Wolf from the Book of Kells (c.800 AD). (The Board of Trinity College, Dublin).
The habit was to kill the wolves by trailing a dead horse through the woods before dropping it in a clearing. When the wolves came to feed at night, the hounds were let slip and quickly dealt with the famished guests. As farming developed and more of the country was put under pasture, the wolf became an increasing nuisance and hunting was promoted through various edicts and bills. In a ‘Book of Information’ compiled in 1584 it was recommended that ‘some order might be had, as when the lease is granted to put in some clause that the tenant endeavour himself to spoil and kill Wolves with traps, snares, or such devices as he may devise’.37 No doubt, the species in the sixteenth century was still very widespread and numerous. An entry in the diary of William Russell, Lord-Deputy of Ireland, in 1596 indicates that there were wolves in the woods just outside Dublin. Further action was encouraged under James I and in 1611 it was decided that an ‘Act for killing Wolves and other vermin’ was necessary – though it was never passed. The text of the proposed Bill cautioned the Lord Deputy or Principal Governor to call off the hunt if they thought that the hunters (requisitioned peasants mostly) were using it as a ploy to get armed – a clear case of wolves in sheep’s clothing.
In a subsequent attempt to civilise Ireland, Cromwell brought out a Bill in 1653 spelling out the necessity to hunt and destroy the plunderers he called ‘doggie wolves’. Some organisation was required – ‘daies and tymes for hunting the Wolfe’ had to be appointed – and money was to be paid on presentation of the heads of male, female or infant wolves, a different rate applying to each specimen. Settlers and natives therefore actively engaged in a renewed bout of destruction, which in 1683 enabled an observer to say about Co. Leitrim: ‘The wolves, which were very numerous, are now very scarce…’. By the close of the seventeenth century the battle was nearly won and Ireland’s reputation as ‘Wolf-land’ could no longer be literally sustained. But the saga of the ‘last’ wolf continued through the eighteenth century with some counties being entirely cleared while in others, like Kerry, more hunting was required. But as the woods dwindled the wolf was left with straggly pockets of trees, which made it even more vulnerable. Eventually silence fell: there was no more ‘panting, lolling, vapouring’38 outside farmyards and no more howling.
European frogs and natterjack toads
The history of the European frog in Ireland has perplexed biologists for several centuries. Was it introduced in 1699, or does its lineage stretch back into the mists of time, to the postglacial period at least 10,000 years ago? The story begins with early categoric statements regarding the frog’s absence. Donatus, the ninth century Irish monk, appears to have been the first to speak:39
Nulla venena nocent, nec serpens serpit in herba
Nec conquesta canit garrula rana lacu.
No poison there infects, no scaly snake,
Creeps through the grass; nor croaking frog annoys the lake.
Cambrensis echoed these sentiments in Topographia Hiberniae, written in the 1180s:43 ‘Of all kinds of reptiles, only those that are not harmful are found in Ireland. It has no poisonous reptiles. It has no serpents or snakes, toads or frogs, tortoises or scorpions.’ But Cambrensis contradicts himself a few pages later when he speaks of the discovery of at least one European frog, found near Waterford: ‘Nevertheless in our days a frog was found near Waterford in some grassy land, and was brought to Robert Poer…’. It was seen by many people including Duvenaldus (Domhnall), King of Ossory, ‘who happened to be there at the time, with a great shaking of his head and great sorrow in his heart at last said (and he was a man of great wisdom among his people and loyal to them): “that reptile brings very bad news to Ireland”.’ So what are we to make of this? What is the real truth about the frog’s pedigree in Ireland?
Noxious animals and their evil associations were an obsession of early Christian commentators who placed the frog in the same category as toads, snakes and lizards because of a superficial similarity. Thus when St Patrick, in one generous swing of the crozier, drove all the pernicious creatures away, the frog left the country – or so Christian mythology claims. Another story concerns a certain Dr Gwithers, Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, labelled ‘frog introducer to Ireland’ who is supposed to have performed his sly deed in 1699.40 One snag is that there is no Dr Gwithers recorded on the books of Trinity College, although there was a Dr Gwithers who was one of William Molyneux’s network of correspondents gathering information for the English Atlas, an ambitious and ill-fated project launched by the London bookseller Moses Pitt in 1682 (see here). Dr Gwithers, in his notes supplied to Molyneux, now lodged in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, categorically states that the frog was absent from Ireland. But his zoological credentials were seriously compromised when he noted that both the stag and otter were also absent which, of course, was not true.41
Another chapter in the mystery of the frog’s antiquity was unravelled some 355 m up on the side of Keishcorran Hill as the present century dawned. Here, at one of the southern outposts of the limestone region in Sligo and Leitrim, at about 90 m above the base of the hill, on the southwestern side, is a line of low cliffs some 15–30 m high punctured by a series of cave entrances. The caves provided refuge and shelter to many animals during the late glacial period some 12,000 years ago. Bones of brown bear, red deer and wolf from this period have been found buried in the earthen floors under more recent material. Other animals came as prey brought by others. During the excavation of one of these caves, the Plunkett Cave, in 1901, a large number of frog bones were found in the upper stratum of soil extending to a depth of some 30 cm on the cave floor. No doubt this stratum was of recent origin, but below were much older layers of soil that revealed more frog bones, associated with Arctic lemmings. Lemmings were present in the Irish landscape some 10,000 years ago as evidenced by the radiocarbon dating of bones found in the Edenvale Cave, Co. Cork, but probably not much longer after that as the rise in temperatures made habitats unsuitable for them. In other words, if frogs were contemporary with the lemmings they had to date back about 10,000 years.
Some of the fossilised frog bones recovered from Plunkett Cave lay in the clay stratum nearly 2 m below the surface layers. Such depth ruled out any likelihood that frogs from more recent times had burrowed down through this overburden, or were deposited there by other animals digging up holes, or had been displaced by soil shifts caused by running water coursing through the cave systems. Moreover the bones were blackened and filled with clay showing that they had not arrived recently. The evidence was enough to convince Scharff that the frog was indeed a member of the ancient fauna of Ireland.24,42 But there are other opinions about the bones’ antiquity and the argument can only be settled with a radiocarbon date. That this task has not yet been undertaken is quite astonishing. As the European frog lives quite happily throughout Europe and within the Arctic Circle there is no reason why low temperatures in Ireland, at the end of the last glacial phase some 10,000 years ago, would have cramped their style or inhibited their spread throughout the country.
The natterjack toad’s history in Ireland is equally controversial without any definitive conclusion as to its antiquity. However, the somewhat slender evidence would point to it being a more recent arrival in the country than the frog.
View from Keishcorran Cave, Co. Sligo, where ancient frog bones were discovered.
Although Cambrensis observed that there were no toads in Ireland in the twelfth century43 there is no evidence in his texts that he went to west Kerry or had any informants from the region. There was no written reference to toads until 1836, when J.T. Mackay, botanist and author of Flora Hibernica, reported seeing them in