A Fairy Tree in Clare

Having flown all night in the darkness over the Atlantic, and now being rudely welcomed by the sunrise just as our bodies were telling us it was time to go to bed, we placed our bags for the driver next to the back of the jitney van, and wearily shuffled inside.  There was plenty of room inside the van, a minibus really, and each of the eight crew members – two pilots and six flight attendants – who had just worked the flight in from Philadelphia on a Boeing 767, had a row to themselves for the 30 minute ride to our overnight in the charming Irish town of Ennis

In my last year as a flight attendant, I finally had enough seniority, after seventeen years of flying, to hold some trips to Ireland.  I worked the flights to Shannon and Dublin as much as I could that final summer.  Dublin, a more cosmopolitan destination which featured a terrific hotel for our crews, went a little more senior and was tougher to get.  I could pick up Shannon as much as I wanted, and flew there a couple of times a month that summer.  And the West of Ireland is a far different place from Dublin.

A couple of the flight attendants had planned ahead and commandeered the remaining champagne and orange juice after the First Class breakfast service, and offered mimosas from plastic water bottles to everyone in the van.  I passed.  They celebrated the end of a long day and night by sipping on them during the ride.  I took out my iPod, selected my “Irish Mix” from the playlists, and sat back to enjoy the scenery as the sound of Van Morrison and the Chieftains played in my ears.

About 15 minutes after we had left Shannon Airport and headed north through County Clare, we came to an interchange on the N18 motorway, and the driver turned back to the crew and pointed out the window, to a motley looking large bush off to the side of the road, and proudly proclaimed, “see your bush, there, do ya’?  That’s our fairy tree.  Quite a fight over that tree when they built the bypass, there was.  But they moved the road and kept the tree."

Those of us who had flown this trip before knew the tale of the fairy tree, of course.  The fairy tree was pointed out on every ride to Ennis whenever there was a crew member aboard enjoying their first Shannon overnight.

The Fairy Tree that diverted the N18 motorway in County Clare.

"Whaaaaaattttt?,” came a female voice from the back of the van, after she had cleared her throat of her early morning mimosa, wondering if she had heard correctly.  

“A fairy tree?”

“Ah, sure, have you never seen a fairy tree before?  We’ve lots of them here in Ireland,” explained the driver.

I had lived in Dublin, Ireland many years prior, and I don’t know if I had ever seen a known fairy tree, let alone one that was saved from demolition as it sat in the path of inevitable modernization: the bypass of the N18 motorway through County Clare.

"The locals fought hard to keep the fairy tree.  It’s bad luck to destroy one, ya’ know.  They made a fuss when the bypass plans were first announced, but the government saw the error of their ways and eventually moved the bypass,” the van driver added.  

The plans for the N18 Fairy Tree bypass.

Sure enough, if you knew about the tree and looked carefully, you could discern that the motorway took a slight path out of its way around the small tree, which was more of a bush, really.

The Americans in the van laughed and talked in bewilderment about the absurdity of moving a huge, modern freeway around a tree or a bush.  That would be unthinkable in America, would it not?

I doubt they would even do it any more in Dublin; too modern and forward looking.  Dubliners today are more worried about interest rates, home values and cell phone reception than fairy trees.

The modern Irish can be a little touchy with Americans about some of the myths and stereotypes of old Ireland.  The leprechauns, jaunting carts, The Quiet Man; “top o’ the mornin’” Ireland, as some would refer to it.  Similar to the way I viewed Fisherman’s Wharf when I lived in San Francisco; I would stop by to drop off visitors playing tourist, but it was long past its life as an authentic part of The City. 

I didn’t laugh at the story of the fairy tree.  I just smiled.  I’ve never seen an Irish fairy – although one night on the Aran Island of Inishmore I had to walk home with a few friends from a ceili in Kilronan to our B&B about a mile away (“is that a real mile or an Irish mile?”) in the PITCH black night – where I could barely make out my hands right in front of my eyes – and I would have been a believer in just about anything that night.

Irish folklore, the mythologies, they may not mean as much to everyone today, but I figure they served a useful purpose.  There’s a reason they existed and a reason there are still believers.  And as a modern American, who am I to pass judgement on “fairy trees?"

Quite the contrary, I found great comfort in its existence.  Ireland has become so much more modern and fast-paced since I lived there; its economy was known as “The Celtic Tiger” during the go-go 1990’s, and even the infrastructure in the rural, isolated West has been vastly upgraded with money from the European Economic Community (E.E.C).

But no matter how affluent and modern a country it may become, and how many high tech factories and cell phone towers are built along its western shores, I wouldn’t want to live in a world where I didn’t know that somewhere in Ireland there was a modern motorway bypass that was moved, just a wee bit, at the insistence of its people, to make way for the “fairy tree."

Would you?