Ireland's Red Squirrel - Salmon of Knowledge - Fionn and the Irish Mind

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:01]Good afternoon.

[00:00:04]I had the privilege of seeing a small red squirrel the other day.

[00:00:11]And it got me thinking and reading up a little bit about them. And they've an interesting history here in Ireland because their history is nearly kind of symbolic of >> [snorts] >> Irish people's history.

[00:00:25]And in a way not even symbolic because they shared the same history as the people of Ireland did, right?

[00:00:34]Because they were here living in Ireland.

[00:00:37]And so impacts from other nations other people's choices on Irish people also had an impact on the wildlife in this country.

[00:00:52]And as far as we know, the red squirrel is pretty native to this country, right?

[00:00:58]So, there's very few if none at all archaeological fossils or anything like that found of the red squirrel, right? So, it's kind of hard to pinpoint a time when we can say when at least we know it was here 3,000 years ago or whatever, right? Owing to just the size of the creature, right? And also the habitat of the creature, right? It's not really conducive to fossil creation, right? But we can assume that the red squirrel has been here as far as we can go back, right?

[00:01:35]And a pretty seismic event happened to Ireland and the red squirrel, right? In the 1600s, 1700s with the the Tudor Tudor family, Tudor or whatever you want to call the family line in England, right?

[00:01:53]And there was rebellions that came up and popped up in Ireland against Norman English imposition, right? We know this.

[00:02:05]And the English found it difficult to kind of to squash these rebellions.

[00:02:10]Why?

[00:02:12]Based on the landscape, right?

[00:02:15]So, if you look at it this way, like England would have had like an organized regimented standing army sort of approach, right?

[00:02:24]Whereas Irish people probably didn't have the numbers, didn't have the technology maybe on a par with with the English army.

[00:02:33]But they had the landscape, right? Which was heavily wooded at the time.

[00:02:38]And so, it kind of balances off the the numerical advantage or maybe the uh technological advantage, right? That the English would have had over Ireland or maybe had.

[00:02:53]Because in the woods, you it's very difficult to march in formation, right?

[00:02:57]So, because you have to go through the woods, a block of soldiers are going to have to split up, right? Which means it's it's more easy for them to be picked off.

[00:03:07]It becomes >> [snorts] >> a one-on-one game more than uh a standing army against a smaller number of people, right? So, that kind of guerrilla warfare, if you want.

[00:03:22]It was always going to be attack of the Irish, right? So, the English understood this. And what they did is they came and they deforested essentially most of the country, right? So, about 80% of the woods was destroyed. And served two purposes, right? So, it cleared massive wooded areas, which forced the Irish to have to reevaluate their tactics, right? And it stripped them of their advantage of understanding the the landscape around them and utilizing the landscape as as a weapon, right?

[00:03:57]But it also it fed at the coffers of the English, right? Because you could use that lumber and that timber for for ships, for fuel, for whatever, right?

[00:04:11]So it just as that was devastating to the Irish people for a number of reasons, right? A few of them I'm going to get into another time.

[00:04:18]Because I think it's still valid today.

[00:04:21]Because historically it's it's actually not that long ago, right?

[00:04:24]Um and if you think of like world views and perspectives that we move from one ideology into another one and if you view history that way as as the changing of perspectives or world views more than just the passage of chronological years and time, you can kind of you can kind of collapse history into a seemingly smaller smaller problem to tackle, right?

[00:04:53]So we would have went from living amongst if not in woods till a lot most of the woods in the country being decimated and destroyed and pulled down, right? So all of a sudden our relationship with the landscape is is there's a change that's forced upon us there.

[00:05:09]Not just militarily, right? But also just day-to-day living.

[00:05:16]And as I said at the start, just as that happened to us, it also happened to the red squirrel as well, right? So 80% of their habitats not not that they were living in all of the woods, right? But maybe they were, but that was destroyed. So those challenges foisted upon them, too, along with the fact that they were hunters, right? They were hunted for their coats, their fur, which is just on the face of it, like how many how many these things are the size of your hand, right? So there's not much fur to be gotten out of them. So, there is records of thousands of of red squirrel furs being being taken out of Ireland, shipped out of Ireland.

[00:05:56]So, they were hunted nearly to oblivion, right? And just based on the the destruction of their their habitat as well.

