Blasket Spirit Read online

  ‘Will you be here next year?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘You never know. I might be.’ I hadn’t thought any more than a day ahead for a long time, so the question baffled me. Despite the warm sunshine, Sarah had one of Sue’s beautiful purple and blue scarves wrapped around her shoulders, which she continually adjusted to her best advantage. Michael smiled at me.

  ‘Her Moonday present. Thank you.’

  Sarah then pulled a small brown bag from inside her sleeping bag roll.

  ‘Happy Moonday to you too,’ she said, presenting me with the package. Inside was one of Páid’s wooden candleholders.

  As I hugged her, I felt my throat swell, taut as a drum. I didn’t speak. She kissed me on the cheek and took off down the hill. ‘Byee.’

  ‘Looks like it’s time to pick up that drama script again,’ Michael laughed. He took my hand. ‘Goodbye. And I can’t thank you enough,’ he said. He still held my hand, smiling awkwardly. ‘And be more assertive with those donkeys.’ I nodded, swallowing hard to quell waves of emotion. ‘We’ll definitely be back next summer,’ he said finally.

  I never managed to say goodbye. He smiled and released my hand.

  He waved one last time from the clifftop, before disappearing down the slipway. I watched until the ferry disappeared into the shadow of the mainland. Then I went into the hut, closed the door and cried. The tears were new and warm. They spilled from a living spring, so different to the dead stagnant waters of earlier days. I thought again of the two little girls I had seen at the old National School and knew that, like them, I wouldn’t meet Michael and Sarah again.

  That night after dark, I began to write. I lit a candle, wrapped my sheepskin around me and poured my thoughts and dreams onto the page. At 3 a.m. I was finished. Until I left the island, I continued the same nightly ritual – story after story, in an effort to tell the story that couldn’t be told.

  Haughey’s Isle

  Throughout that month of August, the weather remained warm and calm. The ferries buzzed back and forth with cosmopolitan cargoes. The midges were out in force, flushing squealing lovers out of the undergrowth. One female camper ran to the ferry screaming that she was being eaten alive. She left her tent and belongings to be collected by the ferryman days later. Filling the vacuum after the departure of Michael and Sarah, I busied myself with excursions to the back of the island, bare feet in the damp turf and face into the sea breeze.

  As I soaked in the sun, in the shelter of the Bright Dwellings at the far end of the Great Blasket Island, I frequently saw the tiny, lone figure walk from the direction of the stone house on Inis Mhic Uibhleain up to the huge rocks in the centre of the island. I always wondered if it was Charlie Haughey, and I became determined to take that trip to the outer islands, to find out.

  One evening in return for giving a tour of the Blasket village to the crew of a passing yacht, they presented me with the opportunity.

  ‘Do you fancy sailing around the islands tomorrow?’

  I jumped at the chance. The following morning as we passed Inis Mhic Uibhleain, I could see the landing place. I wondered about going ashore. The skipper agreed with me. There was no harm in taking a few photos of red deer. Without giving it a second thought, I scrambled onto the rocks and climbed up the landing steps. Our approach to the island had obviously been under observation as a familiar male figure was waiting for me as I arrived at the top.

  ‘How can I help you?’ Charles J. Haughey asked me.

  I was so surprised and breathless it took a while to explain the purpose of my visit. He listened and confirmed to me that he was that tiny figure I had seen.

  ‘I regularly climb up to study the remains of the past. These stones have seen it all. Sometimes I feel like shaking the secrets out of them. Maybe some day archaeologists will develop a technology that will enable them to unveil the past more meaningfully, but in the meantime we can only gaze and wonder.’

  I knew what he meant. Compared to the permanence and power of these islands, we are nothing, as insignificant as blown dust.

  ‘Over there is what appears to be an ancient burial ground,’ he said. He was silent for a time. ‘I believe the oratory here, and the graves in front of it, are closely related to the monastic site on the Greater Skellig – probably some monks of the same order. Have you been to the Skelligs?’

  ‘I have. I don’t think I’ll be invited back though. It’s a long story. Perhaps the Blasket dwellings were actually part of the Skellig community?’

