Early rock climbers (20th C) - Conor O'Brien - a climbing sailor

 Conor O'Brien was the son of Edward O'Brien of Cahirmoyle, Co Limerick, and his second wife (Julia Mary Marshall, whose substantial wealth was based in Yorkshire and Lancashire).  Conor grew up in South Kensington, was educated in England (Winchester 1894 -99, Trinity College, Oxford 1899-1903),  frequently visited his relatives in Ireland as well as visiting the Swiss and Italian Alps. 

 After qualifying as an architect he worked for the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS), designing creameries in the Limerick area and worked on the design of churches and private houses.

In 1907, the United Arts Club was established by luminaries including W.B. Yeats, George ‘AE’ Russell, and Augusta Gregory.  OBrien was among the founding members.  Another member was Page Dickenson, with whom he became a close friend.  Their friendship may have been based on their shared enthusiasm for mountain climbing, for in the years 1909, 10 and 11 weekends and holidays were spent climbing the mountains of Ireland with a group from the Arts Club. 

 Dickenson had been climbing at Pen-Y-Pass in Wales since the first of Winthrop Young's  climbing weekends there in 1903.  Frank Sparrow,  another Arts Club member, had been also climbing there since 1907.  Easter 1911 was OBrien's first Pen-y-Pass sojourn and afterwards, on occasion, he sailed to North Wales  to join the climbing group in his own yacht.  On these weekends he climbed with such notables as Geoffrey Winthrop Young and George Mallory (of Everest) and both were invited to sail with him to Ireland's south west coast to explore Mt Brandon in Kerry for its climbing possibilities, which they did but found that the Old Red Sanstone of the region was unimpressive for climbing.

Robert Graves (poet, novelist), who had also climbed in North Wales wrote of OBrien:  "..we did real precipice climbing and I had the luck to climb with George (Mallory)...Kitty O'Brien and Conor O'Brien, her brother...He would get very excited when any hitch occurred; ...Kitty used to chide him 'Ach Conor dear, have a bit of wit!'...he used to climb in bare feet."

(Kitty seems to be totally forgotten as an early woman climber)

As a sailer his great achievement was his round the world journey, to circumnavigate in a small personal craft, west to east, and soutth of the three great capes.  One of his objectives in this was to climb Aoraki (Mt Cook), which was not achieved, but he climbed South Africa's Table Mountain.

After two years he returned to Ireland, became a successful author, publishing numerous books and articles.  He died in 1952 and is buried at Loghill Church in Co Limerick.

Further details see:

In Search of Islands. A life of Conor O'Brien.  Judith Hill. Collins Press

Conor OBrien. Sailor Extraordinaire.  Vincent Murphy.  Flag Lane Publishers.

Alpinists in Ireland

  The Irish Alpinists did not neglect their homeland hills, but they treated them principally as practice grounds for the Alps, and their attentions did not give rise to a vigorous school of local climbers as was the case in Great Britain...'  In comparison to their Alpine exploits it is also unlikely that their mountain travels in Ireland would have warrented publication.

Nevertheless, some of the very highly renowned Irish alpinists did record some of their mountain journeys in Ireland.

John Ball had been climbing in the Alps from as early as 1840, well before the establishment of the Alpine Club.  He was appointed in 1846 as Assistant Poor Law Commissioner in Ireland and as second Poor Law Commissioner in 1849, which appointments gave him the opportunity of visiting remote parts of the country.  It was during these years that he recounts  a number of visits to various mountain regions of Cork and Kerry.  These were not so much mountaineering trips as geological trips to locate and examine  evidence of the passage of glaciers, similar to what he had done in the Alps. Notice of the former existance of small glaciers in the County of Kerry was the title of the article he subsequently wrote for the Journal of the Geological Society of Dublin (1848-50).  He reports on the signs of glaciation around Lough Doon, near Connor Pass, and he walked along the moraine that extends down to the lower Lough Beirne.  Similar features occurred around Lough Cruite,

Near Lough Cruite

near Mt Brandon, and on the NE side of Purple Mountain, where its moraine '..offers to the pedestrian the only path where his foot does not sink in the spongy masses of sphagnum..'   Local men may have accompanied him as guides but this is not recorded.

All this was taking place at least ten years before the formation of the Alpine Club, of which he was appointed as President, in 1857.

