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Nature's Silent Music
In this book, Callahan shows how ''civilized'' insanity is turning Ireland away from her naturally harmonious, aesthetically pleasing, sound practices. Why remove a thatched roof to replace it with galvanized tin, only to increase the heating bill? With insightful wisdom, Callahan also ex¬amines the mysterious power of round towers, ''magic spots'' and healers such as Biddy Early. Callahan's study of hedgerows, booley people and Ireland's traditional form of agriculture can teach everyone the value of the land and why not to carelessly destroy it with toxic chemicals.
246 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 13, 2014
After a trip in Ireland with Patricia Monaghan, I immediately re-read this book, where Mr Callahan goes to Ireland several times. The first of the 'several times' was as a young man for 3 years during the end of World War II, so we get memories from a previous generation and wonderful black and white photos.
I was happy to add to my new understanding of Bealtaine being a blessing of the herd (from Monaghan) the culture of booleying. "Booleying was an ancient herding system in the mountainous area of Europe across Spain and as far west Switzerland. The system originally revolved around what is called the village and booley system where for protection farmers lived in clusters of houses (villages) and went out into the fields from a central spot to farm and herd. In western Ireland after the famine, however, instead of groups from a village spreading out over the upland in the summer to booley, the Catholic Irish, who had already spread out and were dispersed on the small plots on the lower slopes, moved to the higher mountains to booley in groups. They pooled their resources to form little assemblies of temporary shelters. It was a sort of nomad's life in which the youngest members of the farm, and mostly the girls, left the scattered lowland cottages and migrated in the summer to the mountains, each with her family's herd. The departure was usually launched with a ceremony, and the return, at the end of October, was celebrated on Halloween. The booleys themselves evoled into sort of mountainside villages of young people. Shelters were built of rocks and sod and the tops roofed with branches of heather and thatch.
On the mountain slopes the herders lived a rugged, healthy life among the schist and on granite-strewn slopes. There they absorbed into their bodies the very energies from those stones from the sea that the butterfly of Slieve League knew about in that unique earthy way that every insect understands.
...How did the booley people in their mountain land come to understand these weak natural forces so well? In the same way, I believe, that the ancient megalithic people and later Egyptian civilization discovred them--by using their own bodies as detectors. They sat among the rocks and felt in their very beings the same rock energies that drew the butterfly to a special mountain rock on Slieve League." (p 64-66)
Mr. Callahan married an Irish lass, so he has family connections to boost his knowledge and love of the place, and he also has a geologist's outlook and a love and respect for subtle energies that get overlooked in our bigger is better culture.
I was happy to add to my new understanding of Bealtaine being a blessing of the herd (from Monaghan) the culture of booleying. "Booleying was an ancient herding system in the mountainous area of Europe across Spain and as far west Switzerland. The system originally revolved around what is called the village and booley system where for protection farmers lived in clusters of houses (villages) and went out into the fields from a central spot to farm and herd. In western Ireland after the famine, however, instead of groups from a village spreading out over the upland in the summer to booley, the Catholic Irish, who had already spread out and were dispersed on the small plots on the lower slopes, moved to the higher mountains to booley in groups. They pooled their resources to form little assemblies of temporary shelters. It was a sort of nomad's life in which the youngest members of the farm, and mostly the girls, left the scattered lowland cottages and migrated in the summer to the mountains, each with her family's herd. The departure was usually launched with a ceremony, and the return, at the end of October, was celebrated on Halloween. The booleys themselves evoled into sort of mountainside villages of young people. Shelters were built of rocks and sod and the tops roofed with branches of heather and thatch.
On the mountain slopes the herders lived a rugged, healthy life among the schist and on granite-strewn slopes. There they absorbed into their bodies the very energies from those stones from the sea that the butterfly of Slieve League knew about in that unique earthy way that every insect understands.
...How did the booley people in their mountain land come to understand these weak natural forces so well? In the same way, I believe, that the ancient megalithic people and later Egyptian civilization discovred them--by using their own bodies as detectors. They sat among the rocks and felt in their very beings the same rock energies that drew the butterfly to a special mountain rock on Slieve League." (p 64-66)
Mr. Callahan married an Irish lass, so he has family connections to boost his knowledge and love of the place, and he also has a geologist's outlook and a love and respect for subtle energies that get overlooked in our bigger is better culture.
December 1, 2020
Callahan's research is impeccable, his conclusions astonishing.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews