In theory, one could go on forever following the continuous coastline of an island like Ireland again and again and, each time, finding new and exciting places. The Irish coast offers infinite opportunities for exploring that complex fringe where the land and sea merge, forming multiple habitat zones and supporting myriads of species. Our island is so small that one is never far from the coast and, like Praeger, I am always drawn, as if by a magnet, to explore harbours, beaches, dunes, cliffs and islands. The islands off the Irish coastline hold a special attraction for me, as they did for Praeger. He frequently wrote about his excitement on visiting these isolated places:
Islands are always fascinating – particularly if they are small. Their aloofness makes a curious appeal …. Picture the romance of approaching, after days of unbroken horizon, an unknown island! We cannot hope for this in our prosaic latitudes, but, all the same the most fascinating holiday that our own country offers is, to my mind, a sojourn on one or other of the little islets that lie off the Irish coast.(BS)
The clearly defined nature of the islands also held a fascination for Tim Robinson, who lived in and mapped the Aran Islands. He wrote that ‘the island is held by the ocean as a well-formed concept grasped by the mind’.1 As Praeger recorded on Rathlin Island and Fair Head, he was a fearless climber and hillwalker in his youth, with boundless stamina and drive. In his early life he was described as ‘powerful’ and ‘full of energy’. His friend Anthony Farrington recounted how ‘he was near his sixty-seventh birthday when I met him at the top of Coumshingaun Mountain. I had traversed the southern ridge but Praeger had come up the cliff at the back of the corrie.’ He was always learning although, when he was 69, he said, ‘I am too old to learn new techniques but I want to know about all these things and so I’ll do all I can to help’.2 In the 21st-century world of complicated technology, I can relate to this feeling of detachment from nature and a dependence on computers and mobile phones, but I have a desire to stay focused on the wild places. Praeger was equally undistracted by the ‘new techniques’ and his fieldwork continued until he was over 80.
I have often wondered what drove Praeger to devote his entire life to exploring the island of Ireland in such minute detail, inspiring many other naturalists to collaborate with him and resulting in such ground-breaking results as the Clare Island Survey. His early family life was obviously a key launchpad in that his parents gave him the freedom to wander at will, exploring the countryside within easy reach of his home, from the Mourne Mountains to the Antrim coast. Here he honed his field skills and developed a love of outdoor pursuits such as hillwalking, climbing, caving and swimming. His grandfather and his uncle were already well-known naturalists in their own right. They inspired the young Praeger, encouraging him to join the Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club, where he learned from many experienced naturalists. He was also a product of the Victorian fashion for natural history pursuits such as botany and entomology that were especially associated in Ireland with the Anglo-Irish community.
It is likely that he was influenced in his youth by Darwin’s seminal work, On the Origin of Species, which was published in 1859, just six years before Praeger was born. This was the foundation for evolutionary biology, and it must have sparked many questions in Praeger’s mind about nature in Ireland, which was little studied at that time. Despite being trained as an engineer, he was fired with the curiosity of a scientist to find out more about his natural environment. His interest in archaeology and antiquities may have been reinforced by the growing fascination with Celtic legend and mythology in late 19th century Ireland and the rise of cultural nationalism. In adult life he was so busy with his scientific work that he does not seem to have had time to raise a family. A key factor in all he undertook was the support of his devoted wife Hedwig, who explored many of the remote places with him. Equally, he loved to explore alone and wrote in The Way that I Went, ‘the study of nature in the open needs contemplation and quiet, and these are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain’.
His penultimate book, The Natural History of Ireland, was widely regarded as falling short of the unique nature of his early efforts. Written during World War II, when the author was nearly eighty, but not published until 1950, it suffers from ‘too much technical terminology and obscure botanical categories’. It also ‘indulges some of the author’s pet topics without consideration of their interest for a potential readership’.3 I recognise from my own experience as a writer how easy it is to become absorbed by the finer details of my own special interests, whether it is sailing or nature study, and forget that these pursuits may of little interest to a wider readership.
