April Blog: What If?

At the beginning of April, Spring  burgeoned into life. One day I was jogging alongside bare hedgerows.  Then it was as if over a weekend the world was like a park where a gardener had gone round planting everywhere. For suddenly, primroses seemed to be dotted all along the hedgerows that I passed  on my runs. Although they have arrived late there seem to be more than ever this year.

Meanwhile I went for a long walk around Lough Talt in County Sligo. I accessed it via Tubbercurry, a town that I pass through on the way to work. Lough Talt  lies in the Ox Mountains and is a  narrow glacier lake approximately 1.5 miles long and 0.5 miles wide. It is a loop walk  of about 4 miles. The day was  bright and fresh  and the lake still and glass like.  The pathway was easy to negogiate and the scenery pleasant with a rocky hill on the left and the lake on the right. A couple of sheep ran, indignantly frightened, out of my way.

View from northern end of Lough Talt

At the more northern end of the lake, I passed through an old homestead, parts of it still being used  for farming where the family had probably moved a few generations back into another more modern farmhouse I saw a bitteen into the distance. I also saw a small charming church away over on the other side of the hill. It was  easy to envisage how it used to be here - small rural isolated but close knit communities. That is going now with many areas of the world being mapped and made more easily accessible - there are not many truly isolated places now. However Northwest Ireland comes pretty close. The walk  back was along a rather busy road which meant I had to concentrate on ensuring I was not left vulnerable on dangerous bends - crossing from side to side of the road on order to stay safe and visible to oncoming traffic. If I had known the road would be so busy I would have backtracked back along the lakeshore rather than walking it as a loop.

As I passed along the road I came to a lay by where  I passed an older man with a rather jaunty hat  looking out into the distance of the lake. It was a particularly picturesque spot.

Lough Talt from the Sligo end - Mayo is over in the distance

As I approached he turned and said " Wouldn't it put you in mind of the Sea of Galilee?" I confessed I had never been there but knew it was a lake rather than a sea and lay between Israel and the Golan Heights which Israel had taken off Syria. We both looked at Lake Talt slivering through the valley and he explained how we were in Sligo at our end where we were standing and that way over northwards where the lake tailed off into the distance was where Mayo was . So maybe his reference  to the Sea of Galilee dividing two warring factions was an allusion to Gaelic football rivalry between Sligo and Mayo!

I finished my walk where I started, thus completing the loop. I started to read the notice board that provided  information about  the walk.  I saw that there were other walks and vowed to come back. Wryly I remembered a Robert Frost  poem called " The Road Not Taken" - " But knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever  come back ".

I remember a recent conversation that had also recalled that  particular poem  to  me.  I was talking to an older  lady in a wheelchair . She was talking about her life and the choices that she had made - how she used to live in Dublin. How  a cousin of hers had suggested she come to Mayo and so she did. " I could have stayed in Dublin." she said  ruminatively gazing up at me with her eyes magnified ,   oyster like behind  foggy glasses.  " But I don't regret it" she said firmly. " I took the right road,  so to speak "  But I    saw a wistful aspect in her  gaze. "Two roads diverged  in a yellow wood........   And both that morning equally lay in leaves no steps had trodden black. Oh.....I kept the first for another day "  I quoted and she smiled.

Easter was  early this year at the end of March and in this year of 2016, Easter and early April was taken up with remembering the 1916 Easter Rising. There are a a lot of what ifs with history including Irish history and as with the lady I was talking  to,  speculation on roads taken in life . What if Dermot  Mc Murrough had never abducted O Rourke the King of Breifne's wife. He would not have been dispossessed of his Kingdom of Leinster  and thus would not have had to call Henry II over from England. Ireland might not have been under England rule for so many hundreds of years. What if General Humbert had succeeded in the French invasion of Ireland in 1798. We could have been entrenched in French culture , fluent French speakers. And finally in 1916 what if Roger Casement had never been caught and the shipment of arms never confiscated? Would Ireland have eventually got Home Rule? Would there still have been a bitter civil war after 1916? I suppose at least Ireland fought for it's freedom in 1916 rather than handing it over as happened back in the 12th century

As Robert Frost wrote

" I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence .
Two roads diverged in a wood and I,
I took the road less travelled by
And that has made all the difference"

He has got the whole " What If " issue down to a fine art. It  is by taking that one road or another that makes the difference  and writes your history for you .Once you go down  the one you choose - you never go back.