Eagle Rock
(Courtesy NLI)

John Tyndall's Hours of exercise in the Alps has a chapter on Killarney where he recounts his climb of 'Carrantual', Mangerton ('Mangerton is a stupid mountain') and Purple Mountain.  As in the Alps he used a local man as guide on such climbs and recorded that he paid 'the moderate sum of three and sixpence...' for the service.  This was in 1860 and when Con Moriarty, about forty years later, offered the same service he was being paid five shillings.  By the 1930s local guides were being paid about ten shillings. (see IMEHS Journal Vol 4).  In this chapter Tyndall gives, what appears to be, the earliest account of Rock Climbing in Ireland: 'Various bits of climbing were accomplished during my stay, and almost in every case in opposition to the guides.  The Eagle Rock for example, a truly nobel mass, and others, were climbed, amid emphatic enunciations of "impossible".  (This may in fact be Eagle's Nest)

This was not Tyndall's only sojourn in Ireland's hills.  Some four years later, (Easter 1865) he undertook a 'walking holiday' in northern Ireland with his friend Tom Hirst.  They walked from Larne to Glenarm along the coast and over the moors to Cushendall.  They used a local knowledgeable man as guide, a Mr Dixon, and went clambering over the causeway and wandering from headland to headland along the coast but no mention is made of Fair Head! Continuing to Donegal they climbed Muckish and Errigal with a local lad ' to carry our coats'.  At Slieve League ' ..John  descended one of the steepest portions to the water's edge and then ascended again at a still steeper place.  The guide dared not follow him....John emerged safely at the very highest point of the cliffs.  His wonderous feats of climbing already forms the subject of talk in the whole neighbourhood'.  (From Hirst's diary).

Sliabh Liag

(full account in Irish Mountain Log Autumn 2022 No 143).

Tyndall's climbing in Kerry and Donegal are likely to be the earliest accounts of climbing in Ireland and his book, which went to many editions, is likely to have promoted the tourist attractions of the Kerry region.

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Early mountaineering in Ireland

 'Although Irish mountaineers were prominent in the early development of Alpine climbing, mountaineering in Ireland did not take a firm root until recently. (mid 20th C)

    The Irish Alpinists did not neglect their homeland hills, but they treated them principally as practice grounds for the Alps, and their attentions did not give rise to a vigorous school of local climbers as was the case in Great Britain...'

This statement by Pyat & Robson (IMC Journal Vol 1) is accurate but only up to a point.  It fails to mention the people on the island, not Alpinists or mountaineers in a strict sense, who nevertheless were 'hillwalking' and climbing Irish hills during the 19th C.  It also ignores the clubs and organisations that encouraged 'rambling' and 'hiking' in the outdoors without claiming to be 'mountaineering' clubs.

Here, I'll look at the written evidence of people who were hillwalking and climbing during the 19th Century.  Further on I'll look at the clubs and organisations that seemed to encourage such activities among their members.

Poets and writers mentioned their enjoyment of mountains and mountain scenery (Brian Merriman, Mary Tighe) but the earliest written record of a specific climb seems to have been written by Caesar Otway after his visit to Donegal in 1822 when he climbed Muckish.  The account was published in 1839 in his book 'Sketches in Ireland''. (see below)

Muckish

Muckish

Mary Burtchell was a resident of Graiguenamanagh, Co Kilkenny and records in a diary entry for 16th Aug 1845 that she climbed the nearby Brandon Hill.  No great feat of mountaineering, it does indicate her interest in venturing into relatively wild upland terrain and she went, again, to the higheset point in Co Kilkenny on 9th Sep 1850.  She gives no further information on her trips.

Brandon Hill

In 1849, a Waterford man, ( a member of the Mackesy family) wrote a detailed account of a two-day venture into the Comeragh Mountains in which he gives a detailed account of his journey with a description of the terrain and many of the lakes and cooms --

        Let us ascend. Aye, it is very steep, and the day is bright and hot ; but take it quietly—you have        only a two-mile walk before you. For a part of the way the grass is pleasant, and we can go straight onwards. But ever as we climb, the heath and ling become tougher and taller, the grass thinner, the stones more numerous, the dried-up channels of the winter floods more deep and  frequent ; so that we can no longer hold a direct course, but must deviate into many a zig-zag;  and still, as we surmount each swelling knoll, the dark Coum above seems to recede, and the way  to lengthen before us.  (Dublin University Magazine 1849).