Seán Lysaght, who wrote an authoritative biography of Praeger, recalled, ‘as an old man he wrote a little book on Irish Landscape, in a series commissioned by the Cultural Relations Committee.4 Máire Mhac an tSaoi, then working for the Department of Foreign Affairs, reviewed the typescript with him and was obliged to write her comments and questions, as Praeger was very deaf and, by now, had not long to live.’ Reflecting the policy of the government to consider Ireland as a single entity, she insisted on removing references to ‘partition of Ireland’ because it ‘spoiled the otherwise happy character’ of the text. She also asked him to consider changing the references to ‘the British Isles’ and ‘Londonderry’ to ‘these islands’ and ‘Derry’ respectively. Clearly, Praeger agreed to the censorship, but he was still allowed to include a rant about the untidy appearance of Ireland’s towns and villages.5 The tiredness of old age shows clearly in the rough scrawl of Praeger’s handwriting on the manuscript of the Irish Landscape, which was eventually published as his last book in 1953.
Anthony Farrington wrote that when Praeger sent his last scientific paper to the press in 1951, he said to a friend, ‘I’m written out. I have no more to say,’ adding characteristically, for he did not relish idleness, ‘can you think of anything that I can do?’ Farrington also referred to Praeger’s ‘somewhat abrupt manner of speech’ in old age, saying,
this habit of ‘blustering,’ as he himself called it, caused many who did not know him well to regard him with awe and some to call him rude. For this reason, on Field Club excursions the more timid, desiring information about some plant, were wont to approach him through the medium of his wife. It must be admitted that he could be very short with those he thought insincere or inept, though once he was convinced of the real interest of the inquirer in the matter concerned, he would go to great trouble to give them the required information. There must be innumerable instances of his kindness. One such is a series of letters written between 1943 and 1945 to a girl of 13 or 14. Here we find Praeger at his kindest, answering questions, advising, or merely chatting. It has been suggested that his bluff manner may have developed early in life to cover a sentimentality which he undoubtedly possessed and of which in his youth he may have been shy. In his later days he was not ashamed to admit this by various actions known only to a few of his most intimate friends.6
With advancing years, Praeger found it hard to adapt to modern life. ‘The present time is one of rush and clatter, of fuss and noise and glare: I fancy I see repercussions of all this or of the new mentality which has produced it, and which it has produced, in the strange literature and art and music of the day. My medieval mind will not rise to modern heights’. Like him, I sense a need for peace and quiet as I grow older, finding solace and escape in sailing far from the distractions of the modern world or absorbed in watching a wild animal or bird as it goes about its simple struggle to survive. Praeger disliked the modern pressures affecting some lifestyles that were largely unchanged in Ireland since the previous century:
Hurry and noise are the keynotes of today, and where these prevail we need never hope to lure the fairies from their hiding places. Perhaps I have arrived at the stage of old-fogeydom, for I recall the more leisurely, deliberate, spacious days of Queen Victoria, the courteous quakerish naturalists who taught me the truths that the lie at the bottom of all science, and I confess that I look back on those times … with a deep affection. (WW)
After more than fifty years of marriage, Praeger’s wife Hedwig died in 1952. Now aged 87 and almost completely deaf, Praeger had become heavily dependent on his wife for basic needs of mobility and communication with others. After sorting out his affairs and transferring his huge library of papers to the Royal Irish Academy, he moved back to the place of his birth in County Down to live with his sister, Rosamund, who by this stage was a well-known artist. It was there that the great Irish naturalist died in May 1953, aged 88 years. He left behind him an enormous legacy of publications, knowledge of the flora, fauna and archaeology of his native island and a much greater appreciation of the natural world. Sixteen years earlier in The Way that I Went, which was subtitled An Irishman in Ireland, he had written:
To the patriot, the loveliest country is – or should be – that in which he was born and in which he has lived, for it has given him the very foundation of his being. … I have wandered about Europe from Lapland to the Aegean Sea but have always returned with fresh appreciation of my own land. I think that is as it should be.(WW)
In my own wanderings around the Irish coast over the last seven decades I have, in many cases, revisited the same places where Praeger ‘roamed at random’ up to a century earlier. I have noticed great changes on many wild shores, but others remain much the same as when the greatest Irish naturalist of his time recorded their features.