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Perhaps my favourite folktale about the “good people” or the fairies is the tale of Guirteen and the Golden Ball, always wonderfully told by the late, great storyteller Eammon Kelly. In it, Guirteen finds a golden hurling ball belonging to the fairies and, at the same time, meets a young girl who has been taken away by them and a changeling left in her place. The tale is far too complicated to summarise, but rest assured at the very end, the fairies have their golden ball returned and Guirteen wins the young girl back from them, marries her and they live happily ever after.
What has me in mind of this tale is that the story begins with the lonely figure of Guirteen taking solace in the one thing that he loved: he is out, early in the morning, head down, walking the fields, in his bare feet, looking for mushrooms. Guirteen, like many others in Ireland, had a craving for mushrooms and the month of September is the best time of the year to satisfy such desires.
In this homage to mushrooms, I am sticking with Guirteen and rummaging around the open pastures, staying away from the very inviting yet more diverse and dangerous mycelium environment of the woodlands.
Caution
An important note of caution, in forest or field, there are certain fungi that, at best, can make you very sick, with others that can greatly affect your long-term health, and others again that are downright fatal.
The word in Ireland for poisonous and inedible fungi is púcaí or “pookies” linking them to the malevolent, often deadly fairy world. The continuum of inherited practical vernacular knowledge that distinguished between the delicious and the deadly was broken in Ireland at the time of the famine. Any present-day mushroom foraging should only be done with someone who is knowledgeable and who has long experience of the different varieties.
In the open fields in September, particularly where cattle, sheep and horses have been, the common field mushroom (Agaricus campestris) and its cousin the horse mushroom (Agaricus arvensis) appear like magic, overnight. The Irish language fully captures this magical phenomenon, not with a single word for a mushroom, but with a phrase, “fás aon oíche” (growth of one night). The young field mushrooms are white, with a tinge of pink and many will pick them when at this size as they are at their best. There was a belief in Ireland that mushrooms stop growing once someone sees them. This, of course, is not the case because very quickly, they open to reveal pink gills which then turn brown, and in no time at all, they become deep black.
The field mushrooms can grow to the size of a dinner plate. Sometimes, smaller is better and the young, small, unopened mushrooms were a favourite in Ireland and were simply boiled in milk. A pint or two of milk and an equal quantity of mushrooms along with a big lump of butter and flavoured with salt and pepper were slowly brought to the boil. The milky mushrooms were then left to simmer under boiling-point for an hour or so. Sometimes this mushroom milk was thickened with flour to make a white sauce, poured over the spuds and the full flavour of early autumn was enjoyed by young and old.
Hot grate
When the mushrooms had opened their caps and their gills were pink or light brown, the favourite way of eating them was to turn them upside down and place them on the hot grate next to the fire. This was a pet activity amongst the young lads, who would fill their pockets with mushrooms and wait until the evening, when their parents were gone to bed, to cook and eat their private caches.
The old people knew all-too-well that the residue of the juices that came out of the mushrooms would destroy the well-seasoned iron frying pan and they often hid the frying pan when the mushrooms were out. In the absence of the frying pan, if there was no grate, the lid of the bastible pot or even an old spade or shovel was used while more often the mushrooms were simply set into the gríosach, or embers of the fire. The stalks of the mushrooms were left on so that they could be easily picked up and turned and as the heat drew out their juices, a little pinch of salt was added and the warm, flavoursome mushrooms were savoured as a free, special, seasonal delicacy.
Plentiful
When the months of May and June are dry and sunny, and the rest of the summer is wet – as it has been this year - then the mushrooms will be very plentiful in September. Such a glut of field mushrooms was gathered by the bucketload and used to make mushroom ketchup. This once widespread, homemade condiment could be added to any savoury dish to give it an extra kick. There were many who loved it on their potatoes; its dark liquid soaked into the dry balls of flour. The open capped, black-gilled field mushrooms that filled the fields before the use of artificial fertilisers were ideal.
When collecting mushrooms, it is better to use a knife to cut the mushroom at the base of the stalk and leave its root behind so it can continue to self-propagate. The older women made the mushroom ketchup or “cat’s sup” by firstly wiping the collected mushrooms clean and dry and breaking them into small pieces. Then they placed them in a crock or large basin in layers, sprinkling each layer with salt and leaving it for three days to “melt”, stirring and mashing them regularly. The dark liquid was then “seasoned” with salt and pepper along with whatever spices were available such as allspice, ginger, and cayenne pepper before being boiled for three hours or so. The catsup was left to cool, strained, and put into bottles with a few cloves added to each bottle before being corked.
So, off you go, up at dawn, shoes off like Guirteen, into the meadow, head down, in search of the elusive yet wondrous “fás aon oíche”, one night’s growth, and think of all the delightful pleasures that lie ahead.
Shane Lehane is a folklorist who works in UCC and Cork College of FET, Tramore Road Campus. Contact: shane.lehane@csn.ie
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