shire_kitchen | A bit of the Irish for St. Patrick's Day

Legendary [Irish] stories tell of a shadowy island far out to the west, which could be glimpsed now and again before it disappeared into the waves. Many intrepid sailors set out in search of its fabled shores but no one ever succeeded in his quest. It was known by various names: Hy Brasil, "Tir Tairngire" or the Land of Promise, "Tir na nOg" or the Land of Youth, and most evocative of all, "Maigh Meala" or the Plain of Honey. This Otherworld of the Irish was known as a place of music and laughter, of warm streams, golden apples, fine wines and choicest mead, and of golden-haired people, where, in the words of the poet WB Yeats: "nobody grows old and crafty and wise, where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue." A land of milk and honey was how many poets and storytellers liked to describe Ireland down through the "golden ages", no doubt basing their vision on the shadowy paradise of their pagan ancestors. However, there is little doubt that while streams did not flow with wine, or golden apples hang from every bough, there was milk and honey in abundance from earliest times.

~ Brid Mahon, from "Land of Milk and Honey"