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RTÉ News
08-08-2025
- General
- RTÉ News
All you need to know about the blackberry season
Analysis: The blackberry is a plant of notable cultural significance in Ireland, not least in its ability to evoke all sorts of emotional memories and nostalgia It's the blackberry season. The still red and green fruits will darken and ripen over the coming weeks and the white, sometimes blush, flowers will form into berries later, prolonging the supply over several autumn months. The bramble is a widespread shrub, often forming dense thickets with vigorous stems or canes that climb or trail, making the plant a resilient presence in urban as well as its more usual rural settings. As a tough native perennial, the blackberry shrub, with its hundreds of microspecies, holds a long-lived practical, culinary, and economic presence in Ireland, and as a result is a plant of notable cultural significance; not least in its ability to evoke all sorts of emotional memories and nostalgia. The prolonged annual seasonal presence of the blackberry gives us ample opportunity to time-travel, especially to childhood when the excitement and exhilaration of collecting food for free fixed to the near wondrous taste of the first sweet berry. Richard Mabey, one of the pioneering advocates for collecting wild foods, explains that the cluster-forming design of the stems is helpful in deciding which berries to eat raw and which to keep for culinary uses. His 1972 Food for Free advises 'the lowest berry- right at the tip of the stalk- is the first to ripen, and it is the sweetest and fattest of all. Eat it raw. A few weeks later, the other berries near the end ripen; these are less juicy, but still good for jams and pies.' From RTÉ Lyric FM's Daybreak with Evonne Ferguson, Naturefile profiles the blackberry, commonly found in Ireland from the end of the summer until October This first berry is not only sweet, but it is intensely aromatic and once consumed the berry-picking could become a bit more tedious and pricklier, especially if it rained, which tended to spoil or dilute the taste of the collected berries in the can. Moving on to the second phase of blackberrying, the cooking and preserving stage, added to this assortment of memories. Therefore, blackberrying, as a multisensorial activity, bonded memories to childhood, evoking the joy of those days with a sense of lost innocence. The following child's account from Monaghan from the Dúchas Schools' Collection is as timeless and soothingly nostalgic as it is familiar: I usually take a whole day blackberrying. I take a pint tin and a white enamel bucket. I gather them in the tin and then put them into the bucket. If it begins to rain I have to stop picking as they would not keep. I do not gather them along the road as they are too dusty. I always go round the fields where they are sure to be clean. I only pick the largest ones and I do not pick any that are too ripe. If I do not get all I require in one day I go out a second day. I usually bring one of my chums with me and we divide whatever we pick between us. As with the case of bilberries, the children's own reports in the Collection suggest that collecting blackberries was a norm fixed to their seasonal routines. An expression frequently provided by the children that 'I play blackberries in autumn' implies that the activity was an integral and standard one, while the now-forgotten expression that something is 'as plenty as blackberries' denotes the fruit's ubiquitous presence. In comparison to other seasonal wild purple fruits, like bilberries, elderberries and sloes, blackberries were easy to find, identify and collect making them the quintessential representative of wild summer and autumn fruits. With their high and aromatic taste profile and versatile culinary uses, blackberrying was emblematic of childhood and it brought as sense of agency to children's activities and endowed pickers with a bank of emotive memories to indulge reflective nostalgia. Seamus Heaney reads Blackberry Picking That one berry should hold such a network of intermeshed meanings makes it one of cultural, historical, archaeological, material and, indeed, literary import. The blackberry is an item of interest in all these disciplines and it goes without saying that it was a useful food resource from the prehistoric period to near