Robert Lloyd Praeger

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Bibliographical details
The Way that I Went: An Irishman in Ireland [1st edn.] (Dublin: Hodges Figgis; London: Methuen 1947), 417pp.; further edns. incl. Do . facs. rep. [reduced] (Dublin: (Dublin: Allen Figgis [riverrun] 1969); Michael Viney, intro., Do. (London: Collins; Dufour Edns. 1998), 432pp.; intro. Michael Viney (Cork: Collins Press 2001; 2008), 464pp. [See Contents & Extracts, infra.]

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A Populous Solitude (Dublin: Hodges & Figgis 1941), 272pp., 9 ills; [epigram from Byron’s “Childe Harold”: ‘populous solitude of bees and birds and variformed many-coloured things’]; Chap. 5: ‘Dr. Boate and Dr. Barton’, pp.112-38, refers to Boate’s comments on petrifying properties of waters of Lough Neagh, elaborated in Dr. Barton’s lecture of 1751; also cites Walter Harris’s trans. of Roderick O’Flaherty’s Ogygia making reference to same; includes a notice of William Hamilton of ‘palaeosophy’ fame, pp.133-38.

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Commentary
Seamus Heaney, ‘the Sense of Place’ [lecture of 1977] , in Preoccupations (London: Faber & Faber 1980), remarks of Praeger’s account of Co. Tyrone that ‘his sense of the place is, on the whole, that it is no place’, quoting: “Now that I wish to write about it, I find it is a curiously negative tract, with a paucity of outstanding features when its size and variety of surface are considered [… &c.] A minor excitement excitement is caused by the occurrence in this neighbourhood of a small coal-field, but the strata have been so much disturbed by earth-movements that the seams are broken up by faulting, tending to make mining difficulty and expensive.’ (no source; here p.144.) [Cont.]

Seamus Heaney (‘The Sense of Place’, in Preoccupations, 1980), cont. - ‘Heaney comments: ‘This is also a subjective reaction, of course: who is to say objectively that Tyrone is a “curiously negative tract” and that the Sperrins are “the least inspiring of the Irish mountains”? Who (except someone with an incurable taste for punning) will [144] agree that a small coal-field constitutes “a minor excitement”? The clue to Praeger’s sense of place comes a couple of paragraphs later when he moves into Fermanagh and declares it “more picturesque and from many points of view more interesting”. His point of view is visual, geological, not like Kavanagh’s, emotional and definitive. The Tyrone landscape, for him, is not hallowed by associations that come from growing up and thinking oneself back into the place. The eye is regulated by laws of aesthetics and the disciplines of physical geography, and not, to borrow a phrase from Wordsworth, by the primary laws of our nature, the laws of feeling. [… &c.] (pp.144-45).

John Metcalf, ‘North Down’s Literary Associations’, Fortnight Review (Sept. 1993) [Supplement]: ‘Praeger took fond accounts of Irish landscape, flora and fauna into the realm of literary merit.[ top ]

G. V. Whelan, reviewing Collins rep. of The Way that I Went (1998), recites account of a symposium on bogs ‘held in the middle of one of the wettest of them’, where they participants stood in a ring until ‘under the unusal superincumbent weight, whether of mere flesh and bone or of intellect, the floating surface of the bog slowly sank till we were all half-way up to our knees in water’ (n.p.; Books Ireland, Nov. 1998, p.302.)

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Quotations
Irish Landscape: Cnéithe na hEireann [Chomhar Cultúra Éireann / Cultural Relations Comm.] (Cork: Mercier 1961; rep. 1972), 41pp. ‘As to its actual frontiers, the turbulent ocean on the one side and the less formidable Irish Sea on the other provide around their margin an inexhaustible variety of no-man’s-land where the waves have eaten into the rocks, forming dark cliffs or sandy bays, also the less conspicuous reverse condition where the sea has been forced back owing to a rising of the coast, resulting in new land planed smooth by the former action of the defeated ocean, and now carrying a population of land animals and land plants. Inside the shifting coast-line lies the main mass of our island. Though the surface of Ireland is on the whole smooth, it has passed during its history through great and long-continued periods of stress, when gigantic internal forces have here and there crumpled the surface into ridges and hollows, producing the delightful variety of form which we call scenery. Streams have deepened their courses, carving out valleys, sometimes wide and fertile, sometimes narrow and gorge-like. In a rainy country like Ireland, all hollows, large or small, are filled with water, so that Ireland is indeed a land of lakes. The central parts have for a long time suffered little from large earth movements, so that much of the surface forms a great plain of limestone still retaining much of the horizontality which characterised the muds as which it was originally laid down under the ocean. At present raised some few hundreds of feet above the level of the sea, it forms a land surface much older than that of most countries of Europe. And a further point - the decayed rocks, mixed with the remains of thousands of years of grassy vegetation, have produced a soil singularly suitable for the food of grazing animals. So Ireland is and [6] has been since man and his flocks first arrived, preeminently a cattle country. That is its destiny, and in the absence of extensive mineral deposits, so it will remain. That is its doom and pride. And though our carpet of luscious grass over limestone may not tend to produce for mankind the worldly wealth that would come from beds of coal or iron below the surface, who would not prefer the lovely verdant undisturbed countryside with its refreshing greenness, starry wildflowers, limpid brooks, health-giving atmosphere and golden crops to the slag-heaps and spoil-banks, factories and slums, which are the usual accompaniment of more wealth-producing conditions?’ [Cont.]