  ‘Well, only the stones know at this stage,’ he smiled. ‘You know, I would have liked to have been an archaeologist.’ We sat quietly for a time. Around us the remains of the oratory, beehive huts and old boundary walls lay silent. Only the sea breeze rustled through the grass. I thought of the yellow digger, gouging out layers of time back on the Great Blasket Island. At least here, in on the Inis, under its present caretaker, the secrets of the stones would remain intact.

  ‘We’ve started an island log,’ he said.

  I understood his reasons. Recording the transitory comings and goings of migrating birds, visitors, winter gales, boats and grandchildren seemed to give an anchor in time, to validate us, before we became more flotsam on the tide.

  ‘I always wanted to live on an island off the west coast of Ireland,’ he added.

  ‘Are you from the west?’ I was only aware of the former Taoiseach in a Dublin context.

  ‘I was born in Mayo,’ he proclaimed with pride, planting his hands firmly on his knees. ‘There’s a place in Donegal called Haughey’s Isle. I looked at it, but it is no longer an island, though it may have been at one time. Most of the islands off the west coast don’t have any proper title, so I was at a dead end. Then Maria Simonds-Gooding suggested Inis Mhic Uibhleain.’

  As Charlie talked about the Inis, he said, ‘It is known as the island of the fairies – na púcaí, where they play fairy music, to carry away the very soul. On a summer’s evening, at twilight, when the sea murmurs below, and the haunting cry of the seals echoes in the caves, it’s relatively easy to believe anything.’

  I knew that this man felt the spirit of the islands. I told him of my experience with the two little girls at the old schoolhouse.

  ‘I have never seen anything on the Inis myself, but Maria had a terrifying ghostly experience here. It was while she was in here on one of those painting visits, in the early days, that she saw the ghost.’

  Curious, I asked him to tell me about it, but he just smiled. ‘You’ll just have to talk to Maria about that. That is her story to tell. Tom and Paddy Ó Dálaigh owned the island at that time. They were bachelor brothers, and kept sheep on the island. As long as they lived, we gave them the grazing for their sheep. When they were in clipping the sheep, they stayed in that bothán over there.’

  ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘It was in the seventies. We’re here over thirty years now. It was a great place for the children to holiday, and learn about the sea, and develop respect for it. They were out boating, swimming, exploring and climbing from one end of the day to the other, and now the grandchildren can have that same freedom. We had to build up the landing place – an leirigh. That was, and still is, probably, the most forbidding aspect of island life, trying to land. You waited for the boat to rise on the swell and jumped, hoping for the best. The climb up from the sea to here is heavy-going, just as bad as the harbour in Dún Chaoin.’

  Memories of our school trip where we jumped into the rocky darkness from the rising waves came flooding back. I recounted our disastrous landing on the cliffs below Dunmore Head back in 1979.

  ‘I heard about that,’ he said. ‘It’s gone down in the Kerry annals, a bit like the wine story.’

  I was at a loss. ‘What’s the wine story?’

  He looked at me in disbelief. ‘It is a Blasket story that has become folklore by now. You must have heard it.’

  I waited in anticipation. A cloud formation rested on the western horizon, like a distant island.<
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  ‘We tell the grandchildren that is Hybrasil, and that we had tried sailing out west, looking for it, but never found it.’ He gazed out to sea and recited:

  ‘On the ocean that hollows the rocks where ye dwell.

  A shadowy land has appeared, as they tell.

  Men thought it a region of sunshine and rest

  And they called it Hybrasil, the Isle of the Blessed.’

  I thought of Fergal’s boat, Oileán na nÓg, called after the mythical island where nobody ever grows old. Myth and history, always, seemed to be a vital part of our present, on these mystical islands.

  A deer stag inched his way towards us, nuzzling and chomping the grass on the clifftop. We watched him silently. Behind him the infinite expanse of blue sky merged into three thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean.

  ‘Why did you bring the deer into the island? Would introducing a new species not change the natural balance here?’

