From the Great Blasket to America

by Michael Carney

  Food

  In my day, we usually had plenty of food on the island. People were healthy. We had to be, because there was no doctor or nurse to care for us if we got sick. We had a good diet – three meals a day. Almost everything was home-made. We would buy our flour in 20 lb sacks in Dingle. We had great fresh baked bread every day. We didn’t have too much pastry except for pies and cakes once in a while. I used to love the strawberry, blackberry and raspberry jam and the marmalade that came from Dingle. A piece of fresh baked bread and jam was a meal in itself.

  For breakfast, we would mostly have soft-boiled eggs, laid by our hens, with some bread and tea. Sometimes we had porridge or fresh mackerel cooked on tongs over the fire. Lunch was milk and a sandwich. Supper was usually a potato or two with meat or fresh fish. Potatoes were a very important food all over Ireland. My father used to throw a big bag of hot home-grown potatoes on the table. They had been cooked in the oven over the open fire. We would have vegetables as well and, of course, milk to drink.

  Blasket women gather ‘shore food’ in the 1920s.

  We ate mackerel primarily in the winter as well as herring and goat fish. And we had pollock, hake and cod too. We had fresh fish in the summer and mostly salted fish in the winter. We used to salt the fish in a small storage room attached to the house and then we would put the fish out on the roof of the house. The sun would harden it up. This would cure it and it could be eaten later. I never cared for salted fish too much. It did not agree with my system. I have a sensitive stomach, like my father. We ate a lot of mackerel, an oily fish. When you cooked them on the tongs in the fireplace, drops of oil fell into the fire and it flared up.

  Once in a while, I would go back up on the hill and snare rabbits. I would set the snares at night on the little paths where the rabbits used to run. Then we had nice fresh rabbit to eat the next day.

  We didn’t eat much meat on the island and when we did it was a treat. Sometimes we had bacon or half a pig’s head from Dingle. We would buy a whole side of pre-cured bacon and hang it in the loft on hooks above the fireplace. That would smoke it to improve its taste.

  Dillisk, a type of seaweed, was an island specialty. There was plenty of it available. It doesn’t sound appetising, but we would let it dry in the sun on the roof and then chew it like a snack. After chewing for a while, we would spit it out. It was very salty, naturally, and made you thirsty.

  Years later, when we visited West Kerry, my brothers and I would bring some seaweed back home in our suitcases so we could enjoy a taste of the island right here in America. It is a good thing the United States Customs officer didn’t check our bags!

  Another kind of a snack was periwinkles, the little snails. We would gather them up at the shore and boil them in a pot. Then we would pluck the meat out of the shell with a pin and eat them. They were very tasty, something like oysters. We also used them for bait sometimes.

  We had our own cows to produce milk and butter. The milk, of course, was unprocessed. There was no such thing as pasteurisation or homogenisation on the island. We had no ice and no refrigeration. Food that would spoil had to be consumed right away. So we chilled it as best we could in the coolest place in the house, usually in a dark corner of the kitchen.

  Periodically, we had to bring our cows over to Dunquin, 3 miles across the open ocean, in order to be serviced by the bull owned by the Fitzgerald family who ran the small store located there. We had to tie the poor cow’s legs together and put her down on her side in the naomhóg for transport over the Sound to the mainland. We had to try to keep the cow calm or she would tip the naomhóg right over. We also had to take a second naomhóg with us as a backup in case there was an accident. It was a full day’s operation with the loading at one end and the unloading at the other. It took a lot of brute strength. One time, a restless cow put her horn right through the side of a naomhóg and salt water started pouring in. This was a big problem because most people on the island did not know how to swim. One of the lads quickly took off his cap and jammed it in the hole to stop the water from coming in. That saved the day for all on board. It just goes to show you that the islanders had to be quick-thinking to deal with all kinds of unexpected situations.

  Because all this transporting of cows back and forth to Dunquin was so dangerous, the islanders decided to get their own bull on the island. My uncle Pats Tom was in charge of the operation. They went to see a butcher in Dingle named John Moore, and he helped them to apply to the Kerry County Council for a bull.

