Introduction

A river runs through us, no matter where in Ireland we may be. There will always be a stream, a river, a ditch nearby, leading to a larger channel of water and finally to the sea. These local watercourses are sometimes quiet and undramatic and are often ignored by those who pass by them every day.

Where the Waters Flow is an exploration of some of these shining waters and a plea to see them, hear them, care for them better than we have done. This book will take the reader on a journey around Ireland, looking at some of the history, myths and folklore associated with fifteen rivers, beginning with the Liffey and ending with the Boyne. The stories we will explore will come from every epoch of Ireland's history, from the myths which tell of the first invasions of Ireland to twentieth-century folk accounts of fiddlers hunted by fairies. During our river journey we will meet medieval bishops, wild squireens and women who raise the dead. A book of this length cannot hope to do more than paddle in the shallows of the wealth of these stories, but it will hopefully inspire readers to go a little deeper. Each river and its valley is a world in itself.

Look at a map of Ireland. You will see a fine network of lines covering its surface, like blue capillaries, connecting each part of the country, the lifeblood of the island. Rivers are the great connectors. They were the path taken by the first settlers as they ventured upstream from the coast, into the heart of Ireland. They were also the route adventurers took downstream towards the coast when they wanted to travel beyond the sea that surrounds us. For humans, like the salmon, rivers are both the call of home and the call to adventure. In the past they have been used as a protection from attack, acting as the frontier line between opposing tribes. This role can still be seen in the rivers that act as the dividing lines between counties. Rivers were also used as an access route by Gaelic and Viking raiders and by later invaders. There are many contradictions inherent in rivers, the source of life and healing that also carries the threat of death, the cradle of civilisation that can annihilate human life and our works. There are two sides to every river.

In mythical terms, rivers symbolise life and fertility, and also death. The mighty Ganges and the rivers of Eden, the sacred Nile and the holy River Jordan, the Otherworld rivers of the Lethe and the Styx are just some of the rivers which flow through the myths and religions of the world. A river protects the infant Moses, and another carries the head of the singer Orpheus downstream. But as well as being the fount of life, a river can rise up in anger. The Scamander river-god in the Iliad battered the murderous hero Achilles with a furious, roaring torrent that swept across the plains of Troy, because he had defiled the god's waters with the bodies of the men he had killed.

Rivers in Irish myth and folklore are somewhat more benign, although we do have stories of rivers rising up and pulling humans into their watery and fatal embrace. Irish folklore tells us how some rivers take a toll of a human life every year, and how others have drawn back their waters so that a man seeking a drink dies of thirst. Often seen as a route to the Otherworld, sometimes the voyage there is not a voluntary one. Rivers carry the symbolism of the earth they rise out of and the sea they flow into. Throughout Celtic Europe, many water deities were placated with offerings to rivers and lakes, and they were sometimes used for gruesome divinatory purposes. Warriors in Germany placed newborn babies on their shields and sent them to float on the water of rivers. If they floated, it was proof that the child was theirs.

Rivers were the place where kings and heroes were conceived and born. The Mórrigán straddled the banks of the river where the Dagda mated with her. It was in a river that Nessa gave birth to King Conchobar. Rivers have mourned with those who have lost their loved ones and provided inspiration and knowledge to those who walked their banks.

In historical terms, our Irish rivers have been used and sometimes abused by humans since settlers came and constructed their homes on the banks of the Bann around 7600 BCE. Our ancestors built in the shelter of riverbank trees, and they lived on the food the river provided. Rivers supplied the water that kept them alive, and they used its flow to cleanse themselves and carry their waste away. River water powered the mills to grind the corn for their daily bread. Tradition says that King Cormac created the first cornmill to lessen the labour of his beloved. As time has gone on, water power has been used to make everything from cloth to paper to gunpowder.

While many rivers have been harnessed for energy, the concentration of nineteenth-century industry in the eastern parts of Ulster has led to river pollution and changes to their natural configurations. Rivers like the Bann and the Lagan have suffered more from human interference than rivers such as the Moy on the country's west coast. In our own times, the rivers of the heavily farmed south-east of Ireland are particularly vulnerable to pollution from fertilisers and agricultural run-off. Buried, channelled, canalised, dammed, blocked and poisoned - there is hardly an indignity that rivers have not suffered at our hands. The final indignity is that in the twenty-first century they are largely ignored. Rivers rarely even appear on road maps anymore. On other maps, the river has become the thinnest of blue lines, sometimes without even the courtesy of a name, viewed merely as an obstacle to be crossed or possibly a traffic hazard with an old-fashioned humped bridge.

We have become blind and indifferent to the fact that our rivers, like so many others on the planet, are under threat. While the wet climate of Ireland means that we are unlikely to lose the flow of our rivers to drought, the possibility of preserving them in a healthy state literally hangs in the balance. As the twenty-first century moves forward, numerous Irish rivers are listed as seriously polluted. There has been little or no improvement in the quality of our rivers in almost a decade, and phosphorus and nitrogen levels remain high in about a quarter of them. Overall, the condition of just over half of our rivers is high or good, while the other half is considered moderate, poor or bad. There have been some improvements in the water quality in rivers such as the Liffey and the Slaney, but a decline in others such as the Barrow and the Shannon. Since the second half of the twentieth century there have been inestimable losses in biodiversity and in the numbers of every form of river life, from the pearl mussel to the salmon. These losses - in particular the catastrophic decline in salmon numbers internationally - owe much to climate change, but also a great deal to the phosphorus and nitrogen which flow into our rivers from the bright green fields on their banks. Industrial activity, industrial-scale forestry, sand extraction and human waste removal also play a role in the damage done, but intensive agriculture is the most widespread threat. Irish farmers, many of whom are finding it hard to make ends meet, have been reluctant to cut back on their use of artificial fertilisers or look at different ways of dealing with animal waste, a major source of nitrogen pollution. The growth of toxic blue-green algae, most obviously in Lough Neagh but also in other rivers and lakes all over Ireland, is one of the clearest signs of the destruction of the freshwater environment. While the situation in Ireland is not as serious as it is in some other European countries, there is no room for complacency. We are part of an international problem.

Globally, floodplains are considered among the most threatened of all ecosystems. The threats to rivers cross international barriers. Pollution upstream is carried down to other communities; the headwaters of a river are particularly vulnerable as the whole river system will be affected by any pollutants close to the source. Damming upstream can deprive another area of water. The massive dams being built in Turkey are just one example of the use of rivers as a political tool, taking water security from people living downstream, in addition to playing havoc with biodiversity. Areas of once fertile land in Iraq and Syria, bounded by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, have been left dried up and barren, partly because of climate change but also because of the dams upriver. Disruption of the flow of water raises the question of who holds the rights to rivers and their waters. There are many who believe that these rights are held by the river itself.

Recognition of rivers as individual and unique entities has developed into the argument that a river is itself a living creature. This is the argument put forward by the Rights of Nature, an international movement which is active in Ireland. Some county councils have already passed a motion recognising such rights, and there has been movement towards submitting a referendum proposal which would enshrine these rights in the Irish Constitution. Rivers in Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia have been acknowledged as having rights as legal entities, including the right not to be polluted. There has been a shift in our relationship to the natural world. Where before, the majority of people thought of the river as a resource, something to be exploited...