As trees provide us with oxygen, shelter, heat, food and medicine, they have indirectly created the conditions necessary for human culture to evolve. However, trees have also directly influenced the development of Irish culture and identity in fundamental ways, forming a significant part of our heritage. One of the aims of the ITEN project is to connect everyone with this special heritage.

Trees Through Time

Wooden artefacts found at archaeological sites throughout Ireland demonstrate just how central trees were to everyday life in Ireland from the time of the first hunter-gatherers to the Middle Ages. Trees were used to make a range of essential items, from 7000-year-old fish traps, Bronze Age arrow shafts and wheels to Iron Age wooden bog trackways and Viking ships and houses.

Trees were considered of such value in early Medieval Ireland that if a person inflicted any unlawful damage upon one, they would be required to pay a hefty fine. Certain trees, such as the Yew of Rossa, County Carlow, were believed to be sacred, and to cut down the sacred tree of another tribe was seen as an act of war. Trees were deemed so important during this period that the letters of the early Irish ogham alphabet were even named after individual species

For instance, the Irish name for Birch – Beithe – was used represent the ogham letter that stands for ‘B’:

In later periods, the wood from Ireland’s forests continued to be an important source of timber for construction. Indeed, Irish oak was used to rebuild Canterbury Cathedral around 1175 AD. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Irish timber became an important source of fuel for industries like Iron-smelting and glass production. It was also used to make musical instruments including the harp, which became a resonant symbol of Irish identity.

Placenames

The history of trees is deeply embedded in the places in which we live, with approximately 20% of the 60,000 townlands in Ireland being named after trees, groves and specific uses of trees. For example, the Irish name for Adare in County Limerick – Áth dara – means ‘The ford of the oak tree’.

Myth, Legend and Folklore

Trees are also very much a part of Irish myth, legend and folklore. Many people still believe that hawthorn trees are sacred to the fairies and that to cut one down is very unlucky. In other stories, certain trees, like the apple, were thought to have magical properties.

Art and Literature

The beauty and virtue of trees has been celebrated in Ireland for centuries in art and literature, as in the Medieval poem, Sweeney’s Lay, where the writer praises many of Ireland’s native trees. The connection between trees and Irish literature is especially visible in the ‘autograph’ tree at Coole Park, on which various famous authors and figures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, like the poet, W. B. Yeats, carved their names.

Our Current Relationship with Trees

Despite the significance of trees in Ireland, historically, and largely because of their immense value, people have been consistently cutting them down for generations, to the degree that only 11% of the entire land area is forested. This number was even lower by the end of the seventeenth century, a fact which prompted many Anglo-Irish landowners to undertake an extensive programme of tree planting during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, leaving us with some densely wooded landed estates. But this did not solve the problem. Our continuous need to clear trees for timber or to create farmland has ensured that Ireland has not succeeded in significantly increasing the size of its woodlands. As a result, it seems that this perception of trees as simply an economic resource or a nuisance is now also part of our cultural identity – a nation without trees.

Looking to the Future

Thankfully, it’s not too late to change this attitude. Having enriched and facilitated the development of communities in multiple ways for thousands of years, trees are part of the story of Ireland and essentially part of us. This connection is something of which we can be very proud and another reason why we should protect and care for our trees. In the A-Z section of the website, you will find information on the cultural significance of each tree that is commonly found in Ireland.