Letter: The glorious ‘whin’ bush is both a friend and a foe, a paradise flower and a pestilence to farm profit

Gorse in bloom is a spring glory on the steep hills surrounding Belfast Lough.

Pretty trees are silhouetted against the skyline hills visible on the Belfast to Whitehead rail journey. But even more wonderful are the streaks of gold lower down, where it looks as if an almighty hand has skilfully applied layers of yellow pastel dye to the picture. The impressive colour of gorse (“whin”) calls to mind an old family story which we remember with great fondness.

Many years ago my late grandfather met a “new” sister from the steel town of Hamilton in Ontario. The family had been forced to migrate en masse from rural Tyrone at a time of early 1900s hardship. But my grandfather stayed on in Ireland, and only saw his own father once more, when the older man made a single return trip by boat. My great grandfather, much to the amusement of his household in Hamilton, took a block of Irish turf “from his own moss” back to Canada, and gave it pride of place on the mantelpiece for a long time. We each attach a perspective or value, to places or people or objects, based on our own deep-seated unconscious prejudices.

And so it was with the gloriously golden whin bushes of an Irish May, when my grandfather's sister (born and raised in Ontario) eventually came to meet him and see her parent's original home farm. Olive adored the golden gorse bushes of Tyrone and thought them stunningly pretty. My grandfather, in total contrast, had spent decades in a battle against the “whin”.

“Whin” is both a friend and a foe, a paradise flower and a pestilence to farm profit. Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder.

It is good to count our blessings in this post-pandemic time. The Fastnet or Inishtrahull lighthouses were once the final sight of Ireland for past generations of Irish migrants in transit. Even if our food prices or basic service charges have risen, we should still be very grateful for full shelves in larders and a relatively comfortable lifestyle: something our forebears never tasted or envisaged.

Dr James Hardy, Belfast BT5