This post is a little aside to my usual bantering about polymer clay! This post is about Inishkea, where I got this name for my polymer clay work and my connection with it.
My nana is one of the closest things to my heart. She was born on an island off the west coast of Ireland, named Inishkea North. She now suffers from the debilitating and degenerative Alzheimer's disease and can no longer share all her old stories that I used to love hearing about her childhood and the way they lived. So when I had a chance to investigate and write a creative non-fiction piece last year, I took the opportunity to learn more about the Inishkea islands. I'd like to share it with you as the story of these islands and their community is a sad but intriguing one and you might see how Inishkea has weaved itself into my soul!
I feel
the keen beat of my yearning heart
as I
launch my curragh and paddle out to
sea
I've
waited in Blacksod for the calm to hold
and now I
make my slow but sure way home
to
Inishkea, I pray the Lord will carry
me back
to the shores of my island free
Through
swell the village rises proud and free
I know
the pattern of the waves by heart
patience,
until the right moment to carry
my
precious load into land from the sea
we
celebrate when finally I'm home
my wife
and children wait for me to hold
We eat
and drink as much as we can hold
the
porter and the poitίn running free
our
friends all come to gather in our home
to hear
the tales that cheer and give us heart
the young
ones dance and over a moonlit sea
our
singing and our laughter seem to carry
When
ships are wrecked we take all we can carry
the wild
Atlantic has us in its hold
we ask
the Namhóg to keep at bay the sea
so we can
fish for mackerel trouble-free
we labour
to survive with all our heart
we
cherish our land and our one-roomed home
I refuse
to pay a tax for my own home
so when
the tax man tries to land and carry
our goods
off, we grow staunch and brave at heart
we herd
our livestock to a central hold
we hide
our goods in caves and then we free
our grips
of stones to drive him back to sea
My son is
going fishing, sure the sea
looks
calm enough as he embarks from home
we think
the night will remain tempest-free
but
fierce winds pick up and roll in to carry
away the
boy we're never again to hold
and his
loss breaks his weary mother's heart
A free
wind guides us over the conquering sea
we carry
our brood and all that we can hold
a new
home, still my heart beats for Inishkea
A row of
ruined houses hints at a village from an era past. Time and tide slowly dissolve the vestiges of
the island community that once dwelled here. Visitors to the islands of Inishkea North and South, where the ruins
lie, feel the eerie serenity that blankets the site. Such calm seems out of place in these
wind-swept surrounds. They strain to
envisage the thriving society that survived here not so long ago. They drink in the poignant beauty of both
land and ruins. And when they leave,
they notice a change. Ever so
slight. Their soul is lighter. Father Kevin Hegarty spoke of 'thin places'
after a visit to the islands in 2007.
The spiritual feel of the area recalled this Celtic idea of sites where
past, present and future seem to combine.
Some call places like this the edge of heaven. Places of solace where our earthly plane
meets something beyond. Strangely appropriate when standing on the islands, you
feel that you are standing at the edges of the earth.
The
Inishkea islands lie a few miles off the coast of the Mullet peninsula in
County Mayo on the western coast of Ireland.
They are low-lying islands, bathed in the Atlantic ocean but are
constantly harried by its winds and waves.
The islands are rich in history and mysticism. Archaeological investigations have revealed
multiple periods of settlement. From the
Bronze Age to the early 20th century.
The islands are littered with remains of religious importance from early
Christian times. These include church
sites, holy wells, burial grounds and cross slabs. Evidence of island settlement again appears
around the late 18th century. And the
island population grew steadily after this period, mostly peopled with
fishermen and farmers from the mainland.
Living
conditions on the islands were harsh.
The Atlantic storms and hurricanes were relentless and made agriculture
difficult. They grazed livestock and
worked to adapt a thin and sandy soil for the growth of potatoes, turnips,
barley, flax and rye. Their lives were
heavily reliant on and based around the sea.
They supplemented both diet and income with the fruits of the sea. They fished for mackerel, herring, bream,
cod, lobster and crayfish in the surrounding waters. They harvested fish oil and seal oil and
collected limpets from the rocks. They burned kelp for extra income over the
winter months.
The
islander spirit was independent, proud and sturdy. Their isolation meant they were an insular
community from the outset. They
developed a true sense of identity with their island culture. Nurtured by their interdependence on each
other for survival. Their society was
founded on their notion of neighbourly love.
Widows and landless neighbours were cared for within and by the
community. They looked out for their
own. They operated as one.
Islanders
tell of how they would come and go from each others' houses in the
evenings. Their days were full of toil
and tasks but their nights were full of friends, family, singing and
storytelling. As such, the islands
developed a unique social order. The
most highly respected among them were the ones that could weave a good tale -
the storytellers. Next in line were
those that had fine singing voices.
Third were those that entertained them all by dancing. Fourth would be the school master or the post
master. And in a lowly fifth place they
held the poor parish priest.