Irish Landscape: Cnéithe na hEireann (1972) - cont. ‘Ireland is essentially an agricultural country, with plenty of open space and little hurry or overcrowing; that is the main reason for its being so pleasant a refuge for those who seek rest after toil. The pity is that such conditions are, in the nature of things and the worship of “progress,” ephemeral. We realise this by looking backward, not by looking forward. The urge for “improvement” goes on incessantly. “The old order changeth, giving place to the new,” even when the old was better in a hundred ways. I confess that, in order to envisage the Ireland of my best years, I throw my mind back for half a century. There were many “disadvantages” - few bicycles, no motor-cars on the roads, no domestic electricity, no tarmac, no jazz (or worse), but there was less rush, time to think about things, and time to hold communion with nature, which is much the same as communion with God. But I believe that life on the present-day city model - incessant hurry, incessant noise and glare and excitement, and especially the deplorable craze for ugliness which is rapidly on the increase, carries within itself the germs of failure and disillusion; and that a return to simplicity and a [7] less fervid existence will include a wider appreciation of nature and natural things.’ (pp.7-8.) (Cont.)

Irish Landscape: Cnéithe na hEireann (1972) - cont. ‘The Limestone Plain of Central Ireland, the [8] dominant physical feature of the country, is covered in the main with either grass or bog. Peat-bog is a very characteristic feature of Ireland and the Irish landscape, about one-seventh of the whole surface of the country being covered by this strange vegetable blanket. Out in the Central Plain the wide treeless purplish flat or convex surfaces of the bogs give a quite unusual aspect to the wider areas. This spreading peat is a very recent happening from the geological point of view. Our great bogs are only a few thousand years old, the operating conditions being the oncoming of a wet coldish climate subsequent to the Ice Age. In many areas the growth of peat has now lessened or ceased. The bacteria which cause the decay of vegetable matter lost their vigour under the wet cold conditions, and in consequence decay lessened, acidity increased, and accumulation of dead plants resulted, until up to forty or fifty feet of peat may remain, useless except for fuel (when dried). The surface layers of the bogs are generally so acid that a specialised dwarf vegetation has occupied the ground, of which the chief ingredient is the common ling, accompanied, on account of the scarcity of food, by some interesting insect-eating plants and others. At present the cutting of peat for the production of electric energy in particular is increasing greatly, and unless new sources of heating are discovered - as no doubt they will be - the problem of heat-supply in this rainy country will one day become acute.’ (pp.8-9.) (Cont.)

Irish Landscape: Cnéithe na hEireann (1972) - cont. ‘To go from the gigantic to the small. I never heard an explanation of the massive gate-pillars, built of stone and mortar, round, with conical shaped tops, and mostly white-washed, that one finds in many parts of Ireland - five or six feet high, quite imposing objects, and yet erected for quite trivial use - merely to hang a light iron gate on. They seem a waste of time and labour as compared with the simpler obstacle they often replace - an old cart wheel, or a furze bush, or the end of an old iron bedstead, or the ruins of a bicycle. But no doubt there is a philosophical explanation. (To keep the pigs in or out - you facetiously suggest.) Are they the descendants of some prehistoric type, or do they merely represent a way of getting rid of superfluous field-stones? Or are they degenerate forms of the Irish round tower motif, which they much resemble? But a tour in Ireland soon convinces you that the pig, far from being a universal animal there, is by no means so. The white-faced bullock is the Irish agricultural animal par excellence, and should figure on the Irish coat-of-arms, if any animal be so honoured, the harp, once favoured, is extinct as a national instrument, but exists still as an emblem, like the unicorn on the English arms.’ (p.16.). The text includes a Hiberno-English narrative of a crippled woman who is sent by a wise man to Lough Nahanagan, Co. Wicklow, where her fright at encountering the water-horse monster of the lake sends her scarpering back to him in Co. Down, after which her legs are straight and good. (pp.20-22.)

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References
Belfast Central Public Library holds Beyond Soundings (1930); The Botanist in Ireland (1934); Irish Landscape (1953); Marine Shells of the N. of Ireland (1889); Natural History of Ireland ... (1950); Official Guide to Co. Down and the Mourne Mts. (1900, 1924); Old Fashioned Verses and Sketches (1947); A Populous Solitude (1941); ... Investigation of Gravel Beds ... (1890); Some Irish Naturalists (Dubdalk 1949); A Tourist’s Flora of the West of Ireland (1909); The Way that I Went (1947); Weeds, Simple Lessons for Children (1913). University of Ulster Library (Morris Collection) holds Official Guide to Co. Down and the Mourne Mts (1898).

Booksellers
Hyland Books (Cat. 224; Dec. 1996) lists John O’Mahony, The Sunny Side of Ireland (rev. 2nd ed. 1902), with Praeger’s chapter on Natural History, maps, ills. [Hyland 214]; Official Guide to Co. Down and the Mourne Mountains (1st end. 1898), xv+232+(24)pp., maps and ills.; Do., rev. edn. 1900 [Hyland 219, Oct. 1995]. Tourist’s Flora of the West of Ireland (1909), 5 folding maps, 27 photos; 17 text ills.

Emerald Isle Books (Cat. 95) lists Praeger with G A. J. Cole, Handbook to the City of Dublin and the surrounding District (Dublin UP 1908), 441pp., maps, ill.

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Notes
William Emlius Praeger - see more under William Patterson, [q.v.]; see also Irish Book Lover, Vol. 6, for contemp. reviews of his books.

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