[00:06:03]They had it hard, right? They had it rough. They roughed it out with us, right? And they're still here. They roughed it out with us. We say that.

[00:06:09]And the challenges that we faced, they also faced similar, right? So, there's a serious overlap and parallel existence between the red squirrel and Irish people.

[00:06:18]Um then in the early 1900s, the gray squirrel was introduced, right? And I'm kind of excited about the red squirrel thing because it was just interesting cuz it was the first time I'd ever seen one.

[00:06:30]Uh in real life anyway. I'd seen pictures and stuff, but sure what what good is that? But I've seen loads of gray squirrels. I um And and then these gray squirrels were introduced uh apparently as a wedding gift to somebody and they were released into the wild, right? And they just exploded and proliferated proliferated around uh the wooded areas, the woodlands.

[00:06:53]And they're a much bigger squirrel than than the red one. So, they were able to outcompete them, right? Um they would eat more based on their size as well.

[00:07:01]So, they'd hoover up most of the resources, right? So, that put a strain on the red squirrel as well.

[00:07:08]But what's interesting about this is that I I and a few people I put up a video. I recorded the red squirrel the other day and a few people are kind of getting on to this already, which which I think is interesting, right?

[00:07:22]Because it's based on a point that I'm going to make in a few minutes.

[00:07:26]People are kind of seeing the story to it, right? And you'll you'll maybe understand it when they get into it, right? So, you had the native red squirrel whose existence was um challenged, right? There is an existential threat to the a squirrel.

[00:07:40]It's prior to the gray squirrel, but with the addition of the grey squirrel, which is essentially an invasive species to the red squirrel, they um their existence hung in the balance, right?

[00:07:53]But, the landscape itself, or whatever you want to call Ireland, right?

[00:08:00]Um but the body of land that that is Ireland, it it offered up a solution, right? And it offered up the solution with um the the pine martin, which is it's called the cat crown, right? So, the the tree cat in Ireland.

[00:08:19]And owing to probably several reasons, right?

[00:08:23]The the the pine martin preys in between the red squirrel and the grey squirrel predominantly on the grey squirrel.

[00:08:31]Now, it might not be like a conscious decision, right? That I'm going to target this grey squirrel. It could just be due to the fact that and this is where evolutionary people will look and say, "Well, the reason for that is."

[00:08:44]So, the red squirrel and the pine martin would have shared Ireland and shared spaces for thousands of years probably, right?

[00:08:52]And the red squirrel would have been far more familiar with the praying practices of the of the the pine martin. So, it would have developed strategies and ways of familiarizing themselves more with the presence of of the pine martin and ways of getting away. So, it's a smaller squirrel. It's able to dart along smaller branches, right? That the that the pine martin probably can't.

[00:09:13]The weight of it would just tip it. Same with the grey squirrel.

[00:09:16]So, it ends up being that the the pine martin it kills more grey squirrels than it does red, right? So, matter of factly, right? But the there's nearly there's nearly a poetic reason to that as well, which which suggests that there's a natural balancing in in Ireland in the heart of Ireland, right?

[00:09:39]That is seeks to defend itself in some way, right? And what's interesting about the red squirrel is that, as I said at the start, you can nearly because they lived through the history of they lived through Ireland a part of Irish history and they lived through it and experienced it, right? Just as we did. It wasn't peculiar to us, right?

[00:09:59]The wildlife and the trees and and and and animals and that as well. They went through the same thing and met similar challenges.

[00:10:05]But you can look at the red squirrel as being nearly emblematic of Irish history, okay? And the gray squirrel, the invasive species, the the pine marten as Ireland, the earth, right? The heart of Ireland answering back in a way, right?

[00:10:19]The spirit of Irish people answering back to safeguard its existence, right?

[00:10:29]But what's fascinating about it is and here's where I'm going to get into the other kind of thinking.

[00:10:36]Before and there's no like there's no clear demarcation, right? But again, you can look at periods of time where certain worldviews came to dominate or are were held as like the the consensus.

[00:10:52]And pre-Christian Irish thinking, and you can get this from their stories, their poetry, their mythology, their name the way they named the land, right?

[00:11:02]And what meaning was attributed to that and what relationship between things was cultivated and and stored in the naming of these things, right? Because pre-Christian Irish thinking and and into the Christian era as well, right?