Their
insularity also meant they adhered more to their own moral and legal guidelines
than to those imposed on the mainland.
The islanders were Roman Catholic but they were far from the influence
of their parish priest. They would say
their daily prayers and attend church on the mainland when they could. But when the winds rolled in and the seas
were ferocious, it wasn't the Rosary they gripped as they said their prayers,
it was a carved stone called the Namhóg. No one knows quite how or why this stone was
venerated so. But it's thought the
islanders attributed to it the power of calming the waters. The priest is said to have tried to destroy
the idol on one of his visits.
The
islanders were also out of the way of regulatory bodies and policing. They appointed their own 'King', who was
responsible for external relations. Most
of the islanders avoided paying their taxes.
The tax man simply couldn't land his boat amidst the showering of
stones. And if he did manage it, those
who paid their taxes would claim ownership of all the sheep and cattle. And if he went into a house to claim goods in
lieu of money, he'd find it barren. All
the valuables had been hauled off and were hidden down in caves.
In the
mid-19th century, activities such as piracy, ship wrecking, scavenging and
smuggling were common and accepted practices.
A coastguard was placed on the islands in 1848 to prevent these dangerous
activities from taking hold. The
distilling of illicit liquor from their barley crop became a legendary source
of income and infamy for the islanders - they were renowned for the quality of
their poitίn. So much so that in 1895 a police barracks was
built and manned on the north island to try to impede the practice.
Outside
world influences continued to force their way into the island lifestyle with
the establishment of schools on both islands.
This introduced the younger ones to the English language and opened them
up to the world outside their little community.
They started to look externally for help and when these endeavours were
successful, relief was more frequently sought from the government in times of
distress. Government emigration schemes
saw young people or sometimes whole families leave for America.
In 1927,
on the evening of 28th October, a sudden hurricane caught fisherman all along
the west coast of Ireland off-guard. The
story is told that though the day was stormy, a calm befell at dusk. Many made
the choice to go out in their curraghs
and get their fill of fish. Some of the
older, more experienced men turned back in time. But many did not. Forty five were lost that night, ten of them
from Inishkea. Most in their teens or
early twenties. Two years later, two
more north island fishermen were drowned at sea.
In a
community hit hard by the tragic loss of their young men, people began to feel
that life would go easier for them on the mainland. Both church and state wanted this marginal
community back within their reach. So
when the islanders petitioned the government for holdings on the mainland, they
did all they could to accommodate their needs.
Most were granted acreage in Surgeview, with views to the islands and
access to their fishing grounds.
When the
last of the islanders of Inishkea left in 1934, they took with them the spirit
of Inishkea life. They carried on a love
of tales and song and dance, they passed this to their children and their
children's children. Their little houses
left behind now tell a tale of their own, as the turbulent Atlantic gradually repossesses
them. But a glimmer of hope shines
through for the future of the islands.
Descendants of Inishkea families return and a few of the old ruins on
the south island have been rebuilt as holiday homes. Yet another new incarnation in the ebb and
flow of life on the Inishkeas. People
will always be drawn to the thin places.
Thanks!
Thanks for taking the time to read this piece about Inishkea. I'd like to say a very special thank you to my grandmother, Sheila Flynn who has instilled in me this love and awe for Inishkea and its people and shared her stories of life growing up in the region. Thanks to my parents, Roger and Liz Flynn who helped me in my research for this piece and even trekked across Ireland to get me the out-of-print book by Brian Dornan on the Inishkeas!! Thanks to my cousin Sarah Ashton for our road trip to the Mullet peninsula so many years ago! And most especially thank you to my dad's cousin Ann Lavelle, who shared with my mother a letter detailing her notes on island life and history from her own research and speaking with my nana's siblings.
References
Coman, BJ 2005, 'The
Last of His Tribe: Maurice O'Sullivan and the Blasket Islanders', Quadrant, 1 March.
Dornan, B 2000, Mayo's Lost Islands: The Inishkeas, Four
Courts Press Ltd, Dublin.
Dunne, A 2010, 'Lost
at sea', Irish Times, 3 July 2010, Newspaper
Source, EBSCOhost.
Hegarty, K 2007, 'Oh, to be on Inishkea', Mayo News, 14 August.
McNulty, A 2008, 'Beautiful
Isles', Mayo News, 5 August.
O'Crohan, T 1986, Island Cross-Talk, Oxford University
Press, Google Books.
O'Sullivan, M 1953, Twenty Years A-Growing, Oxford
University Press, Google Books.
Royle, SA 2003, 'Exploitation
and celebration of the heritage of the Irish islands', Irish Geography, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 23-31.
The National Archives
of Ireland, Census of Ireland 1901/1911, <http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/>.
Wyatt, M 2008, How to Write a Sestina, suite101.com,
<http://writing-poetry.suite101.com/article.cfm/how_to_write_a_sestina>.