(for full account see IMEHS Journal Vol 5;)

There were other residents who made significant expeditions to Greater Ranges abroad but don't seem to have recorded any such activity in their homeland.  John Palliser is likely to have hiked in the Comeraghs and William Spotswood Green in the Kerry mountains.

Of course, some of the very fanous Irish Alpinists undertook some climbing at home and this will be looked at soon.

Caesar Otway's climb of Muckish:

But the lofty cloud- compelling Muckish was near Ards, and on this pig's back I was determined to mount-there will be no limits to vision from it; I shall see all Donegal, and Innishowen, and Tyrone; I shall see Derry, the brave devoted city, the joy of the whole Protestant world, under my feet; I shall see the fine land-locked Lough Swilly, the deep indented waters of Mulroy. In short, I shall see what I have ever had a passion for seeing, a wide and outstretched view, from a mountain.

 So, in spite of the fervours of a July day, and joined in the daring enterprise by some of the younger part of the family at Ards, we set forth to climb the mountain, and here it was literally climbing. There are some lofty mountains you can ride to the top of. To the craggy height of Snowdon, Welsh tourists, as I am informed, ascend in carriages; but rest assured this facility was not possible to us; for actually in many places we had to catch hold of the heath and and rock to help us in the ascent; and so steep and downright was the mountain, that a stone of any size could be hurled from the top to the bottom. Thus amusing ourselves rolling down  the compact silicious rock, and observing the noise, velocity, smoke, and flashes of fire that were elicited in the momentum of the descent, at last, after near four hours' exertion, we arrived at the summit of our ambition.

 I ran, covered with perspiration and panting with heat, to mount the topmost ridge; and just as we arrived there, just as we had cast our eyes around, and began to feast on the immense vision of earth and ocean beneath us, a vast murky cloud from the Atlantic, big with sleet and moisture, enveloped us as well as the whole top of the mountain as with a night-cap, and made every thing so dark, indistinct, and dreary, that we could scarcely see one another : besides, it was attended with such a cold, cutting breeze, that we, who were all with pores open under the process of perspiration, felt as if the Cacodemon of the mountain, in revenge for his invaded solitari- ness, had risen in anger, and armed with a scythe, had rushed on to cut us asunder-to retreat, there- fore, was the best policy. ......

 But I, whose curiosity was more intense than that of my friends, in spite of a cold and driving sleet, and fearless of a fever, still lingered behind, and hastily observed that on the top of this lofty mountain, which at a distance appears so acute and linear in its ridge, there was a plain of some acres, on which grew in luxuriance that species of saxifrage, so great an ornament to our gardens, called London pride. I also took time to observe, that on the north-western side of the elevation where it stands exposed to the driving sleet and tempest, and saline spray of the great Atlantic, even the white quartz rock is decomposed, and has been con- verted by the agency of the elements into beds of minute sand, as white as the driven snow-this the proprietor of the mountain rolls down the side of the hill in canvas bags, and exports to Dumbarton in Scotland

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Another Barrington, Richard

Courtesy:
F Nugent & Barrington family

 Richard Manliffe Barrington was half-brother to Charles, and was the only son of their father's second wife (Huldah Strangman). Born in 1849 at Fassaroe, Barrington was a delicate youngster, with a keen interest in natural science. He was educated mainly at home, with the exception of one year at a day-school in Bray. He entered TCD (1866), graduating with honours (1870) in experimental and natural science.

 In 1875 he was called to the bar, but soon found the life of a land valuer and farmer more to his liking. After the death of his father (1877) he became more involved with the management of the farm at Fassaroe. 

Growing up, he spent many weeks every summer on the islands, mountains and lakes of the south and west of Ireland gathering notes on plants and birds. Along with another Trinity educated mountaineer, Henry Chichester Hart, he contributed to Alexander Goodman More's 1872 publication, Cybele Hibernica.

On a visit to London in that year (1872) he attended a lecture in the Royal Institution given by John Tyndall and on his return went on a hillwalking holiday in Killarney where they went to the Gap of Dunloe, climbed Carrantuohill (with a local guide) and Mangerton, got a little lost in the fog on Mount Brandon, climbed Eagle Mountain and hiked around the area before returning to Dublin by train.