[00:11:17]Because you had nearly a fusion of the arriving Christianity and pre-Christian thought and you got it like um a sort of synthesis to that, right? So you you have different [snorts] flavors of Christianity in Ireland than you would in other areas based on the the the merging of pre-Christian thought with Christian thinking in Ireland.

[00:11:41]But, the Irish way of thinking was a relational way, right? So, we would consider it today as a right hemisphere way, right?

[00:11:54]In that every there was a web of correspondences built up built up from everything. Everything was related to everything else in certain kinds of ways, right? And an animal or a tree or whatever the case is would have a different layers of correspondences or associations, right?

[00:12:13]That it stood for.

[00:12:16]So, you could use it in poetry and a tree could represent a multitude of things. It could represent letters, right? It could represent the earth itself. It could represent the difference between spirit and and the world, right?

[00:12:31]So, it's the same with the red squirrel in Ireland because the red squirrel is obviously associated with hazel hazelnuts, right? The the foraging and the storing of nuts for a later period, right? So, the red squirrel would be considered smart, savvy in some way, right? Able to plan for the future, right? So, there's an intelligence that's associated with the red squirrel.

[00:12:57]In Irish mythology then, the hazel stands out as one of the sacred trees, right?

[00:13:04]And one of the most well-cited um sacred trees.

[00:13:11]And in Irish mythology, we had what was called the well of wisdom. And it was surrounded by nine hazels. And the hazels are said to have have shed their nuts into this well.

[00:13:22]And at the bottom of the well was the salmon of knowledge, right? It was just a salmon at the time, but if it's nuts, the nuts symbolize the knowledge, right?

[00:13:30]The hazel tree itself symbolizing knowledge.

[00:13:33]The salmon at the bottom of the well of wisdom ate the hazel nuts of knowledge and became the salmon of knowledge.

[00:13:41]Right? And then we have the story of Fionn mac Cumhaill who burnt his finger on the salmon, sucked his thumb, and acquired the knowledge of the universe or the world, right?

[00:13:55]He then went on to head the Fianna who spent their life living in and amongst the woods, right? And their job was essentially what they were was a lot of them were um nobility, right? So, chieftain's sons or Taoiseach's sons or whatever the case is, right?

[00:14:14]Who were at an age or stage in their life where they weren't ready to acquire land or they weren't ready to acquire a position, right? Or whatever the case is. But, instead of having and this is what's interesting about the societal setup in Ireland as well, is that it accounted for different strains and different temperaments and types, right? So, they were aware of the fact that you have young men who are in their prime, right? Maybe not as wise as they might go on to become. So, what do you do with that energy, right? They don't have the ability to own or determine land or or make tribal decisions to a large degree.

[00:14:56]So, you have to put that energy to use, right? Don't waste the age and don't waste the vitality of your young people.

[00:15:01]So, what they would what they done was they became the Fianna, right? Or they established the Fianna or whatever whatever way you want to look at it. And they would go around adventuring, right? Looking for new land to try and claim new land, settle in disputes amongst people, and also defending the borders of the land, right?

[00:15:22]And they would test themselves in in the wild, right? And there's loads of different kind of poetic renderings of it, right? That um a member of the Fianna would need to learn all the poetry of the land, right?

[00:15:34]They'd need to know the laws. They'd need to be well educated and switched on, right? It's not just a case of going out and exerting brute force over anything.

[00:15:43]And they would have to pass certain physical trials, right? So, be able to escape and be able to escape through a woods and pull a thorn from your foot without breaking a stride. You know, this this sort of a thing, right? So, to just be excellent physically and excellent mentally as well.

[00:16:01]So, Fionn eats of the salmon of knowledge after the salmon ate the ate the nuts of knowledge that fell from the hazels into the well of wisdom, right?

[00:16:11]The hazel then the red squirrel finds its home and finds its nourishment in it.

[00:16:18]Now, Fionn goes on to head the Fianna.

[00:16:24]Oisín then becomes the last existent Fianna, right?

[00:16:28]A member of the Fianna.

[00:16:30]And his story is he goes after the other world. He is lured away by Niamh, I believe.