  ‘No, not at all. There were always sheep here, and the red deer and sheep are very similar in their behaviour and in what they eat. The red deer were very natural successors to the sheep, particularly since there are no trees on the Inis. The red deer is a native species that has survived in Ireland since the last Ice Age. When I came to the island, the only native herd in the country was in Killarney. At that time, that herd was under threat and falling in numbers. Any major setback, like foot and mouth disease, would mean that unique genetic link with the past would be gone forever.’

  ‘There are red deer in Wicklow and Donegal.’

  Yes, there are and they are a very important part of our wildlife heritage, but they are not the native pure-bred Irish red deer. They were brought in from Scotland and England in the nineteenth century. The Killarney herd was then the only native herd of red deer, the same deer that the Fianna hunted. Inis Mhic Uibhleain provided a unique opportunity to preserve the native species. It gave us the base on which to build up a reserve herd, so that if the Killarney herd was ever threatened again, it could always be renewed from here. The Inis turned out to be an ideal habitat for the deer. They thrived and there are now over a hundred. We brought in the native Irish hare, another link in our wildlife heritage chain, and they are doing very well too.’

  Red deer on Inis Mhic Uibhleain.

  There it was, that word ‘heritage,’ again. ‘It’s a pity that heritage isn’t a priority in Ireland today,’ I said.

  ‘Heritage. They can’t even spell the word.’

  I watched the regal stag lift his head, smelling the wind. Behind him, An Téaracht rose from the sea like a volcano. Its pinnacle was topped with a motionless hazy cloud. The stag bolted and disappeared down the hillside. ‘I almost expected to see Fionn and Oisín in hot pursuit there.’

  Charlie smiled. ‘I am afraid I cannot arrange that, but at home in Dublin, we have Cú Chulainn.’ I had heard of it. ‘It is a larger-than-life statue, carved by Joan Walsh Smith from the trunk of a fallen elm. We lost some elms in a gale in the early eighties. Joan carved Cú Chulainn out of one of them, and he now stands patiently on guard outside Abbeville.’

  ‘Well if Oisín came across the sea again, he would feel quite at home here, even now,’ I said, watching the larks spiralling up from the springy grass around the walls of the oratory.

  ‘Yes, I suppose it hasn’t really changed.’

  His gaze then fell upon the house. ‘Well, the rate of wine consumption and the solar panels might throw him, just a bit.’ He chuckled to himself. I was slow to pick up his joke. ‘I don’t think Oisín needed solar energy to power his mobile phone.’

  ‘You still have to tell me the wine story,’ I reminded him.

  He looked at me and said ‘my version… and I don’t want to be quoted.’ I sat back in delight while he regaled me with a tale of French wine, storm-bound builders, and French presidents. ‘Now, you will have to go to Larry Slattery over in Dún Chaoin to hear the full story of that episode, over a pint.’

  ‘You mean the ferrymen’s father?’

  ‘The very same gangster,’ he said affectionately.

  The yacht returned for me much too quickly. Charlie walked to the top of the cliff with me when I was leaving. ‘Come back and see me again soon. You can tell me your Skellig story next time. I love to hear about the islands.’

  We shook hands and said goodbye. I set off down the steep path. As I looked back up, he waved. Behind him, a herd of red deer grazed by the ruins of the ancient oratory. As I waved back, I knew that the secrets of the stones on this particular Blasket Island were in safe hands.

  Blasket Wine

  Larry Slattery arrived into the Great Blasket Island a few days later. He was a jovial man who had time to chat with everyone. I approached him, as he stood on the cliff, above the slipway, watching the red ferry depart. He pushed the cap back off his head, wiping the sweat from his brow.

  ‘Charlie told you to ask me,’ he said and burst into guffaws of laughter. ‘That’s a good one. What did he say about it?’

  ‘Well, he laughed a fair bit too.’

  ‘The man has a sense of humour, I’ll say that for him, and it was lucky for us that he does.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘You know he built a house in on the Inis?’ I nodded. ‘Well, I was in helping Dan, when we did the deed.’

  ‘Who’s Dan?’

