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Some of that ancient rock is with us still. I can take you to a place far down on the east coast where you can see and touch it. Near Wexford there's a stone, which, the locals will tell you, dates to two million years B.C. Two hundred miles higher up the coastline, as the crow flies, there's another such rock, in Antrim. I've looked closely at these two items, and I could see the specks of quartz sparkling inside them. They looked like the eyes of little creatures who saw the mighty flames that imprisoned them in the rock long, long ago.
So the fact is, when the volcanic earth had mostly stopped heaving, Ireland amounted to nothing more than a cold field of stone. Much, much later, sediment from the universe floated over and settled on this stone acreage and spread and thickened there like a primal silt.
Gradually, gradually, across those hard plains, there rose an island of rich loam and gentle hills, where today quiet rivers flow through green woods down to seas full of glimmering fish, where shiny horses and their foals gallop across the meadows in a bountiful and misty land flowing with milk and honey. That's how the world thinks of us today, and we're glad of the compliment, which is accurate enough–but it isn't the whole story. Before the land finally settled, before the final phase of seeds blew in on the wind and fertilized it, and before the birds and the insects again made their homes here, we were also born of another great earthly power–the direct opposite of fire. We were born of ice.
Four ice ages attacked Ireland, one after another, and the ice took possession of everything. It destroyed any fertility that had been established, ruined any progress that nature had made. Wherever it met rock, the ice's freezing edges gleamed like the starched frills of folded cloth. It found hidden flaws in the mountains, ripped them open, and filled them–they're what we call glaciers, and in time they became today's rivers. In the largest rock faults, the ice cut channels wide enough to turn into eventual seas, and that's how Ireland was cut away from Britain.
All the hills and highlands and all the ravines and hollows and gullies and gulches and every wrinkle and creek and punchbowl of the Ireland we know today was carved by the cruel hand of ice. They say that great ice takes hold slowly. It begins when the sun grows colder and the land bends under an endless chilling gale. The temperature sinks without mercy, and over the bald clay of the plains and valleys a deep rime forms, squeezing out all plant and animal life.
Across Ireland, one such pulverization followed another until the countryside became a carpet of impenetrable cold. That all happened in the accumulations of the first three ice ages. And then, just as things were thawing out once more, a last northern marauder settled Ireland's final shape–the savage Fourth Ice Age.
Twelve thousand years ago, a vast sheet of compacted and frozen snow broke away from the Arctic Circle, which surrounds the North Pole. It was thousands of feet thick and hundreds of miles broad, and when it finally rode down the curve of the planet, it looked like a floating country.
They say that ice on the move sounds like the beginning of the world. With shouts louder than the voice of God, its shelves heave and crack. The intensity of its light alters every color it meets. Ice, they tell me, is never pure white, never a fixed or lone shade. It is ivory, it is silver, it is chalk, it is salt.
Except that–according to the polar explorers, and I've met more than one of them in my own travels–ice isn't white. Close up, it handles as white. At certain distances, it stands as white. But those who know it well, who have stood on it, lain on it, even fallen through it–they say that ice in bulk glows blue.
Does it take its cue from the sky, as the sea does? Or is it a trick of the light? Maybe it has struck a pose to show how chilly it is, how menacing? Perhaps the blue is clothing, cladding, a gift of nature–as we know, she has all the best tricks. Whatever the cause, the ice that broke away and sailed down those high Atlantic latitudes twelve thousand years ago was as blue as a lady's gown.
But it had other colors too. Do you know the names of the noble Metals? Gold, silver, and platinum. All ice shines like those noble metals, and all color, as we know, is determined by where the light falls. As this island of ice moved south, I wonder how many shades of gold the sun sparked from it. Yellow and bronze and copper. Amber and brass and saffron. And then, at night, under the wind-whipped moon, thousands of new shades glinted, mostly silver, soft or piercing or ominous or benign.
So there it was, sinister in its bright lights and content in its own power. Its noble metals flashed. The sound of its great creakings and crackings echoed across the waters. And the whole glimmering mass headed relentlessly down the northern seas like some great, glowing ocean liner built for a nation of giants.
It was the biggest iceberg ever seen, a thousand times bigger than the one that sank the "Titanic." It was its own landscape and its own geography. The fierce weather of the north had polished it like glass. And the harsh winds of the east had ruffled it and etched little furrows on the plated surfaces. These shales looked like ruched fabric or ebbing sands, and the whole mass had hogbacks and crests and headlands and forelands, all sharp-edged, jagged, and crystal.
The bow of this great vessel formed itself into a fierce and concentrated spearhead. It slammed forward in slabs and reefs so wide that the very horizon seemed made of ice. And it attacked Ireland with spikes half a mile high and half a mile wide.
The first white prow crashed into the cliffs of our northermost counties, Antrim, Derry, and Donegal. Huge chunks of foreland fell away into the ocean and formed today's bays and harbors. Higher wedges of ice scythed out deeper inlets–you can gaze up at those cliffs today and some of them look as if a great hand descended with a sharp knife and cut a sheer slice from the rock.
After it came ashore, this great iceberg plunged south across the country. It kicked rocks and even hills out of its path, and it scooped out valleys and glens that had never existed before. A few peaks and ridges were higher than the ice-cliff, and they continued to raise their spears above the ice. You know them; mountains like Errigal in Donegal, Galtymore in Tipperary, Croagh Patrick in Mayo, where pilgrims after the Ice Age climbed to be nearer their gods, and do so to this very day. But along the lower slopes and in the deep valleys and ravines, the ice fought every fold and won every groove. A new cold gripped the mountains so tightly that its chill penetrated to the stone's deepest core.
The wisest men tell us that everything, sooner or later, changes. And all change commences with a specific moment. We say to ourselves, "I won't do this again, I must become different." And we succeed–eventually.
One day, even the mighty ice changed–it started to shrink and retreat. One single day, ten and a half thousand years ago, Ireland's climate began to alter. The chilling gale that came with the ice blew itself out. Softer breezes floated in from the west. Gentle and warm sea currents came from the southwest. A hot African wind rode up past the coast of Spain and caressed our southern shores.
(continued on the next page)
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