Whether in Ireland or Scotland, heather was everywhere.
I have never seen it before, but I know of it from the English and Scottish poetry and writings, like The Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Heather Ale, a poem I first heard at about age five from my grandma, read in Russian, of course, in the brilliant translation by Samuel Marshak. I inserted it at the end of this paragraph in English and Russian, in case you want to read it. It tells the story of the peaceful ale-brewers known as Picts (see my Firth of Forth post) and the cruel conquerors who destroyed them, but then wanted to gain their secret ale recipe… This poem teaches bravery and wisdom and honor and loyalty…too bad it is not as famous now as it once was. At least not in USA, where the you need lessons in all that,
Later, after I learned English in the US, I actually saw fields of heather, mostly in
the ecranisation of the Bronte novel. The black and white does it no justice. The heather, I mean. In color, I now understand the dramatic passion Bronte’s heroine and her doomed love feel at the sight of fields full of blooming heather.
I may add more photos as I “unpack” my camera of the thousands snapshots. I clicked everywhere – in museums, streets, on buses and trains, because I saw such beauty and wanted to share with you all.