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| Harry Clarke stained glass in church, Inishmann |
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| Dún Chonchúir, stone ring fort |
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| Path, Inishmann |
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| Stone walls, and thatched roof houses |
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| Synge house |
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| Dún Chonchúir |
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| View of Inishmann, from Dún Chonchúir |
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| Thatched roof house |
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| Church with Harry Clarke studio stained glass windows |
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| Thatched roof house |
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| Clochán na Carraige, bee hive hut |
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| Dún Fearbhaí, another stone fort |
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| View of Inisheer, from Dún Fearbhaí |
I have the wildest admiration for the Irish Peasants, and for Irish men of known or unknown genius ... but between the two there's an ungodly ruck of fat-faced, sweaty-headed swine."
JM Synge Irish writer and playwright
If you ever read Synge's book "The Aran Islands" you will hard the story of a man 100 years earlier looked at Inis Meáin and thought "this is the last outpost of ancient Europe, I am privileged to see it before it disappears forever" - that sense is often shared by visitors to this day. Inis Meáin has stood solidly against the Atlantic Swell for many centuries, it's Gaelic culture has shown the same resilience, its ways and traditions run deep in the islanders' blood, as its limestone cliffs and, against all odds, has held the oldest tradition of Europe alive.
Today is Sunday. It should be quiet until Mass is out, around noon. I made a good breakfast of eggs (which I rarely eat) and wheat toast with blackberry jam, after a hard night of call, which is unusual as of late. I saw twenty patients Saturday morning, went by the nursing home, then made four more trips to the clinic over the day. The most interesting visits were a head laceration due to a Gaelic football game injury which I was able to superglue (great stuff-no stitches) and a alcohol related solo MVA, which was bad enough to send to the hospital. Then, I got an early morning call about a sick Hospice patient, requiring another trip, so I decided to make a proper breakfast as a reward from a tiresome 24 hours. Usually I have oats and raisins, but I went special today. As I enjoyed the breakfast, I realized the eggs were from a gentleman who when he comes to the clinic, he brings me some fresh eggs. The blackberry jam was from a family where I had done a home visit.
This week, I went to another Aran Island, Inishmaan. This has been a wet year to date for Ireland, and this trip played to that tune. I don't have the luxury of waiting for a sunny day (which have been few and far between) to see this fine country, as my days here are limited, and my Irish bucket list is long.
I had hope to fly, but serendipity put me on the ferry, as visibility was poor. Inishmann is a relatively small island, a few miles wide, with around 200 inhabitants.Inishmaan (Irish: Inis Meáin) is the middle of the three main Aran Islands in Galway Bay on the west coast of Ireland. There are 2 pubs, and 1 hotel. A couple of us got off the ferry, the rest were going to Inish More (see earlier blog entry). The smart ones took the only taxi at the pier, which I was surprised to see, until the driver said "it's a long walk to town". It was raining, and blowing, and by the time I had made the thirty minute walk to town, I was drenched. Four hours later, I was really drenched. When I walked, my hiking boots literally oozed water. Well, at least it was a marginally warm wind. My first stop was at Dún Chonchúir (Conor's Fort), an ancient oval stone fort, dating to pre-Christian times, with views of the island's other ancient sites and on a clear day, the neighboring Arans, and even the Cliffs of Moher. Only excavation could tell us for certain whether it was originally built during the Bronze Age or the Iron Age, but the fort continued to be occupied down into the Early Medieval period.
Teach Synge is the house where John M. Synge stayed on the island every summer from 1898 to 1902. It was here he is said to have got inspiration for his plays The Playboy of the Western World, Riders to the Sea, and many of his other works from stories he heard while on Inishmaan. In 1896 he met W.B. Yeats, who was in Paris to found a French branch of the Irish League. It was in Paris that Yeats, 'the strategist of the Irish cultural revival', issued this famous instruction to JM Synge: 'Give up Paris, you will never create anything by reading Racine, and Arthur Symons will always be a better critic of French literature. Go to the Aran Islands. Live there as if you were one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression.' Yeats' singling out of the Aran Islands as a culture and a way of life worthy of consideration by a writer was no random selection. The west of Ireland had been identified by the Celtic revival of the late 19th Century as the home of an authentic 'Irish' culture and way of life, the country's uncorrupted heart and natural home of the Gaelic language. And the Aran Islands, as islands off the west coast of the west of Ireland, were even more likely to encapsulate these pure and ancient Celtic cultural and spiritual values.
While on Inishmaan J.M. Synge struck up a friendship with an elderly islander, who was able to converse in English (Synge's Gaelic was not yet good enough for him to understand the native speech). He told Synge many stories, some of which Synge documented in 'The Aran Islands'. One such story, told in the kitchen of Synge's cottage, recounted the tale of an unfaithful wife and was to form the basis of J.M. Synge's 1902 play The Shadow of the Glen. Synge reported on most aspects of island life in 'The Aran Islands', including an interesting account of an eviction and a perhaps more telling report on an island funeral. While his account of the eviction fails to acknowledge his own brother's activity as a land agent in the neighboring county of Mayo, the report on the funeral contains a barely disguised attack on the Catholic church; and after the burial ceremony Synge was told a story from an elderly islander about the poteen ('moonshine') drinking that takes place at island funerals. He was told of one time when two men collapsed unconscious in the graveyard after drinking heavily, and one of the men died later that night. This image of drunken debauchery at an Irish funeral was later used by Synge in his controversial drama 'The Playboy of the Western World'.
J.M. Synge, meanwhile, returned to the Aran Islands for a month in September 1899, and again in September 1900, when he witnessed the tragedy of a drowning which would form the basis of his short play 'Riders to the Sea'. We can see here how the apparently anti-modern, anti-commerce beliefs of J.M. Synge could be interpreted, by Irish nationalist sensibility, as yet another instance of the Anglo-Irish landowning ascendancy attempting to keep the native Irish in medieval poverty. Synge appears to be suggesting that improvements in economic and social welfare in the west of Ireland come at the expense of the charming and authentically Celtic way of life. Despite the controversy caused by The Playboy, J.M. Synge had a huge impact on the Irish literary and cultural scene, providing an inspiration for multiple writers and artists.
Next, I found a primitive bee hive hut,Clochán na Carraige, not nearly as well built as the few I saw on the Inveraugh Peninsula. The structure of which is unusual because the outside is circular but the inside is rectangular.
Gerard and Amanda Hooke had told me about the island church with stained glass windows by the studio of reknowned Irish stained glass artist, Harry Clarke. He worked on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (his work on which was destroyed during the 1916 Easter Rising) and Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen became his his first printed work. This was followed by an illustrations for an edition of Edgar Allen Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination.
The stonemason who built the church altar was the father of Patrick Pearse. (Pearse was the man who read the Irish Declaration of Independence in 1916.) All this from a small church on a small island. There is no priest living on the island, but when I went by, a group of men were just leaving it.
Naturally, after church I went to the local pub. I left a large puddle (of rainwater, that is) after consuming a pint and a sandwich. I had just enough time to trudge up the hill to the stone fort Dún Fearbhaí, which dates from the 4th century A.D. and is unusual in being almost rectangular - instead of circular as the other forts on the island.
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