Blasket Spirit Read online

  ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, you have five minutes to take some photographs. Stay in the designated area. You may not go up behind the cells where the ground is loose.’

  Twenty people scattered amongst the beehive huts with their cameras. I escaped into the darkness of the first beehive hut that I came to. I flopped onto the ground, leaning back against the coolness of stone. For the first time, I was alone and relief surged through my whole body. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I gradually made out the 1,500-year-old corbelled roof. I was transported back to the awe of that first day on the Sceilg Mhichíl with the lighthouse keeper.

  ‘The spirit of the rock soothes the soul,’ Mick Fitzpatrick had said. He often requested to stay for a second and third continuous term of duty on the light. I stroked the worn stone, invoking hundreds of years of prayer and peace.

  ‘Tom, where’s the other fucking sack?’ barked a workman outside, as his feet tramped along the back of the monk’s cell, which was at my head height. Suddenly the guide’s denim legs cut off the shaft of sunlight that had been streaming through the low doorway.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please leave the enclosure immediately. The helicopter is coming in.’ I would have come out with my hands up, but all sense of humour had failed me. I had failed Páid.

  Blue Shades escorted me to the tunnel, while ignoring the rest of the group. Outside the grit swirled and settled, and the helicopter left once more. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, return down to the cove. Next group, enter please.’ I didn’t move. I stood humiliated and defeated. He repeated his instructions – for my benefit, I am sure. As I turned away, only anger stopped my tears.

  I thanked God that Páid hadn’t made it to the top. The mystical and romantic monastic site, which Páid and Mary had treasured, was gone. Nothing remained but a circus, a building site, and a curiosity for tourists and archaeologists alike. It had become something to tick off on a must-see list, ‘Skelligs – been there, done that.’

  It was 1.45 p.m. Páid’s boat would have departed fifteen minutes earlier. I left the site. My chest was a knot of anger and disappointment. A narrow peaty path ascended at an angle from the main track. I stepped up onto it, away from the crowd, scrambling up onto the flat rock. I was higher than anybody on the island. On one side of the island, the boats rocked on the dazzling blue; on the other side, white surf crashed against rocks, over 200 metres below me. I sat on the flat rock, shaking with frustration.

  Then, everything happened so suddenly. The helicopter approached. The guides and tourists left the site quickly. Everybody covered their eyes, sheltering against walls or shoulders. The top of the rock became a swirling, choking roar of dust. As everybody shrank from the scene, I leaped up, clambering blindly up the bank and over the wall. I found myself behind the top beehive hut. The helicopter roared in my ears. My eyes stung and my hair and clothes whipped around me. An image of soldiers going over the top in the First World War flashed through my mind, as my heart pounded. I was stung all over by flying gravel and debris. Expecting to be fired on, by the chopper or a sniper in reflective sunglasses, I dodged and dived as fast as I could to the target. Crouching at the foot of the quartz shrine, with my eyes tightly shut, I fumbled for the handkerchief in my backpack. Blindly, I unwrapped the two quartz stones, reconnecting them tightly, directly under the high cross. Páid and Mary had their honeymoon stones restored and reunited at last.

  I felt invincible. Stone me or shoot me, I did not care. My mission was accomplished. I stood by the high cross, alone, as the roar of the chopper blades receded and the dust began to settle again. I said a silent prayer for Páid and Mary at the foot of the quartz shrine. Touching the high cross, I took a treasured look around the deserted oratory and beehive huts that survived, perched on the edge of the world. An Sceilg Bheag was a lonely, inhospitable neighbour in the sparkling sapphire sea below. It rose like a small alp, covered in brilliant white guano, making a spectacular backdrop to the high cross. For the first time that day, I was filled with the cries of thousands of nesting sea birds. I reached for the sky, like many had done there before me, and then I slipped out through the stone tunnel before the noise of the next group could break the spell.

  As I emerged, I came face to face with my smile, reflected in the blue shades. ‘Goodbye,’ I called cheerily, as I waved Páid’s handkerchief above me, in the blue sky.

  I never did see Páid again to tell him that I had replaced their love stones. Pat Murphy and the other ferrymen did not notice a frail old man in a dark wool suit. I did not know his surname. I did not know if he still lived in Ventry, or if it had just been their home back in 1954. I do know, however, that the spirits of Mary and Páid soar together again in the winds over Sceilg Mhichíl.

