Why I reel at the demise of the eel

WE call the little stream that runs alongside our garden Abhainn Éasca because one day, some years ago, I turned over a stone and found a twelve-inch long black eel.

It swam away, leisurely, drifting down with the current. Eel River, we decided was a good name for a nameless rivulet, a meandering brook in summer, a gurgling freshet.

This morning, I passed its mouth, issuing into the sea three hundred yards below the house, and stopped to see if there were any elvers under the rocks there. I remembered my childhood passion for small rivers running across sandy shores. Back then, lifting flat rocks, I was certain to come across dozens of bootlace eels, as we called them, and small dabs dashing away from my footfalls. If the stream ran down from a lake, one might find sticklebacks higher up, in the dark boggy waters, under the banks. The males were gorgeous in the breeding season, bright reds and blues, almost as bright as aquarium neon tetras – and there they were, in an Irish stream.