King of the hills: Going wild about our old Irish goats

A romantic outlaw from farmed civilisation, the Irish goat has managed to survive and maintain its identity for six thousand years

Despite its neglect, the Old Irish Goat survives in the wild near Mulranny, the Hill of Howth, and elsewhere around Ireland. Picture: Seán Carolan

We refer to our children as ‘kids’, but our attitude to goats is ambivalent. Muriel the Goat, in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, is a respectable citizen. She can read, but she’s deemed to be lower in the social pecking-order than the pigs. A captured goat is crowned during Puck Fair, but an Puc ar Buile is a tricky customer.

Nor is the goat love-hate relationship just an Irish thing. The Greek god Pan was half-man half- goat. Symbols of lechery and agents of Satan, goats were not to be trusted. At Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the scapegoat takes on the sins of the community and carries them off into the wilderness.