  Perched on the edge of the world (l–r): a beehive hut, high cross and quartz shrine on the top of Sceilg Mhichíl.

  Blasket Blessing

  ‘People bare their soul on an island, perhaps that’s why romances happen quickly. People are so free.’ I pondered Maria’s parting words, as I gazed across at the outer islands from the Bright Dwellings. On Sceilg Mhichíl, a very spiritual level of Páid and Mary had been touched. The old man glowed with love for his dead wife and returning to the island to reconnect with her spirit was deeply important to him. I thought of Aisling and Colm, and the other romances that I had seen blossom during that island summer. I thought of Michael, and suddenly I felt very lonely.

  The outer islands looked desolate. I flopped onto the heather and stared. An Téaracht stood, a silent sentry, as our most westerly outpost. The lighthouse keepers were long gone. Their little railway, once used to haul supplies up to the lighthouse along precipitous cliffs, was now obsolete. The keepers’ nanny goat, which chased Paud O’Connor every time he returned for duty, was dead. Paud, Jo Molloy, Ciaran Ó Broin and men of their calibre were now surplus to requirements, having been made redundant by the great computer.

  ‘And what time of the tide is this to be snorkelling?’ had been my first greeting from Paud O’Connor, then the keeper on Hook Lighthouse, County Wexford, several years previously. I had tried bluffing, but it was clear that I hadn’t a clue about what I was doing. What followed was a thorough explanation of the tides and currents off Hook Head, along with a firm reprimand. That was delivered over what was to become the first of many warming cups of tea in Hook Lighthouse. A seagull couldn’t sneeze without being seen by their 24-hour watch. There is no knowing the number of maritime accidents that lighthouse keepers have prevented over the years. Sadly, their vigilance and human friendship are now just memories, as we bow to the god of automation.

  I gazed southwards. There, Sceilig Mhichíl, too, was abandoned. Mick Fitzpatrick was no longer needed to keep watch over his beloved rock. The mighty computer presided behind the barred doors of the lighthouse.

  Before me was Inis Mhic Uibhleain. Once again, through my binoculars, I saw the lone figure of Charlie Haughey make his way up to the stones. I wondered what he really thought of Maria’s black calf experience. I waved at the now familiar speck in the distance. If it had not been for the lighthouse keepers, he would not have been walking the island that day, or any other day. When his yacht ran aground on rocks at the foot of Mizen Head, it was they who came to his aid in the thick fog. One of them went down a sheer cliff, with only a rope around his waist, to rescue the crew. I’d like to have seen the resident computer trying that stunt. After hundreds of years of invaluable service, the keepers of our Irish lights were very badly let down. I resolved to bring that up with Charlie Haughey the next time we met.

  As the rain clouds rolled in from the Atlantic, I left the southern and western seas of Ireland in the hands of two blind, dead lighthouses. It would be sundown soon, time for small drug-smuggling boats to approach our coastline under the noses of our empty automated lighthouses. I vented my frustration as I tramped back along the south path.

  On the east of the island, the village was quiet. I stood a while, gazing down at my new home
. Maria and the day-trippers had long gone. Sue was busy, in and out of her cottage, hanging freshly dyed yarn on the clothes line. Seán was busy tinkering with the shovel of the yellow digger at the back of the cafe. Sigrid sat at the table outside the hostel, writing. I waved as I strolled down the hill. I felt utterly at home.

  As I opened the door of the hut, I stopped to watch the blue ferry returning home, into the island, for the night. It ploughed through the waves, a dusting of seagulls in its wake. Strangely, the binoculars revealed a full complement of passengers. Normally the boat would return empty at this time of the evening.

  As the passengers climbed down into the dinghy, it was obvious that they were not coming in to stay on the island. There was not a backpack or a tent between them. Unlike the usual boatload that splintered into different families, nationalities and couples, this entire group gelled with some definite communal purpose. As each dinghy-load climbed above the edge of the cliff, they gathered in a large group, before proceeding slowly up Bóthar na Marbh. Some old ladies linked arms. One thirty-something woman helped an old man up the hill, while a young boy scampered in and out of the crumbling ruins of the deserted village.