contemporary times. There are also slight pockets of evidence detailing the use of berries, roots and canes as dye material and medicinal resources. The versatility of the plant, therefore, accounts for its inclusion in the list of protected woodland shrubs in early medieval law as outlined by the Celtic scholar, Fergus Kelly, in his 1997 publication, Early Irish Farming. While legal provision for shrubs is not as consequential as that applied to the nobles of the woods (oak, hazel, holly, and wild apple), it does suggest nonetheless a degree of woodland protection, and possibly management, applied to shrubs that have economic importance, and no doubt that value connected to the plant's food and culinary uses. Sources contemporary with the laws indicate that berries were eaten with oatmeal, milk, honey and nuts. Indeed, in a paper published in 1998 in Early Medieval Munster: Archaeology, History and Society, I suggest that such mixtures, seasonally variable, resembled a type of muesli. Interestingly, such meal and milk mixtures continue to feature in folk memory and folklife accounts into the early decades of the twentieth century. From RTÉ Radio 1's Sunday Miscellany, Blackberry-Picking by Kathy Donaghy By then, the list of blackberry recipes appearing in cookery books, magazines and newspapers is extensive. For instance, the Belfast News Letter in September 1922 gives readers six options for blackberries including blackberry trifle; blackberry and tapioca mould; cold blackberry jelly; sponges; rolls; and apple and blackberry jelly. For desserts, blackberries went into mousses, puddings, fritters, cobblers, custards, souffles and meringues. They were baked into cakes, pies and tarts with some of the best loved being a mix of apples and berries. They were made into syrups, vinegars and wines, and of course, they went towards preserves in the form of jams and jellies that with careful household management could last into the winter months. However, away from the structured formality of the recipe, the Dúchas accounts of cooking and consuming blackberries provide insight into the more routine culinary uses. Here, jams and jellies are frequently mentioned, blackberry wine is popular, as are cakes, as in one from Kerry made with flour, eggs, butter, cream, apples and berries. In Cavan, a fine oatmeal flummery was sugar-sweetened and eaten with blackberries: A pint of milk was put into a saucepan & while it was coming to a boil oatmeal was sifted through a very fine sieve or strained. The sifted meal was added to the boiling milk & then sweetened with sugar. All was allowed to boil for five or ten minutes. When nearly cold the contents of saucepan was eaten with stewed fruit-blackberries. In Laois, stewed blackberries were eaten on bread so 'you might go on with your hard work.' The simplest of all descriptions was that in a young girl's letter to the Weekly Irish Times in October 1905. Here she gives the starring role to the blackberry in a description that would be at home in the current vogue for minimalist menu-writing - blackberries, milk, sugar. She writes with warmth and affection: 'I often mix some [blackberries] with sugar and milk, and they are lovely.' From RTÉ Radio 1's Liveline, callers discuss the joys of blackberry picking But rather than romanticise these accounts, remembering contextual details is important. Here is evidence of a food system that has undergone irrevocable change since the mid-20th century. The obvious affection for the berries and blackberrying connects to their seasonal presence. Today, by contrast, berries are everyday and everywhere, with production linked to global agri-systems and supported by a wellness industry that prizes the relatively low-carbohydrate profile of mostly tasteless berries. Outside these systems, the seasonal berry of the accounts above was a rare, anticipated but fleeting pleasure. Gathering in the best depended on tacit knowledge of how, where and when to collect and how to distinguish berries of different flavour profiles amongst the different microspecies. Essentially, the tradition expected connection with the natural world and an understanding of the blackberry's variable presence within that system. The following riddle frequently appears in folk material and is not simply playful, but an insight into a world of essential and inherited but now somewhat erased knowledge.
