Denis Lehane: The homesick Hereford from Castletownbere - no animal is without a weakness
Should a good songwriter or poet come strolling up the lane, I daresay a fine verse would be garnered for the animal and all his noble virtues.
If you will recall, a few months back I bought a Hereford bullock - the first I had purchased in over 50 years of cattle trading.
"A step up," was how the paper titled the news. And it sure was. A break away from the bony and lank Holstein bullock. Upping a gear from the bullock with Jersey in the blood, and Jersey on the frame.
Yerra, he was, and still is, a sight to behold. The finest animal to ever set foot on this farm, in my time at least. He is there now in the field looking at me as I write. And a more honest and solid animal it would be hard to find.
Long after he is gone, stories will be told of the Hereford on this farm and of the pride he put in my step. And should a good songwriter or poet come strolling up the lane, I daresay a fine verse would be garnered for the animal and all his noble virtues.
If he were a horse, he would be Tiger Roll. If he were a mountain, he would be Mullaghanish. He's everything you would want in a bullock, only more.
What I'm struggling to say here is, I'm glad to have him. But all the accolades aside, he is not without a weakness. No animal, or indeed human for that matter, is without some weak spot and my Hereford is no different.
A few days ago, as I ambled through the field to look at my Hereford and the other renegades who inhabit this farm, I swore I spotted what seemed to be a tear in his eye. Yerra 'twas nothing much really and I thought no more of it.
Sometime later while wandering the same patch, again I noticed the very same symptom. This time around it was the other eye welling up.
I put it to a friend of mine in the farming game that I doubted the watery eye in the bullock I had recently purchased, was being caused by 'pink eye,' that scourge of a thing that can occur from eating round bales.
"His eye," says I, "looks fine and healthy, it's simply welling up with water occasionally. Particularly when looking into the distance." Well, my friend who seldom rushes in to comment on any issue without first taking a long puff from his pipe, thought about the matter for a while.
And then when he was ready, when the matter had been fully absorbed, came back with the line that my bullock must be homesick. "A farfetched response," you might say, but I took note of his smoke-fuelled response, for he is seldom wrong.
Doing a bit of investigating later on in the day, I duly discovered that my Hereford had spent a great deal of his youth back in Castletownbere. Back in a part of the country that God blessed in every way possible.
With a scenic and rugged coastline that stretches as far as the eye can see, 'twas no wonder now that my bullock was lonesome. Lonesome for the old country, to the point of crying out for it. Sure, what else could it be?
Besides, what sights do I have on this farm to dazzle the newcomer, only a stray fertilizer bag blowing in the wind?Â
When will he ever again see an ocean-going frigate, with the colours of a distant nation sail majestically along the blue horizon? Or witness waves hitting rocks at the very edge of our proud land with both power and elegance.
My God, not only was it bringing a tear to my bullock's eye but it bought a tear to my own. I felt terribly sorry for him, to have taken him away from such beauty.
"Bullock, you should have never left Beara!" I sobbed, throwing my arms around his neck.
Of course, he can console himself now with mouthfuls of tasty wild grass here on this farm and the delights of water trickling in a nearby stream. But nothing I dare say can compensate him for the huge loss he has suffered.
I'm afraid the lonesome tears will continue for some time on the farm where the homesick Hereford resides.