1876 saw his first Alpine sojourn, when he repeated his half-brother's ascent of the Eiger and it was by his encouragement that Charles wrote an account for the Alpine Club of his own ascent, confirming that it was, in fact, the first ascent of that summit.

His interest in botany and ornithology continued and he visited the western islands of Ireland and Scotland, Lough Erne and Ben Bulben, and visited Iceland in 1881, hiking extensively there and climbing Mt Hekla. Reports on the flora and fauna of such places were written and many published.  On one such visit (in 1883) to the Outer Hebrides he undertook what became an 'epic' climb on one of the sea stacks (Stack na Biorrach) and published an account in the Alpine Journal (May 1913. No 200).

Stack na Biorrach

  He wanted to compare the climbing abilities of the locals (who climbed to collect eggs and fowl) to that of the Alpine guides. This was soon after he had completed a spectacular season in the Alps (1882) when   the Schreckhorn, Finsteraarhorn, Eggishorn, Jungfrau and Matterhorn were climbed     -         a total ascent of at least 84,500 feet in ten days.

Henry Swanzy was a clergyman friend and together they attended the annual meeting of the British Association in Manitoba, Canada in 1884.  Afterwards they continued westwards through the Selkirk and Rocky Mountains on a gruelling journey through largely unexplored territory to reach the west coast, returning via Portland, Oregon and Chicago.  Swanzy's report of the mountains traversed was an influencing factor in the later explorations of his cousin William Spottswood Green.

It was Green who was his proposer for Alpine Club membership in 1886 and in 1889 he returned to the Alps with H.C Hart, climbing the Weisshorn and Dent Blanche.  This seems to have been his last Alpine season.  He died in 1915 leaving his natural history collection to the Science and Art Museum, Kildare St., Dublin.

Biorrach 
Marc Calhoun

See  here for details of his life;

and In Search of Peaks, Passes and Glaciers, by Frank Nugent for more details of his Alpine career.

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The Golden Age of Alpinism - Ireland's contribution

 In Search of PEAKS, PASSES & GLACIERS is Frank Nugent's account of the Irish Alpine Pioneers who made a significant contribution to Alpinism during its Golden Age and the following fifty years.

The Golden Age of Alpinism is generally agreed to have begun with Alfred Wills' ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854 that was the beginning of a sustained period of mountain climbing in the Alps that made fashionable the idea of mountaineering as a sporting activity.  Something of an austere figure, Wills was a judge of the High Court of England and Wales; an Irish connection was that it was he who passed judgement on Oscar Wilde.

John Ball

One of Wills' close friends and climbing companions was John Ball and he  '...was a man whose work in the Alps may...be characterised as that of the chief pioneer of mountain exploration, whether in its scientific, its practical or its literary aspects'. (WAB Coolidge, Ball's Obit.)

Some background:

John Ball, born in Dublin on 20 Aug 1818, a Roman Catholic, he was descended from a Cromwellian officer (Jonathan Ball) and was the son of Nicholas Ball, a barrister, a supporter of Catholic Emancipation and Daniel O'Connell, MP for Clonmel and a judge of the Court of Common Pleas. Nicholas's eldest sister Cecilia Ball (1784–1854) was superior of the Ursuline convent in Cork; his second sister Anna Maria Ball was a noted philanthropist; and his youngest sister Mary Teresa (Frances) Ball  introduced the Loreto order to Ireland. (D I B).

A precocious youngster, his first view of the Alps was at age nine and he was smitten.  His education took him to he Jesuit college at Oscott and later to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he studied under a number of eminent scientists (Airy, Henslow, Sedgwick) but his religion prevented him taking a degree.

Peaks, Passes & Glaciers

Details of his Alpine career are recorded in many places. He visited the Alps almost every year from the mid 1840s until his death.  He made the first ascent of  Monte Pelmo.  He crossed the main Alpine chain 48 times by 32 different passes, and another 100 passes on lateral ridges.

He was chosen as first president of the Alpine Club, instituted and edited its annual Peaks, Passes and Glaciers in 1859, the forerunner of the Alpine Journal; Ball's Alpine Guides,  published in three volumes ((1863-8), became, famously,  his most influential work.

