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From Wikipedia: “Wolves were once an integral part of the Irish countryside and culture…
…Wolves feature prominently in Irish mythology…
…The last reliable observation of a wolf in Ireland comes from County Carlow when a wolf was hunted down and killed near Mount Leinster for killing sheep in 1786.”
Excerpt from Wolf-Time:
“Why is it that Irish historians will not talk at this level about Irish history? Why will they not ask the big questions?
Here, for example, is a big question: the shot that rang out one night in Maam Valley in Connemara? What, compared to it, is the sailing away of the Irish chieftains from Ireland?
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea and the destructive sword are portions of eternity to great for the eye of man.
There it is: one night in the Maam Valley we killed a portion of eternity.
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
…Megalithic language, or languages we silenced; Bear language we silenced; Boar language we silenced; Wolf language we silenced.
Our history if the history of our success in making ourselves and our world unreal.
Mostly, it is from unreality that we suffer. From that and from the wrong kind of man-made reality.
…Sadly, we haven’t yet seen that prospering man-made unreality is, if anything, more dangerous to us than prospering, primal reality was.
Better Céol Cúaine(1) than the ever-hungering, ever unhappy, ever-unsatisfied, inaudibly howling vacancy we have replaced it with.
…Better any day our chances with a real wolf than with the Wolf of Vacancy.
In Nordic myth this Wolf of Vacancy is called Fenris Wolf or, as commonly, Fenrir. In order for our world to be at all possible, so the story goes, Tyr, a great and mighty god, had to bind him, had to lay him up in chains in an underworld. But everyone, including Tyr himself, knows full well that Fenrir will one day slip his chains, he will emerge and run free. Opening his mouth, he will advance his lower jaw under the earth and his upper jaw over the sun. Sun and earth and all in between he will swallow, and for Fenrir that is just a mouthful.
Ever since we first set foot in Ireland we have been creating our own Fenrir, our own Wolf of Vacancy, our own Apocalyptic Wolf of Apocalyptic Vacancy.
What we would see if we lifted our eyes from our ledgers is that at this stage there is no binding him, no laying him up in chains, out of sight, in an underworld.
So here it is, Foras Feasa ar Éirinn(2):
Lights gone out in Ireland’s last wolf are lights coming on
in a not inconsiderably larger wolf,
are lights coming on
in
The Wolf of Vacancy”
From Invoking Ireland: Ailiu Iath n-hErend
Note:
1. Céol Cúaine = The music of wolves
2. Foras Feasa ar Éirinn = History of Ireland
