This is about my community around Lough Funshinagh, my neighbours, people I know. You can make up your mind about what’s right or wrong after.
We are all familiar with what a fairytale is. We know the characteristics. These were made-up stories.
Once upon a time, there lived a prince/princess/a poor man, etc. They lived in a castle, or a wood, or beside a lake or river.
An evil force threatened them, but some force for good came to the rescue, and it ended in ‘they all live happily ever after’.
This traditional format served as a beacon of hope for the ordinary folk. Good would prevail in the end, and be rewarded. Bad times would pass, and this encouraged resilience and faith.
In a world where natural justice would prevail, good people would get the happy outcomes they deserved.
Fairytale of Lough Funshinagh
The hero in this fairytale is Barry. Barry has lived all his life near a lake. Barry is a much-loved member of his community.
Barry has worked and toiled all his life, through good times and bad. He has reared a family. He has been a good neighbour.
He has worked and maintained his land within the exact definitions of stewardship. But the lake – a picturesque border that he grew up alongside – has turned into an evil force, swallowing his land, and this week, his farmyard, inexorably edging towards his home.
At this point in the fairytale, Barry needs the hero, the force for good, to put everything right again.
I said earlier that fairytales were made up, so was this fairytale, except for a few details. Barry is real. He is 91-years-old. He recently buried his wife.
Today, the water from the lake flowed into his farmyard – it’s now under water. It’s moving towards his house.
Imagine being 91. Imagine dedicating your whole life, your whole being, to your property and to your family. Imagine watching it all being taken away.
In a proper fairytale, there would have been intervention by now. Something would be done to halt the march of the lake.
Nightmare
Imagine in a fairytale world, a court injunction would prevent the woodcutter from saving Little Red Riding Hood.
Imagine a fairytale world where one of the Three Little Pigs would be refused planning permission for building a brick house.
Imagine a fairytale world where there was no strong billy goat to challenge the troll under the bridge, and instead the weak would be destroyed.
What a sad, cruel, bleak and hopeless vision of the world that would depict. And they all lived miserably ever after, full of regret and despair.
It shouldn’t be like this. Not for fairytale characters; not for real people like Barry.
The means to do something about this exist, but they are bound in legal limbo, paralysed by point of law.
In Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, the drama revolves around a legal wrangle. Two lines stand out, that are poignantly applicable to Barry’s situation, and others around Lough Funshinagh. ‘To do a great right, do a little wrong’ is one.
Sink the pipe, and connect to the Shannon. Allow a natural level to be established, and allow a natural re-establishment of the flora and fauna of the lake and its boundary.
The second line is ‘when mercy seasons justice’. Barry has lost enough, and so have others around the lough.
Before it’s too late for Barry, and the other families, surely either mercy or common sense should trump law, and maybe, just maybe, future generations might be able to see elements of a fairytale about this story, instead of a horror story.
From Pádraig Murray, Co. Roscommon