During the 'Great Famine' in Ireland he was appointed an assistant poor law commissioner (1846–7), an experience that led him to write a tract, What is to be done for Ireland? (1847). His health broke down from overwork and he resigned, but returned as second commissioner (1849–51).   An unsuccessful parliamentary candidate for Sligo borough in July 1848, he was elected liberal MP for Carlow county (1852–7), advocating church disestablishment and land reform...appointed .. under-secretary for the colonies (1855–7). He used the position to promote his scientific interests, notably the Palliser Expedition (1857) which discovered several possible rail routes across Canada.  After failing to be elected for Sligo county in April 1857, he stood for Limerick city at a by-election in February 1858, ... he was narrowly defeated... disillusioned him with politics .... to devote himself to science and travel, usually spending part of his summers in Ireland (he had a house at 85 St Stephen's Green, Dublin) and his winters in Europe or North Africa.

As Poor Law Commissioner he had an opportunity to visit many parts of this country to do some hiking. It was in about 1846, when he was visiting the Dingle Peninsula, that he noted features that were attributable to the action of glaciers.  Two years later he had an opportunity to examine the area more closely and reported signs of glaciation around Lough Doon, near Connor Pass, and that he walked along the moraine that extends down to the lower Lough Beirne.  He discussed the glacial features around Lough Cruite under Brandon Peak and the former existence of a small glacier on the NE side of Purple Mountain, where its moraine '...offers to the pedestrian the only path wherein his foot does not sink in the spongy masses of sphagnum...'  All this about ten years before the formation of the Alpine Club  [(See Journal of the Geological Society of Ireland IV for his report (1848-50)] and this shows that he undertook some mountain activities in his own country.

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Others to follow.:

John Tyndall

Anthony Adams Reilly

Climbing for Pleasure in Ireland

 Poets such as Brian Merriman or Mary Tighe may have mentioned their enjoyment of Irish mountains in their writing but it seems that the earliest account of climbing or hiking in the Irish mountains was published in 1849. 

A Waterford man, a member of the prominent Mackesy family, wrote about 'The Comeragh Mountains, their lakes and legends'.   This was an account of a multi-day hike/climb in the Comeraghs in which he describes his route, the terrain and the various lakes and the coums (cwms) and the folklore and legends attached to them.

A brief extract gives a flavour of the account:

Coumshingaun - Winter

We have reached the foot of the mountain under Coumshingaun ; high above, you see a dark, circular, hollow - that is our goal - the Coum, in which lies the lake, and it seems to you much nearer now than you will find it to be in reality. 

Let us ascend. Aye, it is very steep, and the day is bright and hot ; but take it quietly—you have only a two-mile walk before you. For a part of the way the grass is pleasant, and we can go straight onwards. But ever as we climb, the heath and ling become tougher and taller, the grass thinner, the stones more numerous, the dried-up channels of the winter floods more deep and frequent ; so that we can no longer hold a direct course, but must deviate into many a zig-zag; and still, as we surmount each swelling knoll, the dark Coum above seems to recede, and the way to lengthen before us. 

Now the ground shelves downwards ; we descend amid coarse herbage, heath, and stones, and now we are in the actual Coum, this deep, stern, and solitary hollow! and there lies the lake, that dark, oval tarn, embosomed in cliffs; but such cliffs! so steep, so gigantic, so magnificent—could we ever attempt to describe them!.......

Mahon Falls

But though Crotty might have had his out-offices here for his live stock, yet for his own proper residence he honoured with his preference a cavern near a lake, called after him," Crotty's Lake," about a mile north from this place. ......

And now the summary of what we have seen is, that of all the lakes and hollows, Coumshingaun is the grandest, Coumfea the mildest, Stillogue More the loveliest, Coumgorra the most savage. The mountains are seen to most advantage when the heath is in full bloom, and after a continuance of dry weather: late in the year they look bare, sombre, and dreary; and after rain the deep moss is so soaked, that you feel as if treading on supersaturated sponges; besides, the frequent mists, the treacherous bogs, and suddenly-swelling torrents, render the excursion dangerous after the commencement of autumn.

Crotty's Lake

 But if advantage be taken of bright, warm days, late in August, or early in September, no real lover of nature will return disappointed from a ramble in the Commeragh Mountains.

