The Pittsburgh Press (September 1, 1942)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
DUBLIN – There is an old saying in Ireland, originated by Jonathan Swift back around 1720: “Burn everything British, except their coal.” You still see it chalked on walls and sidewalks occasionally.
But right now the Irish would be mighty glad to have some British coal to burn. There is a grave shortage of fuel in Ireland. It is due to two things – Wales isn’t producing enough coal now to spare much for Ireland, and so many Irish workers have gone to take jobs in Britain that there aren’t enough peat-cutters left in the country.
Peat, as you may know, is simply decayed vegetable matter – grass and weeds and shrubs – that has lain in bogs for many centuries. If it lay long enough it would eventually become coal.
The Irish have burned peat for centuries, but there is still a large supply left. They say that at the highest rate of consumption there is enough for another 120 years. In the country, peat is burned almost exclusively. And several of Ireland’s newer industrial plants use peat.
In Ireland you never hear or see the word “peat.” Over here they call it turf. Ireland is also a great horse-racing country, you know, and the race track is also known as “the turf.” There are numerous state betting houses in Ireland, with “turf commissioner” painted on the window. It sometimes causes confusion. They tell of one old lady who went into a betting place and tried to buy a ton of “turf.”
The turf is cut in the spring, and stacked up alongside the bog to dry. It dries all summer, and is ready to burn in the fall. They cut it in slightly wedge-shaped pieces, about a foot long.
Before the war you could get turf for $6.50 a ton, but now it is $14. And there will be no more coal at all for the average man. This shortage of fuel has resulted in extreme shortages of cooking gas and electricity, both of which require fuel in the making.
Cooking gas these days is both so scarce and of such poor quality that it is a real ordeal to get a meal. The gas is on three times a day – 6 till 8 a.m., 11:30 a.m. till 1 p.m., and 6 to 7 at night.
If you’re cooking a roast you have to cook it in relays. The gas is so poor that one woman I know spent 40 minutes of her precious evening hour trying to get her stove lighted. And another one tells how the vibration caused by her cat jumping off a chair onto the floor shook out the flame in her stove, and she couldn’t get it started again.
Electricity too is short, and people are urged to burn their lights as little as possible. That doesn’t bother much right now, as the nights are so short. It isn’t really dark till 11, and it’s daylight again by 4. But lighting and heating will be serious tasks this winter.
Trains are suffering also from the fuel shortage. The northern trains between Dublin and Belfast seem to get along all right, but the southern trains are badly delayed. They say it is taking as high as 21 hours to make the 120-mile trip from Limerick to Dublin.
The locomotives simply run out of fuel and have to stand for hours getting up a new head of steam, produced by burning crates and boxes or anything the firemen can lay hands on.
Cross-country busses still run, but are both packed and delayed. I have recently traveled by bus between Dublin and Limerick, and the 120 miles took seven hours.
There are occasional local shortages of stout and ale, but there is plenty of whisky in Ireland, and it is all reasonably priced.
Incidentally, Irish whisky is not made from potatoes, as many Americans think. It is made of barley. But there is an Irish drink made of potatoes, which the boys have been telling me about. It is illegal, is made in the country, and is a sort of super white-mule. It is called “poteen,” is clear like gin, and is so powerful that they say frequently a man can just barely get the cork back in the bottom before passing out.
Poteen also has the facility, like champagne only more so, of making the drinker tipsy all over again if he drinks water the next morning. They say that with one good hefty slug of poteen and two gallons of water a man can stay dead to the world for a week. Happy days!
And while we’re on the subject, Americans who live here say the Irish aren’t such sorts as they’re cracked up to be. Pretty soon I’ll have no illusions left at all.