RTÉ News
07-08-2025
- General
- RTÉ News
Here's what to do when wasps crash your picnic
Analysis: There's a reason why wasps prefer jam to ham in late summer and it's down to what is going on inside the colony By , UCL It's summer in the northern hemisphere and that means sun, sea – and wasps. A lot of us have been taught to fear wasps as aggressive insects that exist only to make our lives a misery. But with unsustainable wildlife loss across the planet, we need to learn to live alongside all organisms – even wasps. They are important pollinators and predators of insects. A little knowledge about their natural history can help you dine safely alongside wasps. The wasps that usually visit your picnic are typically the common yellowjacket (Vespula vulgaris) and the German wasp (Vespula germanica). They seem to appear from nowhere so what should you do? Stay still or she'll think you're a predator Her (all workers are female) smell receptors have got her to your picnic table, but she's now using visual landmarks (you and your surroundings) to orientate her way to the food on your plate. Keep your mouth closed and avoid breathing heavily to minimise the release of carbon dioxide, which wasps use as a cue that a predator is attacking. Similarly, if you start flapping and shouting, you are behaving like a predator (mainly badgers in the UK), which might trigger the wasp's attack mode. From RTÉ Lyric FM's Naturefile, a look at wasps with Anja Murray Watch what she is eating This is a worker wasp. She is looking for food to feed to her sibling larvae in her mother's papery looking nest. Is she carving off a lump of ham, gathering a dollop of jam or slurping at your sugary drink? Watch what she is eating because this gives you a clue to what your wasp offering will be. She is so focused on her task that she won't notice you watching. Make a wasp-offering to keep her from bothering you Before you know it, she's off with jaws full of jam or a hunk of ham. She might zigzag away from your table – a sign that she is reorientating for a reliable return. Once landmarks are mapped, she will fly straight and fast. If you followed her, she would lead you to her nest. But you are better off using your time to prepare your wasp offering, because she's going to come back soon. Your offering should be a portion of whatever she harvested from your plate. You can move it slightly away from the rest of your food. If you let her have her share, you too can dine in peace. You can gradually move your wasp offering further away from you. Wasp offerings are well-tested techniques around the world, whether you're looking to track down a wasp nest to eat, or keep customers unbothered by wasps at an outdoor restaurant. From RTÉ Radio 1's Mooney Goes Wild, the panel answer questions about the common wasp Happily, your picnic friend is unlikely to bring a swarm of wasps to your table, because social wasps are poor recruiters. This makes sense because wasp food (insects, carrion) is usually a scattered, short-lived resource. One caterpillar doesn't necessarily mean there's a huge patch of them, for example. This contrasts with honeybees, for which there has been strong natural selection for the evolution of a communication system (waggle dance) to recruit many foragers to a patch of flowers. However, you might get a few wasps at your picnic, especially if the nest is close, just by chance. Wasps tend to be attracted to a forage source by the presence of other wasps. If she sees a few wasps gathered, then she will investigate. But if there are too many wasps, this puts her off. Wasps' changing feeding habits You may already know that wasps go crazy for sugar at the end of the summer. But why do they prefer a protein earlier in the season? It depends on what is going on inside the colony – and this changes with the season. Wasp larvae are carnivorous. Together, the workers rear thousands of larvae. If your wasp wants ham (or some other protein source) at your picnic, you know her colony is full of hungry larvae. You might notice this in early-to-mid summer – and no later than mid-to-late August. Enjoy the knowledge that you are helping feed armies of tiny pest controllers, who will soon set to work regulating populations of flies, caterpillars, aphids and spiders. A defining feature of an adult wasp is the tiny petiole (wasp-waist). This constriction between her thorax and abdomen evolved so her ancestors could bend their abdomens, yoga-style, to parasitise or paralyse their prey. The wasp-waist of an adult worker limits her to a largely liquid diet. She is like a waiter who must deliver feasts to customers without tasting it. The larvae tip her service with a nutritious liquid secretion, which she supplements with nectar from flowers. For much of the season, this is enough. Blend science and a picnic Towards the end of the summer, most wasp larvae have pupated – and a pupated larva doesn't need feeding. So, demand for protein foraging diminishes, as do the sweet secretions that have kept the workers nourished. This means worker wasps must now visit flowers for nectar – although your jam scone or sweet lemonade may also be exceedingly tempting. If your wasp is fixated on sugar at your table, then you know her colony is likely to be in its twilight phase of life. Although time of the year is a good indicator of the balance of ham-to-jam in a wasp's foraging preferences, weather, prey availability, local competition and rate of colony growth can influence them too. This means the switch from ham to jam this year may be different to next year. We'd like you to help us gather data on this, to improve predictions on whether to offer your wasps ham or jam. To take part, report here whether the wasp at your picnic wanted protein (such as chicken, hummus, beef or sausage), jam (or anything sugary, including sugary drinks), or both.