  At the remains of the old schoolhouse, they stopped. The old building yawned roofless, with gables as jagged as shark’s teeth. The lintels and stone sills of the windows remained intact. In front of the doorway, I saw a little table, covered in a white cloth and balanced on two fish boxes. Immediately, I recognised Sue’s three prized nasturtium blossoms, fluttering in a glass.

  An old frail priest began the ritual of preparing the altar. A younger priest unfolded the vestments. Gently, he placed the garment over the head of the old man, carefully settling the cloth around him. Sigrid and I arrived as the congregation arranged itself on the grassy bank around the old National School. A herring gull landed purposefully on the seaward gable.

  As the mass began, the Atlantic clouds banked over the island again. A few drops were the cursory warning before the downpour. A black umbrella held over the white vestments proved futile against horizontal sheets of rain.

  Young Father Tom spoke in Irish. It was his second mass faoin aimsir and the second time that it had rained. They would not be asking him a third time, he said, smiling. It was also appropriate that this Mass of the Assumption would be held before the schoolhouse since it was here that the women recited the Rosary while the men were out on the mainland at mass. As the priests recited the prayers, an age-old tradition was revived, the rhythm of ritual invoking the lives of the past.

  The showers came and went, as they had always done. After Communion, a full rainbow bridged the Blasket Sound. As the final prayers concluded, Micheál de Mordha, Director of the Blasket Heritage Centre, came forward. He explained the islanders’ final departure from the island in November 1953. He indicated the remains of the Kearney home, just below the school.

  Young Seán Kearney died of suspected meningitis during the appalling Christmas of 1946. Winds raged at over eighty miles per hour for days, with no lull, during which the body could have been taken to the mainland for a religious burial. There was no church on the island, and no consecrated ground to bury human remains. For more than a week, the corpse of the young man lay on a white sheet in the kitchen.

  Father Tom saying mass in front of the ruined schoolhouse, watched by a herring gull perched on the seaward gable.

  The distraught family kept an uninterrupted vigil with the body all that time. They were without provisions from the mainland for the wake but, more distressingly, they were without the comfort of a priest. Meanwhile the storms raged relentlessly.

  In the second week, one frantic islander went to the schoolhouse and fell to his knees, imploring Our Lady for help. Within the hour, the storm broke, long enough for a naomhóg to row out to the mainland for help. It took another two days before the lifeboat from Valentia could reach the island.

  That was it, for many of the islanders. The stark reality of not being able to reach a doctor or a priest hit them deeply. A consensus was taken to leave the Great Blasket Island and so, in November 1953, the island was evacuated. Many people obviously wonder why it had taken so long to resettle such a small number of ageing families on the mainland. It has been suggested that Éamon de Valera’s government deliberately delayed the relocation to ensure that the problem would emigrate or die off naturally. So the islanders had to wait for seven long years after the death of Seán Kearney, during which time the population of the Great Blasket Island dropped from fifty to twenty-two before the government conceded to the expense of buying four cottages on the mainland in Dún Chaoin.

  The story finished, and Micheál sat onto the bank once more. The congregation remained silent, reluctant to break its link with the past. After the final blessing, the herring gull swooped out to sea, and the tie was broken.

  As people stirred and began to trickle back down through the ruins, I took the opportunity to approach Father Tom. He agreed to come up to the hut. I raced up ahead of him, lit a candle and an incense stick, and straightened the old chair in under the shelf. There was no other piece of furniture to tidy. Then Father Tom’s black-suited legs appeared outside the low doorway. I invited him in, warning him about the low lintel. Once inside, I noted his eyes lingering on the ferns and plants growing from the stone walls. I offered him a seat on my one sheepskin-clad chair. He preferred to stand, his back to the hillside, facing the tiny window, set between the bunk and the chair. As he blessed the dwelling, he sprinkled holy water on the four walls. He prayed in Irish and English, for the owner of the dwelling, Ray Stagles, and his late wife, Joan. He prayed for the past inhabitants, and the future inhabitants. As the candles flickered, and the surf roared below on the White Strand, I said a silent prayer of thanks to the Island Spirit.

