As I stroll past the main green of Trinity College Dublin, images of my father flood my mind. Here, where Burke and Goldsmith stand watch over the untamed growth of grass, as vehicles drone by uncaringly and the student body finds pleasure in the sight acting as a sanctuary for bees and a testament to eco-diversity.
My father would have chagrined at the potential fodder left unused. Absence of cows in the presence of such lush grass would have grieved him. He had a keen admiration for fertile grasslands, a sentiment so deep that led him to rent pastures across northern Roscommon for his bovine herd. The responsibility of moving the cattle through the convoluted rural roads of the county, from one leased field to another, fell upon us, his five strapping sons.
Such duties may have constituted child labour, fashionable and thriving back then, but scarcely acknowledged by our father. Not only was he a cattleman, but he also served as a county councillor. During a Roscommon County Council meeting about potential introduction of dog licenses – a proposal he fought against – he amusingly confessed having “five sons and a sheepdog, and valuing the sheepdog more than all his sons combined”. His words may have been scandalous, but ultimately, no dog license was enforced.
This routine shuffling of our cattle across northern Roscommon imbued the animals with a yearning for exploration, prompting them to venture off on their own, ending up in the most unexpected places. They even landed in Maynooth once according to a neighbour who, on his return from Dublin, claimed to have spotted them hitchhiking; a tale we knew was based purely on fiction as our cattle wouldn’t hitch a ride.
Then an incident occurred involving lands my father had leased from the council adjacent to our cemetery. Despite having installed an electric fence to deter the bovines, they breached it, freely meandering among the tombstones.
Upon my father’s intervention to remove them, a woman attending to a family grave scolded him for the disgraceful incident. He swiftly retorted that she was the lone objector. One of the five sons, present at the scene, wished for the earth to swallow him whole. In due time, it would.
Both father and son now lie restfully beneath the turf once trodden by our adventurous herd, unbothered by the flourishing wilderness of Trinity College or anyplace else. The term ‘wilding’ is derived from Old English ‘wilde,’ indicating “a natural, uncultivated, untamed, uncontrolled” state.