Donal Hickey: Blackberries ripe and 'ready for the bucket'

People of all ages, often three or more generations together, are out harvesting and moving along the ditches as brambles are well-laden with blackberries ready for picking

Blackberries are healthy to eat, full of vitamins C and K, and make for lovely desserts; jams to bring the taste of summer into winter, pies and yogurts, to mention a few uses. Picture: Lia Toby/PA 

The late poet, Seamus Heaney, invariably got it spot-on when he penned lines about traditional pursuits: “Late August, given heavy rain and sun / For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.’’ And so it has again come to pass. The brambles are well-laden with berries ready for the picking. A month ago, I tasted the first ones around Castlemartyr, in east Cork. They were black, but not quite ripe.

Last week, however, close to where the River Blackwater rises on the border of counties Cork and Kerry, the blackberries were sweet and soft, ready for the bucket, as they say.

As Heaney noted, serious blackberry-picking is well underway by now and running into the early weeks of September. Following a sunny summer, the crop looks really good this year.

People of all ages, often three or more generations together, are out harvesting and moving along the ditches. Blackberries are healthy to eat, full of vitamins C and K, and make for lovely desserts; jams to bring the taste of summer into winter, pies and yogurts, to mention a few uses.

Good Food Ireland advises pickers to avoid picking along traffic-busy roads, and to leave some berries for wildlife.

Some lore around this age-old custom is recorded in the National Folklore Collection. At one time when people saw the first blackberry, they expressed a wish: Go mbeimid beo ar an am seo aris (That we might be alive when this time comes again).

The brambles currently are well-laden with berries ready for the picking. Picture: Lia Toby/PA Media Assignments

Another custom is that when the first blackberry was picked it was rubbed on the fingernails to keep them from getting sore in the year ahead.

However, we’re also told that farmers did not like to see a good supply of blackberries because it was a sign that the coming winter would be very severe.

Furthermore, according to folklore collectors in Mayo in the 1930s, some farmers did not like any blackberries to grow on their land as they believed the fairies lived beneath the branches, and they might take away any delicate child in the house.

Pickers, meanwhile, should look out for an unusual creature known as a stick insect (phasmid), recently brought to the attention of one and all by an observant, seven-year-old grandson in the Wave Crest Caravan Park, Caherdaniel, County Kerry. First recorded in Ireland in the 1960s, it is believed to have arrived here from New Zealand among exotic tree ferns.

Perfectly camouflaged and tricky to see because it looks exactly like a twig, it is found on ditches, under brambles and in heather. This insect is suited to the temperate, moist climate of Cork and Kerry.