RTÉ News
25-07-2025
- RTÉ News
It's Bilberry Sunday this weekend but have you ever eaten one?
Analysis: The bilberry was an important feature of activities, games, food and entertainments associated with the festival of Lughnasa In October 1925, the Weekly Irish Times ran a brief feature on bilberries in its 'A Nature Picture' column. An attractive monochrome sketch of the plant, captioned Whortleberry, accompanied a text that told readers it 'is a wonderful year for wild berries- blackberries are profuse everywhere, hips and haws abound… So, too, in its favourite habitats the whortleberry, blaeberry, or bilberry, as it is variously called, has a great crop of berries available for those who like them as an ingredient for pies and puddings.' Depending on the economic wellbeing, location, age and marriage profile of readers, the newspaper details of this wild berry may have been very differently received. The bilberry shrub (Vaccinium myrtillus) grows wild on acidic soils of bog, moors and open woodland and it is frequently found growing amongst heather, hence its Irish names fraochán or fraochóg, following the Irish word for heather, fraoch. Once ripe in late July, it is sweet, juicy and flavoursome. But October was certainly too late for picking as July and August were seen as the prime months for collecting the best-tasting bilberries. For those inclined to follow superstitious belief, bilberries were not to be collected after the first Sunday in August as the fairies and Crom Dubh, the dark and crooked figure of the harvest, had spat on them in the same way they spoiled and cursed blackberries at Halloween. From RTÉ Lyric FM's Naturefile, a look at the bilberry, one of the richest natural sources of anthocyanins For those in need of some extra cash, a good berry season was welcomed in rural areas where a network of pickers, buyers and sellers supported an important export industry in sending bilberries (and blackberries) to Britain in the first half of the 20th century. This export trade boomed during the two world wars and the story of bilberries in this industry is detailed comprehensively by Michael Conry in his 2011 publication, Picking Bilberries, Fraocháns and Whorts in Ireland: The Human Story. For an urban readership, the bilberry may have been simply a curiosity unlike the ubiquitous blackberry, that remained a feature of city and town life and was connected to memories of childhood and family expeditions of collecting berries in the wild. But in rural areas, the bilberry remained an important feature of the celebrations of the harvest and its presence in the activities, games, craft skills, festive food, and entertainments associated with the festival of Lughnasa. This important calendar marker between the last Sunday in July and the first Sunday in August was of practical, community, symbolic, and ritualistic significance to traditional agricultural societies. Its status is best illustrated in the numerous names of the festival that survived into the twentieth century: Harvest Sunday; Lammas Sunday; Bilberry Sunday; Mountain Sunday; Patron Sunday; Garland Sunday; Domhnach Chrom Dubh; Domhnach Fada; Domhnach na bhFraochóg. In fact, folklorist Máire MacNeill identified over 80 different local names for the festival in her seminal and sparkling 1962 publication, The Festival of Lughnasa: A Study of the Survival of the Celtic Festival of the Beginning of the Harvest. From RTÉ Archives, Dermot Mullane reports for RTÉ News on Garland Sunday ceremonies at the holy well and mass rock of Tobernalt, Co Sligo in 1975 As with the other three Celtic-survival calendar festivals, Lughnasa was a focal point between seasons and a transition time between a change-over in agricultural work. The summer's fertility and the summer farm work around food production, particularly in terms of grain and potato cultivation, were about to be realised as summer transitioned into autumn. MacNeill's scholarship identified surviving features that may have been transmitted from antiquity into 20th century Ireland. A sizeable part of her research concentrated on the responses gathered from a questionnaire which was sent out in Irish and English to correspondents of the Irish Folklore Commission in July 1942. The questionnaire, titled 'Domhnach Chrom Dubh', received 316 replies and these provided rich substantive detail in elucidating the main surviving features of the