The other week, I found myself driving up a winding road in the northwest hills of Ireland (or, being driven, to be more accurate—I only just learned how to drive on the right side of the road; left-side driving…well, I’d rather not endanger myself or anyone else). I had landed in Shannon and was making my way up through County Mayo, where I would be spending several days. The first thing I noticed is that the cows I’d seen upon arrival had quickly been replaced by sheep—herds and herds of them. “The sheep outnumber the people here,” my driver told me matter-of-factly. I thought he was exaggerating. He wasn’t. By my math, where I was traveling, there are 3.3 times more sheep than humans.1
What I remarked on next was that the countryside was crisscrossed all over by stone walls. Seemingly, miles upon miles of them. To someone who has traveled across Ireland, this is hardly a revelation. But to me, a first-time visitor—I’d been to Dublin, but never seen the rest of the country—it was remarkable. In the literal sense of the word. My driver had an answer to that, too. As it turns out, the stone walls have a storied local history—and it even involves the sheep.
About 5,800 years ago, back in the Neolithic Era when the first domesticated livestock were starting to graze and the first crops were being cultivated, the inhabitants of Céide Fields, in the northernmost corner of County Mayo, faced a conundrum: the soil simply wasn’t that fertile. It was rocky and thin. Not good for crops. Not good for animals. And even if it had been better? The winds off the Atlantic made it untenable for most any agricultural pursuit.
And then someone—a proto-shepherdess or shepherd, perhaps—had an insight. Why not use the rocks that were making the soil inarable to build stone walls? With one operation, you would get three complimentary results: improved land, for both planting (wheat, barley) and grazing (cattle); protection from the wind; and boundaries, so that your sheep and my sheep didn’t bother each other. The stone walls of Ireland were born in a perfect marriage of form and function.
I talk a lot about human decision making, and in many ways, the stone walls are an organic illustration of ingenuity and problem-solving at its best. How to take an inhospitable landscape and turn it into something else, without wasting labor, energy, or material in the process.
Something tells me that the Irish settlers of yore would have no problem with the classic candle problem. Originally crafted by the Gestalt psychologist Karl Duncker in 1945, the problem tests your ability for creative insight. You have a candle, a box of thumbtacks, and a matchbox. Your goal is to attach the lit candle to the wall so that no wax drips on the floor. (Solution in footnote! Read it or solve it first, before spoilers in the next paragraph.)2
The solution to the problem tackles a human limitation known as functional fixedness: we see a thing as just that thing, and not for its potential. A box of thumbtacks is just that—not a box (a possible base) plus some thumbtacks. In follow-up studies, Duncker and other psychologists found that if you simply took the tacks out of the box, you would dramatically improve the results: people would now see the solution much more frequently. Otherwise, they’d often be left struggling to tack the candle onto the wall directly, or otherwise meld it on with wax, all the while failing the basic parameter of the task—that no wax fall to the floor.
The people of Céide Fields didn’t have the luxury of a psychology lab. For them, it was insight for survival. Insight or death. And insight they achieved. They saw that a stone is not just a stone, but rather, a literal building block. An impediment to farming is actually a natural boon, if used correctly. A limitation becomes a strength. It’s human creativity at its finest.
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Today, there are over 400,000 kilometers (or over 250,000 miles) of classic walls around the country—classic, in the sense that they are dry stone walls, built without concrete or mortar of any sort. They are of different styles (some start with the smallest rocks on the bottom, to help compress and stabilize them; others, with a larger base) and different stone (those original walls in Céide, sandstone; many others, limestone, but some also granite and basalt). But with every material, the construction is perfect in its simplicity. The stones block wind—but because they are not reinforced, some wind will get through. That’s part of the point: the animals and land are protected, but the air circulates. The walls are self-draining, leading to less damage and less need for maintenance (hence why so many still stand from centuries past). They are ecologically friendly—no manmade materials; natural degradation; the masonic holy grail.
One bit of local lore holds that you’re to only touch each stone once when building, intuitively sensing where and how to place it for maximum effect—though that logic falls apart when you consider that the walls often have no gate. In order to let animals from one pasture to another, you would deconstruct a stretch of wall and then reassemble it once more.
Beautiful. Functional. A testament to human ingenuity.
But, as with most things, the stone walls of Ireland come with a dark side. It turns out that not all the walls were built for functional and practical reasons. Some of the walls I see are just as I describe them, true, but some are so-called Famine Walls. In the mid-nineteenth century, during the Great Famine, a government scheme contrived to have peasants build stone walls in exchange for food. Those walls were built haphazardly, not serving as proper dividing lines or pasture enclosures. They were, for all intents, without purpose. And what’s more, the labor they required was far greater than the calories provided by the meals the laborers received as recompense. It was labor for labor’s sake, not for any other reason. All in all, quite the perversion of the walls’ initial reason for being.
And so, the walls of Ireland: the best and the worst of humanity, all in one.
But no matter the wall in question, whether one of the originals that shows the brilliance of innovation or one of the products of pointless famine labors, I see the crisscrossed countryside as a testament to the human spirit. To survival against the odds and the elements.
I don’t think I’m alone in this. One of my favorite poets, the late Irish master Seamus Heaney, took a good deal of inspiration from the stone walls of his country. A favorite Heaney poem of mine isn’t about the dry stone walls as such, but it feels like they are at its heart. Solid stone, reminding us that humans endure even when the elements are against us.
As of the last census, in 2022, the population of County Mayo was 137,231. The sheep population: 456,246
Remove the thumbtacks from the box. Light the candle, drip wax to form a soft base in the box, and place the candle on top of it for stability. Tack the box onto the wall. Voilá.
2. Remove tacks from box. Push tack(s) through bottom of box. Push candle down on tack(s). Tack box to wall.
It initially fascinated me with its favorable familial flavor, but over time I have come to appreciate Ireland's immense and poignant perspective. Like all places it cannot help but be shaped by its past and it is that past that informs its view of the present. Its people are proud and purposeful and its international outlook, to my mind, particularly perceptive. Ireland could well be in the running for the most famous country that very few people know much about. It's at once lyrical and layered, spectacular and scarred. There is much to learn from its life.