Irish Digest-Bog Slides, Bog Bodies and More

摘要

Irish peat harvesting records show that 2003 was the best peat production year since 1995. Indeed the long spells of dry weather this year seemed to suggest that perhaps 2003 would top all years in relation to peat harvesting success, but that wasn't the case. In 1975 (the best year on record) 180 percent of Bord na Mona's production target was achieved; in 19 9 5 - 150 percent; in 1984 - 142 percent; in 1959-141 percent and in 1988-138 percent (those being the top 5 years on record) .In 2003 Bord na Mona achieved 119.9 percent of its target, compared with 68.5 percent in 2002, which had been a very wet year. By autumn however the year's dry weather had also probably contributed to two other nationally newsworthy occurrences. Following periods of very heavy autumnal rain, two major bog slides (see photos) occurred at Pullatho-mas in the blanket bogs of Mayo in the North East of the country and at Derrybrien (and the Slieve Aughty Mountains) in the south Co Galway midlands. What is referred to in Irelandasa "moving bog" (also called bog slides or bog bursts) is generally weather associated, as happened in 1896 outside Killarney in Co Kerry, when the only Irish fatal incident associated with such shifting bogs occurred. Robert Lloyd Praeger, the famous Irish botanist-who died in 1953, explained in his monumental book, "The Way That I followed": "It was on peat-covered hills near Gneevegullia, out to the north-east of Killarney, that there occurred, three days after the Christmas of 1896, an extensive bog-burst that attracted much attention on account of the tragic circumstances accompanying it, a family of eight persons [who were asleep at the lime], their home and their livestock, having been carried away and buried... Avast mass of peat and water precipitated itself down the valley, the flood ceasing only owhen it entered the Lower Lake of Killarney, fourteen miles distant".