  Islanders have loaded a cow into a naomhóg for transport with a second naomhóg as backup in case of a mishap.

  Lo and behold, they were awarded a bull free of charge. Then, of course, they brought the bull over to the island in a naomhóg using the same process as for transporting cows. The bull had big metal ring in its nose that was used to lead it around by a leash. When the bull was done servicing the cows, they brought him over to the nearby island of Beginish to graze. The idea was to keep him away from the cows for a while. Well, that old bull turned up right back on the island the very next morning. Apparently, he could hear the cows mooing on the island in the night. So he swam back to the island, about a quarter mile of open ocean in the dark of night. I still don’t know how he did it. I suppose he was highly motivated!

  After a while, the bull became too much of a nuisance, so the islanders decided to butcher him for the meat. The four strongest and bravest men on the island got the job. They hit him over the head with a sledgehammer to bring him down and then drove a long sharp knife into his heart. I didn’t like it one bit and stayed away from the whole thing.

  Sometimes we ate seagull eggs that we gathered on the island of Beginish. We had to test the raw eggs before eating them by putting them in water. If the egg floated on top of the water, we didn’t eat it because there was a baby seagull inside. But if it sank to the bottom, it was okay to eat. These eggs tasted very fishy and I didn’t like them very much. You had to be careful stealing seagull eggs, or the gulls would swoop down and peck you with their beaks, right in the head. You had to be quick or you’d have a huge headache.

  Once in a while, a family would run out of something like sugar, flour or tea. Naturally, you would borrow what you needed from your neighbour. The policy on the island was that as soon as you got your groceries from Dunquin or Dingle, you would immediately return the borrowed item to your neighbour. Nobody wanted to owe anything to anybody.

  Clothing

  We took great pride in our appearance. The men wore a flat cap that was knitted on the island, or bought in Dingle, or sometimes handed down. The men were almost never without their cap. We also wore a knitted sweater or jersey, a ‘geansaí’ as we used to call it. When we were young, we wore short trousers down to our knees; they were called ‘plus fours’ or ‘knickers’. The women and girls sometimes wore home-made dresses. But they primarily wore clothes sent over from America by relatives. The older women often wore dark shawls around the head, neck and shoulders to keep them warm and to protect them from the wind.

  We were always barefooted when we were children, even in the winter. I got my first pair of shoes when I was twelve. Our feet got hardened to the ground. But sometimes we’d stub a toe on a stone. The cure was to rub your sore toe with salt water to make it feel better.

  We had oilskin jackets that we put on while fishing when it was raining. We bought them from the Frenchman who bought our lobsters and sold us fishing gear.

  My grandmother, Máirín ‘Mhuiris’ Uí Cheárna, had a spinning wheel for converting wool to yarn. The women used to knit things like wool sweaters or jerseys. They would also make socks and caps. They were mostly made for the islanders, but sometimes they would sell them to visitors to make some extra money.

  Religion

  The people on the island were all Catholic and were very religious. The Protestant Church tried to convert the islanders in the mid-1800s, but without much success. Our parents taught us our prayers and we said them faithfully eve
ry night. We had catechism lessons in school in the afternoon. Unfortunately, there was no church on the island. The men of the island used to go to Mass on Sunday in Dunquin when the weather permitted. They would go over maybe once or twice a month, mostly in the summer. If they couldn’t go to Mass on a particular Sunday, the islanders would say the rosary together at noon up in Peig Sayers’ house.

  The parish priest from Ballyferriter came to the island once a year on a set day during the summer to say Mass in the school. Of course, the school was owned by the Church. We called his annual visit ‘the Stations’, named after the Stations of the Cross. When he visited, the priest would hear confessions, say Mass, give Communion and preach a sermon.

  One of the island families would have to provide a meal for the priest when he made his visit. We had the priest eat at our house a couple of times. It was always a special occasion for the Carney family. I was an altar boy in them days, along with my brother Paddy. Mass was always said in Latin. It was ‘Dominus vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo.’ We had to memorise it all. We used to serve Mass when we had visiting priests on the island. The priest used to give us a couple of shillings for our effort.

