Time for tadpoles and tiny tapers
FROGS have been croaking in Kerry, with spawn where still waters run deep. Perhaps this is also true of Seamus Heaney’s flax dams further north. Snowdrops, those February Fair Maids, have also been demonstrating spring’s arrival.
A frog was considered an evil omen in medieval Ireland by a council of chieftains and their new Norman neighbours. One overlord saw it as an indicator of doom. The creature was probably an ugly common toad which may have arrived in ship’s ballast.
There has been no sign of over-wintering tadpoles that I have heard of, unlike in the UK where such a phenomenon is apparently widespread. Scientific research there has shown this to be found from Kent and Cornwall to Aberdeen. Freezing weather does not seem to bother them.
Scientists at two Scottish universities reported that it was unlikely the winter tadpoles had become trapped in ponds over summer and unable to complete their development — rather they had decided to stay as they were. They survived winter perfectly well and completed metamorphosis in early spring — and did so at a much larger size than tadpoles that had developed in their first summer. Therefore, the scientists reported, some frogs may have been taking advantage of global warming and so become bigger frogs.
I am grateful for the Kerry news from reader, Paul G, in the Mount Brandon area. Perhaps he might come upon some Kerry toads, creatures which can make unhappy news with hazardous road-crossings. The frog that caused the problem in the 12th century (according to Giraldus Cambrensis, who compiled a colourful Topographia Hiberniae detailing the landscape, birds, animals, fish, magic wells and such), had been found near Waterford and brought to Robert Poer “and others in assembly” who sat around contemplating it.
A chieftain named Duvenaldus, “with a great shaking of the head and great sorrow in his heart”, reportedly said that “this reptile brings very bad news to Ireland and is a sure sign of the coming of the English and the imminent conquest and defeat of the people”.
Giraldus does not mention that the Normans had arrived already and were busy setting themselves up.
Giraldus, in an imaginative flourish, informs that “no one will suppose that the frog had ever been born in Ireland because here mud does not, as elsewhere, contain the seeds from which frogs are born” — a contemplation on tadpoles, perhaps. The fate of the frog, or common toad, is not revealed.
Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) have been in tandem with the water-seeking frogs, delicate growths bobbing from green shoots, sometimes called Mary’s Tapers — a historic link with the church and a tradition that plants originally arrived in the satchels of monks returning from mainland Europe. The flowers bloom in open woodland from Switzerland to Lebanon. The Romans brought them to Britain.
Theophrastus, Greek philosopher and successor to Aristotle, mentions them growing on Mount Hymettos in 300BC. Two hundred historic species are cultivated in the OPW gardens at Altamont in Carlow, and in Burtown’s gardens near Athy and at Primrose Hill in Lucan there are large collections for the pleasure of galanthophiles — as fans of the tiny flower may be called.