Readers blog: Danny Healy-Rae’s fairy tale is a fable about heeding nature

Media commentators who mock the Kerry-based Independent TD, Danny Healy-Rae, for his belief in the fairies display their ignorance of an ancient belief system.

That system used by their ancestors to make sense of all manner of everyday occurrences, both good and bad.

Logic and science, of course, have since provided far more accessible explanations for these phenomena.

However, what Mr Healy-Rae is telling us is that our ancestors, using their common sense and empirical knowledge, would have avoided building on this ground, whereas we, in our insistence that we can control and manage the environment, are quite affronted at the temerity of nature to behave naturally; in this case, for soft ground to subside under weight.

If more of us respected and feared the power and magic of the environment, just as many fairy and pagan beliefs taught us to do, then one of Mr Healy-Rae’s other ‘beliefs’, i.e. that climate change does not exist (and that is infinitely more alarming than belief in fairies), which drew far less media mockery, would be a misnomer.

Áine Ní Neachtain

Baile an Easpaig

Corcaigh