Irish summers are magic. You wake up at five o’clock in the morning and the day is literally screaming “enjoy me.” Especially in the west country.
I wanted to take the family over to the Blasket Island, just off the end of
Dingle peninsula.
At the foot of Dunquin cliff a zodiac arrives. You pay the girl named Anye at the top of the cliff then wait. She speaks Irish just as easily as she does English. They teach them this language from birth here, apparently. Try French, or Spanish, if you must in an attempt to be chic, and fit it. But, basically you're sunk, there’s no crossover here with those languages. Let her speak English to you, no way to look cool.
The skipper is waiting off shore with his 40 foot fishing boat converted for hauling tourists.
In the zodiac is a Dubliner whose non-stop chatter is entertaining as it is incomprehensible. He asks everyone what county they are from, even those from the states. You are a product of your county, no matter what.
It' three miles to the island which rises like a green whaleback. Beside this is a smaller one that looks like a dead man laying down on the water with his arms folded across his chest.
This dead man island is Inis Tuasceart, the Dublin first mate says, only, it comes out “Innish tooosh cart” He keeps saying it like this over and over again. The captain, a northerner from Ulster, squints at the pronunciation, that’s no way to say it. He warns that his first mate’s accent at times requires translation into English.
You get there and realize these were tough people. Those few who were last to leave were taken away as oldsters in the 1950s, but, they could still make this hellacious climb into and out of the craggy hole near White Beach, Beal Bahn, which classifies as a harbor.
The island is about nine miles long by a mile wide, at most. Now get this; it’s nine hundred feet high! Like much of Ireland in these parts, it’s straight up, or seems it. These people must have had the knees and calves of Samson.
The village that remains bears haunting reminders to Ireland's tortured past in the form of tumble-down, famine-era cottages. A few 'modern' houses remain for caretakers, but, basically no one lives in this village which is a ghost-town that has somehow preserved its quaintness.
You're left there for the day by the guide to roam the hillside among sheep, the odd donkey, and hundreds of rabbits still living there. If you were trapped out there, you certainly wouldn't starve. There are no roped off areas. The cliffs are very real, andvery dangerous.From the village you can see the small island of Beginnish, located just offshore.
When we were there, they told us of an English triathlete who thought to swim the distance from White Beach to the cliffs of Dunquin. He made it to Beginnish and had to be rescued. Currents between the mainland and the Blaskets are treacherous. Fog rolls in, seemingly at an instant. He got caught in a fog bank, and felt lucky enough to crawl out just a quarter-mile off shore hours later, nearly having been lost to the vast Atlantic.
Thousands before him, have not been so lucky. From as far back as the Vikings, people have been lost in these chilly, enticingly blue waters.
Even here, even in Irish, men were frequently named after the apostles or saints; Michael (Malachy?), Patrick (Paudraig), Mathew (Paudraig), John (Sean or Paudraig), and so forth. The woman were also frequently named Mary (Maire) or Anne (Anye). Then of course, the last names ran deep, Sullivan, Kearney, Ferriter, Hussey etc. The problem on the island became one of recognition. Mary Sullivan, daughter of Patrick Sullivan, not John, etc. became Mary Pat. Good so far?
When that didn't totally tell precisely who a person was, it came down to a question of altitude, literaly. Upper village (from above) to lower village (from below). The conversation became. "The other day Tim Pat came over before taking the boat." "Did he now? Tim Pat from below, or above?"
Across the water in Dunquin is an interpretive center that tells you the story, sad, haunting beautiful, of the Blasket people. Those who moved away, left not just the Blasket, but Ireland itself and strangely, settled in Springfield, Mass. , which is inland. This makes sense if you consider how heartbroken they must have been at leaving.
Any view of the ocean, or an island, must have been like a knife in the heart, both as a reminder of the life left behind, and in the sad truth that nothing quite equals the stunning views and beauty of this place.
At the top of the Great Blasket Island is a Norman watch-tower built in the 1200s and used right up through the 1500s. These Martello style towers are found all over the peninsula as a means to warn of invasion. You clamber around inside the ruins and find an old fireplace.
The hillside is still loaded with turf for use as fuel source.
These islands like much of Dingle are rich in folklore. Maurice O'Sullivan (simplified from the Irish spelling)
"Twenty Years A-growing" and Thomas Crohan (Also simplified) penned "Island Man" a collaberation between himself an editor, Paudraig Tyers from Cork who thought to preserve the Irish language by living among the Blasket people and learning the language.
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