The badgers are coming back. They do not hibernate, but in deep winter tend to stay near to their setts. They have a good deal of fat on them anyway. And the first clear sightings of them on south Dublin lawns began a week or so ago, pecking gracefully, like birds with long necks, at the scattered monkey nuts, which seem to be their favourites among the offerings. Soon there will be four or five of them at a time, and, later, accompanying young ones. The badgers were here before most of the houses around were built, maybe before Dublin was Dublin. They are firmly entrenched in our history and folklore. According to Joyce's Irish Names of Places, we have Brockabeg in the midlands; Brockish and Brockaghs in Antrim; and Brockles, Brocklis, Brocklusk, and Brockless "in various counties." Broc being the badger, of course. And there's Brockra and Brockry. In German the animal is Dachs, hence the place names Dachsbach, Dachsberg and Dachsfelden. Blaireau is French for badger but can anyone cite that in a place name?
The animals appear to have healthy and catholic appetites. James Fairley in his Irish Beast Book heads their preferences with earthworms, and gives also young rabbits, mice and birds "possibly as carrion." The list goes on with slugs and snails, insects, fruits and seeds, possibly fungi. In other words, he says, feeding is essentially foraging rather than hunting. According to an old Field magazine, when a hedgehog skin was found, "the only animal which can kill and eat a hedgehog is a badger." Some people can believe the most amazing things about this animal. Nearly as incredible as the revelations of Firaldus Cambrensis in Topographia Hiberniae, translated with such grace and vitality by John J. O'Meara, in the beautifully produced Dolmen edition. A treasure.
Anyway, Giraldus on the badger and its nature: The badger or melot, is also found here. It is an unclean animal and tends to bite, frequenting rocky and mountainous places. Scraping and digging with its feet it makes for itself holes under the ground as places of refuge and defence. Some of them are born to serve by nature. Lying on their backs, they pile on their bellies soil that has been dug by others. Then clutching it with their four feet, and holding a piece of wood across their mouths, they are dragged out of the holes with their burdens by others who pull backwards while holding on here and there to the wood with their teeth. Anyone that sees them is astonished. Y