  ‘Dan Brick. Brick, the builder!’ he grinned. ‘When he started building first, there was only a tiny builder’s prefab there, for shelter and for making tea. It was fairly primitive. Most people imagine C.J.H. in a Caribbean paradise, but I can tell you, in on the Inis it was rough – no electricity, running water, firewood or toilet. When the wind and rain beat across the island, no work could be done of course. It was slow going. Loading and unloading materials, and even getting to the site left you at the mercy of the weather. Sure, you’d be exhausted before you’d even start.

  ‘At one stage, the weather turned really vicious. There was Dan, myself and two other lads stranded in on the island for a few weeks. Our supplies were soon gone, so what could we do only investigate Charlie’s stores. Luckily for us, his kids had an amount of tins of food put by, for when they might be caught out. We did OK for a while on tins of ham, but I had to draw the line at tins of snails. French snails, if you don’t mind. I even had a go at making a kind of bread over the open fire. We were getting pretty hungry, I can tell you.

  ‘Anyway, Dan sent me off to see what else I could find, and there it was – a case of wine. The boss told me to get a bottle and we’d try it. He said he didn’t think Charlie would mind. I poured it out, into the two old tin mugs that the Ó Dálaigh brothers used for the tea.’ He cringed as he remembered. ‘It was very rare French wine that he had been given as a gift. He had been nursing it for years, waiting for a special occasion. Nineteen forty-seven was on that bottle. It could have been the year they built the wine factory for all we knew. I suppose if we’d known how much each swig of the stuff was worth, we might have sipped it a bit more slowly, but to be honest, I didn’t taste much in it.’

  ‘Was it the most expensive bottle you drank?’

  ‘Bottle! Are you joking? We drank the whole case.’

  ‘Châteauneuf-du-Pape nineteen thirty-five was on the second bottle. According to Charlie, you can’t put a value on wine like that. Thank God he has a sense of humour. He seemed to get a great laugh out of the fact that we downed it out of the two ancient chipped, tin mugs of the Ó Dálaigh’s. We were stranded out there another two weeks after that. Now that I think of it, there was a bottle of vodka that we drank too. I’d forgotten about that. There was no sign of anyone coming out for us, so the four of us set off across the nine miles in a currach, and do you know, we did it in three hours,’ he announced proudly. ‘Three hours non-stop rowing to Dún Chaoin. Not bad going, eh?’

  ‘But what about the wine? Were you not afraid that Charlie would miss it?’

  ‘Sure Dan said we’d buy a couple of bottles in Garvey’s supermarket in Dingle, an
d Charlie would be none the wiser.’

  ‘That obviously didn’t happen.’

  ‘No, not quite. A couple of months later, Charlie came into the island with the architect and a few others, to see how the work was progressing. It was sweltering hot weather. He spotted me sitting on box outside the bothán, and over he came for a word. We were chatting about this and that, when, didn’t he decide that we both needed a drink! I offered him a cup of tea but he looked at me as if I was half-mad. Then, he proceeded to tell me where his treasured case of wine was stashed! This was the celebration he had waited years for, and he was going to open a very special bottle. I was nearly sick. I suppose I should have been honoured that it was me he thought of drinking it with, and not the hobnobs he’d come over with. I couldn’t get away fast enough, but sure there was nothing I could do. I arrived back with the two tin mugs and a bottle of plonk with one of those screw-on caps, which we’d bought in Garvey’s. He assumed that I couldn’t find the wine and he said he’d get it, so what could I do but look the man in the eye, and tell him that we’d drunk it.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Well, I had to assure him a fair few times that we had, in all honesty, drunk the entire case. He was like somebody that was been told that one of the family had died, and it just wasn’t sinking in. I thought it was the end of me. Then would you believe it, he just put his head in his hands, and he laughed and laughed. He wanted to know all the details. He seemed to get great good out of the idea of the whole case being downed in the old tin mugs, like tea. He was breaking his sides laughing. I was in a bit of a state over it, so I reassured him that we had replaced the wine with much newer stuff from the supermarket.’

  ‘What did he say then?’