[00:16:36]Uh and he comes back after 300 years to find that the the the ways of his people have changed dramatically. It's no longer a case of running with the deer and sleeping under the canopies of the trees and studying the nights, right?

[00:16:52]Now, there was a regimentation that came to Ireland, which is standing when the bells go and following the bells and listening to the prayers and psalms of these new Christian priests, right?

[00:17:03]And we're luckily we're lucky enough to have uh a debate, right? Whether it is a purely narrative debate or whether it's something that actually happened. It doesn't really matter. I think what the important part is that this friction or tension between the the preceding worldview and the coming dominant worldview is embodied in Oisín and St. Patrick's arguments, right? And Oisín is making the case that why would we want to live any other way?

[00:17:41]Like my people Fionn MacCool was the greatest of men and he lived in the woods and he lived that way. What's wrong with that? And Patrick is saying because there's a new god in town essentially, right? And it's the it's the old god that's always been there, but I'm freshening it up for you. And because Fionn didn't follow this god, he's he's damned to hell, right?

[00:18:03]And Oisín is saying, but why would you damn him to hell?

[00:18:08]He was good people. There was nobody in the Fianna that would not give their the shirt off their back to people. So, why did they go to hell?

[00:18:14]And Patrick says because they're not believers.

[00:18:18]And he's trying to get Oisín to convert, right? And Oisín is saying, but I don't understand what you're trying to get me to do here. Why would I follow your way when if I follow your way, I go to heaven and I won't be with my people because they've been banished to hell because they didn't follow your way.

[00:18:36]So, he's saying if it's the case that I get to go to perfect heaven, but be apart from my people, with the old ways of living, then I'd sooner go to hell and be with them even though I'm tormented for eternity or whatever the case is, right?

[00:18:52]So, just as the red squirrel had to deal with an invasive species like the the gray squirrel, the deforestation of the land, the total disruption and upending of what the ways of life for the Irish people, which which probably did not change too much in thousands of years, right?

[00:19:15]You can trace that historically by studying what is a real thing.

[00:19:20]The red squirrel in Ireland, right? You can grab your hands on it if you're fast enough, right? But you can look at it, see it, know it exists, and you can study the fact that it has its species has a history in Ireland. And it is tied intrinsically to Irish history, right?

[00:19:38]But then, if you adopt the more mythological perspective or mytho-poetic perspective, which the Irish people tended to look at things through prior to Christianity coming, right?

[00:19:49]Where things became more externalized and and literalized.

[00:19:54]>> [snorts] >> You can get to the same end, which is really interesting, right? So, if you look at it if you study the red squirrel historically in Ireland you're studying the history of invasions, of colonization, of war, of upset, and destruction.

[00:20:13]And psychic cataclysm to a degree, right?

[00:20:18]Also, if you study the red squirrel mythologically, you get to the same place.

[00:20:23]Right? Which is you end up with Oisín who's from the Fianna led by Fionn who who acquired the knowledge of the world by burning his thumb on the salmon of knowledge. The salmon got its knowledge at the at the well of wisdom by eating the nuts of hazel, which come from the hazel tree, which are home which is home and of nourishment and sustenance to the red squirrel, right?

[00:20:47]So, you can you can see that that the loop, like.

[00:20:50]Regardless My point being, if if you read the red squirrel historically, factually, and literally, as is tends to be the dominant way of looking at things, or if you go back and read it metaphorically or mythologically, as we would have what once done so, which is probably more natural to natural to to us to do, right?

[00:21:10]You end up in the same place, which is you're studying the imposition of worldview on Irish people.

[00:21:17]Which I think is just fascinating, right? So, that's my little spiel about the red squirrel.

[00:21:22]I I probably have more to go into on that just at another time based on or focusing on the deforestation of Ireland and what this probably led to in terms of our minds, right?

[00:21:36]So, I I leave that for another day, but what are your thoughts on that? So, if you can even get what I'm trying to say here, right? That there's parallel there's two ways of looking at a thing.

[00:21:48]And if you choose one as a preference or if you're naturally inclined towards one, it doesn't mean that the other one needs to be written off and dismissed because you find that it whether you read something historically or mythologically, you you can arrive at the same destination.

[00:22:03]It tells the same story.

[00:22:05]So, how was one supposed to be superior to the other when they both lead you to the same place?