  Father Tom finished his blessing. Then he slowly replaced the top on the bottle of holy water. Neither of us spoke. The smell of incense and the sound of the sea filled the air. Suddenly I wondered how I could thank him. Before I could offer a cup of tea or of water, he shook my hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It’s a long time since a priest has been of service to an island house.’ I protested that it was I who owed him thanks. He smiled, saying that it was an honour to be welcomed into an island home. He wrote a short note in Irish, for me to pass on to Ray Stagles. Suddenly he noticed through the tiny window that the island was once more deserted, and his flock was aboard the ferry.

  Again, he shook my hand. ‘Slán agus beannacht.’ He bent low under the lintel and was gone.

  A rainbow bridging the Blasket Sound, viewed from outside the hut.

  Making Memories

  Next morning as I woke to the robin’s noisy pecking, I became aware of a faint smell of incense in the air. I did not stir, relishing the scent, the only trace of the previous evening. The smell triggered a stream of fragmented images in my drowsy mind: white vestments under a black umbrella, a herring gull, Seán Kearney’s remains on the kitchen table, Maria shouting at a black calf, and Charlie Haughey gazing at the ancient stones. All had become yesterday’s memories, as short-lived as seaspray in the wind. With my fingers, I traced the delicate filigree of the fern that grew from the hut wall and overhung my pillow. Soon that too would be a memory, washed away by a new tide. I recalled Charlie Haughey’s idea of keeping an island log, and all at once it was vital to record the island mass. I had not mentioned it in the previous night’s story. I sat up, startling the robin that ducked out under the eaves. I reached for my journal and pen, returned to the warmth of my bed and began to write about the people and events of the previous day.

  By half past eight, I was finished. Four pages of words that would form the sequence of a day’s events in the lives of these people, long after the Island Spirit had reclaimed their souls. I lay, listening to the rollers crashing on the White Strand. Their rhythm had become my heartbeat. I wriggled out of my sleeping bag, pulling a shirt around me, and opened my little green door to the sea and the sky. A shiver of excitemen
t ran through me. Over the previous few weeks, everything had begun to change. I was no longer observing my life from outside a window, but I was actually in there, and was sensing each moment. The grass was wet and cold underfoot as I climbed up to the well. I drank and splashed my face with fresh water.

  Below, the dolphin played around the buoys, ducking, diving and launching himself into mid-air, with a shudder rippling through his whole body. Seizing the moment, as a memory in the making, I decided to go to the cove, instead of the beach, for my dip. The dolphin ignored me on the beach, and I had never had the nerve to go to the cove until that day.

  There was no sign of Seán over at the cafe, or of Sue, below at her house, where her yellow door remained closed. Sigrid had gone out on the previous evening’s ferry, to book her return flight to Germany. All was quiet. I ran down the wet path. The ruin of the schoolhouse was empty but for the stonechat, bobbing in and out of his nest in the wall. The mass had melted into the island’s past.

  The cove was deserted, save for Fergal’s inflatable dinghy, pulled up on the slipway, clear of the tide. The water was deep and so very cold. I gasped, treading water furiously, to catch my breath. Several times I had watched the Irish College students stroking the dolphin from the dinghy. One girl had jumped in, and he swam around her as she tried to touch him. I had been fascinated.

  Suddenly I was nervous. I had no idea what 13 feet of solid dolphin would look like in the water. Methodically, I began my morning routine of front crawl, backstroke and floating on my back. Below me, a meadow of oarweed drifted in the tide. Just as I decided to get out, there he was. A huge dorsal fin circled me and then it dived. I looked frantically but I could see nothing. I ducked under, just in time to see the shape of a beautiful bottlenose dolphin swim past me. My heart pounded. He had been within a foot of me, but I had not dared to touch him. I waited. Nothing. I duck-dived, kicking hard, down to the oarweed. There was no sign of him. I gripped a couple of tough stems, anchoring myself. Back on the surface, the sun sparkled. Shafts of light filtered down, glinting off the swaying of the seaweed. Then from the hazy distance, a silhouette glided towards me. The dolphin’s beak was inches from my face. He turned his head to the left, so his right eye looked straight into mine. For those few seconds, the ache in my lungs disappeared. I reached out, stroking along the side of the dolphin’s head. His eye closed and he pushed against my hand. I touched him once more before shooting back up, my lungs bursting.