festival. In terms of agriculture and food production, it was the beginning of the harvest and the start of the potato-digging season. It was also a time of weather and crop fertility omens. From a community perspective, it was a time of group visits and gatherings to mountain or hill-tops or to lake and river shores with celebratory dancing, music and singing and courtship rituals. The understanding was that bilberries and potatoes bridged the temporal movement from one season to another By the time MacNeill was undertaking her research, elements of older practice were fading. She concludes that 'no custom has been more lasting than the picking of bilberries which… gave the festival several names' and they were 'an earnest of the earth's fruitfulness, a bounty of the deity. And it was important that all should eat them and that some should be brought home to the old and weak who could not climb the hill.' That the berries were an important integrated aspect of the festival is evident, as MacNeill points out, in the berry lending its name to the festival (bilberry, fraughan, blaeberry Sunday). Additionally, the numerous local and vernacular names for the berry (fraughans; hurts; hurds; hurs; blaeberries fraocháns, fraochóg, moonoges; caoraí dubha) quite possibly owes more to the significance of its symbolic attachment to the festive rituals than to its role as a free food resource. Whether MacNeill's interpretation of the berries' symbolic meaning was to the fore in the consciousness of those who gathered the berries on the festival is impossible to determine. What is clear, though, is the continuation of a cluster of rituals associated with their gathering and consumption around the festival. The understanding was that bilberries and potatoes bridged the temporal movement from one season to another. The old (bilberries) and the new (potatoes) foods became the main items and ingredients of festive eating and meals with Lughnasa positioned as the first day to eat new potatoes and the last day to eat fraughans. From British Pathé, the bilberry harvest in Bohemia, Czech Republic in the late 1940s The berry picking followed a meal of new foods, namely new potatoes, new bacon and white cabbage. Mashed potato dishes, cally or colcannon made with milk, cream, onions and white cabbage were equally common as evident in other local names for the day; Colcannon Sunday and Sunday of the New Potatoes. The post-meal activities of climbing hills or mountain tops was the time when the berries were gathered. Many were eaten on the spot. In some areas, the boys strung the berries with straw, rushes or thread to make bracelets and necklaces for their sweethearts. Others were stalked to safely carry them home to those who were too young, old or unable to make the climb. At home, the berries were made into jam, syrups, wines, cakes and pies. To extend the courtship rituals associated with the festival, bilberry cakes were a feature of Lughnasa dances in some areas, as in this account from Kilkenny: 'All the young boys and girls for miles round came to climb the hill and pick the fraughans. Nor did they merely celebrate the day! The fraughans picked during the day were brought home by the boys to the various houses in the district and the young girls were commanded to make a 'Fraughan Cakes'. This was an honour conferred on the girl as each boy came and took that girl as well as the cake to the Bonfire dance. The boys also provided the wood for the Bonfire. Tables were also loaned by the houses nearby to put the 'Fraughan Cakes' on.' The special status assigned to those selected to make the bilberry cakes or pies was also recorded in Co Mayo, where one girl was chosen to make the 'Pocaí Hócaí' or 'Rolaí Bolaí' pies that were eaten in the evening between the dancing and singing. By the mid-20th century, much of the activity around bilberries lasted only in the rhythms of children's play, which may explain the frequent references that were provided by the children themselves to the National Folklore Schools' Collection. The children recorded that they 'play bilberries' in autumn alongside other seasonal games like hop scotch, kites, rounders, spinning tops and nut cracking. The transmission of tradition survivals amongst children is captured in the photographs of full-time collector with the Irish Folklore Commission, Michael J. Murphy, in Antrim between the 1950s and 1960s.