Iska Solas

A number of things are to be noted in the account; 

first of all the date of publication - 1849;

and also the writer is addressing an audience  of like minded people who apparently are accustomed to such activity.

(Of course the images were not part of the original article).

Mary Burtchaell, a resident of Graiguenamanagh, kept a diary in which she recorded a number of walks and hikes including, on two occasions, a climb of Brandon Hill. (16th Aug 1845 & 9th Sep 1850.)  Even if this is of no great mountaineering significance it does indicate that such people were enjoying these activities at this time. (NLI Ms 7800-11).

John Palliser, a landlord whose property included large swathes of the Comeragh Mountains is known to have hunted and hiked in those hills and he plays a greater role in this story - more to follow.

Are there similar accounts of such activities from other parts of the country?

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The festival of Lughnasa

 The ascent of mountains in late July was central to the ancient rituals associated with the Festival of Lughnasa.  Máire Mac Neill studied almost 200 sites believed to be associated with that event, including Croagh Patrick, in an attempt to build up a picture of what used to happen in pre-Christian times.

    It may have had its origin in a mythological struggle between the gods Crom Dubh and Lugh for possession of the harvest.  The human customs that followed ranged from the collection of bilberries to the sacrifice of a bull and some of these continued into relatively modern times.  O' Neill quotes an example from Kilkenny in 1942 where the young men of a district climbed a hill (Brandon Hill?) to collect the fraughans that were then presented to young women to make 'Fraughan Cake' after which they danced at the Bonfire into the early hours.

Fraughans

Fraughan bush.

In Kerry, the slopes of  The Paps was the place that huge crowds gathered to celebrate Lughnasa and pick the wild fruits. In Ulster crowds climbed the steep slopes of Sliabh Croob to the Twelve Cairns on 'blaeberry Sunday' and Tobar na Sul on Sliabh Snaght in Inishowen was where the festival was celebrated on 'Heatherberry Sunday'.

There were similar celebrations on high places in many other parts of the country: Blackstairs (Caher Roe's Den), Slieve Blooms (Ard Eireann, Ridge of Capard), Tory Hill, Slieve Donard, Slieve Snaght and many others.  As Máire MacNeill says 'to know that every year it had been the custom of our ancesters to assemble on these hills in festivity and high spirits...is to  understand better Irish history, our passion for the wide land, for place-lore...'

It is clear that this was another reason for people to go into the mountains and uplands - an activity that continued well into the 20th C.  in modern times such festivals may have faded away but the enjoyment of the uplands and mountains remains, as indicated by the level of participation in hiking and hillwalking.

See: Picking Bilberries, Fraocháins and Whorts in Ireland, by Michael J. Conry for a definitive account of this activity.

Thanks also to: Frank McNally, Irish Times, July26 2019.

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Mountains in prehistory

                          

       

    

Summit cairn on Slievenamon.

    In many cultures the high places (mountain tops) were venerated places. In some they were regarded with awe as locations where the gods resided. It may have been felt that such sites were closer to God and were used as places of initiation, burial or ceremonial locations. In Tibet ancient cultures worshipped the mountains as manifestations of warrior gods - Shivling. There are sacred mountains in Africa - the Mountain of God (Ol Doinyo Lengai) in Tanzania, sacred to the Maasai people. In North America the Devil's Tower of Wyoming has been sacred to the native peoples since Neolithic times. In Greek mythology the foremost deities of the Greek pantheon were believed to have lived on the summit of Mount Olympus.

  In prehistoric Ireland, whatever the beliefs about the mountain summits, they were certainly held in some esteem by the people. There is hardly a significant hill summit that does not have a rock cairn, many of which have been shown to be ancient burial sites. They were also places of pilgrimage where some form of ritual was carried out. The prime example is Croagh Patrick in Co Mayo. This was a place of pilgrimage well before the Christian era and it's thought that the modern track to the summit is an archaeological artifact itself. Three summit mounds are recognised as being of ancient pre-Christian origin. 

  No one can tell what rituals took place there but one possibility is that they were 'Sun' related. There are numerous locations where topographical features align with sunrise or sunset on particularly significant times of the year. The most renowned might be Newgrange in Co Meath but there are numbers of others, some being on mountain summits.

Solstice sunrise from 'Ritual Site' near summit of Brandon Hill in Co Kilkenny, 

looking towards Mt Leinster.

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