Island Writers - Part 2

The Great Blasket island which lies three miles to the south-west coast of Ireland, and considered the closest parish to America in this neck of the woods, was a small island of insignificance until the turn of the 20th century, but the islanders changed all that by their unique contribution to contemporary literature.

There was the upper village and the lower village on the island, and the people who lived in both these sections were in constant competition with one another. It was said that "the cream of the crop" lived in the lower village and there was some truth to this statement. The writers Tomás Ó Criomthain [Thomas O'Crohan] and Mícheal Ó Súilleabháin [Michael O'Sullivan] lived there as did Peig Sayers. The two island poets resided in the lower village, along with the musicians and singers.

That's not to say that the upper village didn't have it's own distinctiveness. It's where Pádraig Ó Catháin, King of The Island lived. And it's also where the famous visitors lived when they began to arrive to study folklore and the language of the native people of the Blasket. People like Synge, Marstrander, Flower and many others. Eventually, Peig Sayers moved to one of the new houses in the upper village.

Tomás Ó Criomthain was born in 1856. Most of Ireland had been Anglicised at that stage. People in rural areas were bilingual, and, unfortunately, the Irish language was slowly declining and losing much of its richness, except in very remote areas. The native language was preserved in all its purity on the Blasket island.

During Ó Criomthain's life on the island, as I have already stated, a number of foreign scholars began to take an interest in the language. Carl Marstrander, linguist, came from Norway, Robin Flower and George Thomson from England and the islanders took these visitors into their homes and into their hearts. The strangers in return regarded the islanders with fondness, and especially Tomás as friend and teacher.

Ó Criomthain could read and write English but like most of the Gaeltacht [Irish speakers] people, he was illiterate in Irish. It was only when the visitors arrived that he decided to learn how to read and write Irish, as it was he who was chosen by the King of the island to instruct the likes of Marstrander in Irish. Tomás was middle-aged at that stage.

The King had made the right choice in choosing Tomás. He knew that the rich oral Irish that Tomás spoke could never be diluted by the written word because it was too deeply rooted in tradition and in the vernacular.

Carl Marstrander, a polevault champion and linguist from Norway was Tomás' first student. The islanders were amused by Marstrander, especially when he took an oar of a naomhóg [coracle] and polevaulted over Ó Criomthain's house!! This sport was completely unknown to them.

Robin Flower or "Bláithín" [The Little Flower] as he was affectionately known as on the island, first visited the Blasket in 1910. He collected stories from Tomás and later published them in Seanchas ón Oiléan Tiar in 1956.

It was Brian Ó Ceallaigh [Brian O'Kelly] who persuaded Tomás to write his autobiography in 1917-1918. An t-Oileánach [The Islandman] was completed in 1926 and published in 1929.

Tomás relates the stories that come into his head and tells them just as they occurred but he uses his imagination because he knows he has to entertain his readers just as he and those before him entertained the listeners each night at a neighbours house or in the "Dáil" or Assembly which was in the upper village. It was here that people gathered to discuss events, tell stories, entertain visitors with dancing, music and singing and it was here that Tomás acquired the skill as listener to the art of story-telling.

Autobiographical stories are to be found all over the world but on the island they are unique because they provided the link which led from the folk-tales to the books.

When An t-Oiléanach was published in 1929 it was clear at this stage that the medieval existence on the island was passing away. As literacy spread, the old tales were forgotten.

Seán Fada [Long John] had wonderful folk-tales but in later years he couldn't remember them. This is what he has to say to Robin Flower:

"It was only the other day that I had all the old tales in my mind, and I could have spent the night telling them to you without a word out of place in any tale. But now I couldn't tell a tale of them. And do you know what has them driven out of my mind?"

"Well, I suppose you are losing your memory," I said.

"No, it isn't that, for my memory is as good as it ever was for other things. But it is Tomás that has done it, for he has books and newspapers, and he reads them to me; and the little tales, one after another, day after day, in the books and newspapers, have driven the old stories out of my head. But maybe I am little the worse for losing them."
The Western Island

The final chapters of An t-Oileánach consist of the author looking back on a community that is now disintegrating before his very eyes:

"I have written in detail about many events in our lives, so that there might be some record of them somewhere, and I have tried to describe the character of the people around me, so that they may be remembered after they are gone, for the likes of us will not be seen again"
An t-Oileánach