A time to relish the joys of midsummer

Country Living with Francis Farragher

It might not be the antidote for all our ills, but our recent run of improved weather seems to have given a lift to the mood of the country, and especially those of us involved at times in the more pastoral ways of this world.

Midsummer is almost upon us and even if it has arrived with a measure of indecent haste, there is just something especially rejuvenating about the splash of light we receive when the sun is at its highest point in the sky.

One of the more noticeable features of the midsummer experience is the absence of darkness even in the dead of night. During those clear nights, if you do chance to wake around the 3am or 4am mark, it’s worth making the effort to take a peep out the window – especially an east-facing one – just to observe that sense of non-darkness.

The reason for our seasons is rather curiously all tied up with geometry and the fact that our planet has a tilt of some 23 degrees. When that tilt is towards the sun, we get our summer solstice in the northern hemisphere and when it’s facing the other way, we have our shortest day of light around December 21.

Probably the most striking sound of the summer season for those with an interest in sport and Gaelic Games is the theme tune for the Sunday Game, a piece of music created by the German composer and band leader, James Last, who passed away last week.

That piece of music is called Jagerlatein, and according to a piece I read from an old colleague of mine, Jim Carney in the Tuam Herald, it translates as ‘tall tales, hunters tell’.

It is an iconic sound of the summer, and around 10 years ago, when some ‘bright spark’ in RTE decided to replace the signature tune, it nearly provoked a national revolt. A few years later, it was brought back, and all was well again with the nation.

One of the great Christian feasts of the years also coincides with the midsummer period – St John’s Day on June 24, traditionally one of the big Christian festivals, that was timed to fall just six months before the arrival of Christmas (a word that maybe shouldn’t be used at this time of year).

Despite all our environmental restraints and points of political correctness the tradition of the summer bonfires on the eve of St John’s Day, June 23, still survives across the country, while the following morning in years gone by, in my neck of the woods, the big summer fair in Abbeyknockmoy was held.

It always did seem a lot easier to make the exit from the blankets around 5am on the 24th for the rounding-up of the best of the spring lamb crop, rather than the November’s Day sale, when light and warmth were always in far shorter supply.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.