Before getting to the heart of our third article on the history of pike in Ireland we need to clarify an often held misunderstanding. There is no concrete evidence to suggest that pike are an introduced species in Ireland. The introduction theory is based on references that have been regarded over the last century by the Irish Fisheries as conclusive. This is only a theory. In our first two articles we have shown that some of those references are incomplete, incorrect or even misleading. Others we regard as naïve and surely not conclusive enough to classify pike as introduced. One example…

Around 1900 a commercial fisherman on Lough Conn catches a fish which he cannot recognize. Subsequently it is identified as a pike. This incident is one of the reasons why the current Research Department of the Central Fisheries regard pike as introduced. When reading the "Doomsday Book of Mammoth Pike" by Fred Buller, one comes across several specimen pike caught on Lough Conn dating back as far as 1870. (One such specimen is currently on display in the Natural History Museum in Dublin.) In other words, at a time when our commercial fisherman caught the fish he could not identify, other people were claiming 40 and 50-pounders from the same lake! Clearly, pike must have been around for quiet a while if the lake was able to produce such monster fish. The fish determination skills from our friend seem to be in line with the science the Fisheries are serving us.

Let’s conclude with a noteworthy passage from the same book :

Lough Conn, whose big pike and big trout once attracted a certain type of fisherman (the big-fish man) from all over Europe, now caters to those who are content to take a more certain bag of smaller fish (trout). This change is due principally to the systematic destruction of pike." The book was written in 1979.

Let’s move on and look into another reference on which the introduction theory is based. We quote from a letter we received from Mr. P. Fitzmaurice, Director of Research of the Central Fisheries : "A review of historical Irish annals carried out in the 1950’s found no reference to pike in any documentation prior to the 15^th Century."

We presume Mr. Fitzmaurice refers to the article "The Pike in Ireland" written by Arthur E.J. Went in 1957. We dealt with Went and the contents of his work in our second article. However, apart from proving that Went’s work was incomplete and parts of it incorrect, we also discovered a few more interesting facts that prove Mr. Fitzmaurice’s quote highly doubtful.

"Regimen na Sláinte" is a medical text from c. 1420 which contains references to pike. It is an Irish translation of a Latin medical tract which originated in Italy. Interesting to note is that the person who translated the text (in the early 15^th century) used the Irish word liús for pike, rather than merely transliterating the Latin lucius. It appears that the Irish translator was already familiar with the Irish word for pike. Since the original Latin text of this work was written in Italy, the references to pike are not directly relevant to the presence or absence of the fish in Ireland. However, the fact that the Irish translator knew of an Irish word for pike seems proof to us that the fish species occurred in Ireland early 15^th Century.

For the sceptical ones among us we will back up this theory and take it one step further.

The Irish Grammatical Tracts are a collection of rules of grammar and diction which assisted student poets in learning their craft. We will quote one such short poem which was written ca 1400 :

It was Chinese to us as well so we got the experts to translate it for us. The translation sounds as follows :

This poem brings us the confirmation that there was indeed pike in Ireland, more precisely in the Shannon, ca 1400 and that no one found this remarkable. That no one found this remarkable leads us to conclude that they were there for quiet a while. It is tempting to draw further conclusions considering the hundreds of kilometers the Shannon covers and the numerous big and small lakes it connects.

The importance of the two above mentioned references taken into account we can rest assured that the claim that there was no (reference to) pike in Ireland before the 15^th Century is outdated and incorrect. After all, the review the current Research Department of the Irish Fisheries base themselves on dates from the middle of the 20^th Century…

In our final article we come to the conclusion of our series on the history of pike in Ireland. We will approach the pike’s history from a few other angles, and bring up a few sources which consider the pike as being native to the Irish country…

Text : Frank Barbé and Shane Garrett