Dances with wolves: The Ireland of old

I TOOK the dog for a walk through an old deciduous wood the other day. I watched him chase squirrels and sniff the traces of badgers while trying to imagine what the walk would have been like back in the days when this sort of forest covered most of Ireland.

The forest would obviously have been much more dangerous and frightening: apart from the threat posed by outlaws, robbers and wood kerns, there would’ve been wild animals — the dog might easily have disturbed an angry wild boar from its lair in the briars and there would also have been wolves and bears.

I also remembered another danger, one I’ve only recently discovered in the course of some research: apparently in times past there were werewolves in Ireland.