  The priests always brought a couple of bottles of altar wine with them. Of course, once in a while, we used to sneak a taste of the wine. We said to each other, ‘If the priests are drinking it, I suppose we can drink it too.’ It was devilment more than anything else.

  All the houses had a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. When people eventually moved off the island, they always took the statue with them to their new house. It was a keepsake of the island.

  In the summer, we sometimes had priests who would come to visit the island from all over Ireland on holiday. They were looking to improve their knowledge of Irish. These priests had special permission to say Mass on the island. The older women used to love to go to Mass when it was held on the island. It was a big event.

  There was a small cemetery at the bottom of the village called ‘Castle Point’ (Rinn an Chaisleáin) or ‘the children’s burial ground’. This cemetery had not been blessed by the Church and no adults could be buried there. It was only for unbaptised infants and for victims of the shipwrecks that happened over the years off the island. Adults were buried in St Gobnet’s cemetery over in Dunquin, called the ‘Village Graveyard’.

  My father was a very religious man. He used to give me a good slap for swearing sometimes. I suppose I deserved it. I always thought that faith was important on the island because it helped you through the tough times. And there were plenty of tough times.

  Health and Medicine

  If someone was seriously sick, they had to go off the island for help from a nurse or a doctor. We had the usual childhood ailments like chicken pox, but your parents took care of you and you got over it. It was no big deal. We had a lot of home cures on the island that were passed down from generation to generation.

  For sore bones or arthritis, we’d boil water and fill a rubber hot-water bottle and put it in our bed. It would heat your bones and you’d feel much better the following day. Another treatment was to rub your bones with seal oil. For a fever, we put a heated sack of flour on our forehead. If we had digestive problems, we would drink a tea made from nettles.

  Parishioners, including islanders, gather at St Gobnet’s Church in Dunquin on a Sunday in 1938.

  If you had a bad cold, you might get a shot of hot whiskey with sugar in it to make you sleep at night. My father used to have a bottle of brandy in the house in case anybody got sick. It was French brandy, the good stuff. It was great medicine. If there was something wrong with your bowels, you would drink salt water or ‘sleaidí’, an awful-tasting drink made from seaweed. Either one would really get you going.

  On those few times when the doctor came to the island, it was big news and the story was told and retold for a whole month. We talked about getting the doctor, and getting him to the island and back to the mainland, and what he said and did. It was all the subject of lots of conversation.

  One time when I was a boy, I was running down the hill as fast as I could. I stumbled and fell down and broke my leg. It hurt like hell! My father knew just what to do. He took me by naomhóg across the Sound to Dunquin and then by a borrowed donkey and cart to Coumeenole. A local farmer named Micheál Caomhánach was the local bonesetter (fear cnámh) for the area. He had learned his trade by trial and error, I suppose. Anyway, he put the bone right back in place. There was no such thing as anaesthetic. More pain … And then it was back to the island. I eventually got over it.

  There was never a dentist on the island. My father functioned as a kind of a dentist, I suppose. If somebody had a bad tooth, my father would pull it out with a pair of pliers. Or if one of the children needed to have a tooth out, he would tie some fishing line around the tooth and the other end of the line to the door and he would make you run in the opposite direction. Sure enough, the tooth always popped right out.

  Transportation

  The only way to move around on the island was on foot or by donkey. We did a lot of walking. There was a whole network of narrow footpaths (cosáin) all over the island. They led every which way. The main road was improved by the Kerry County Council around 1940. This road was wider than the old paths and helped the islanders to transport the animals, and the turf and other stuff. It led from the pier up to the top of the village and beyond. It was called the ‘Road of the Dead’ (Bóithrín na Marbh) because it went by the seldom-used island cemetery and it was also the road that coffins travelled on the way down to the pier for transport to Dunquin for burial.

  The only way for islanders to get from the island to the mainland and back was by naomhóg, or currach. It was also used for fishing. Sometimes it was fitted with a mast and a sail, but mostly it was rowed. Naomhóg means ‘young saint’ in Irish. I suppose the idea was to ask for the protection of young saints from the dangers on the ocean.

  A naomhóg was made of black canvas stretched over a frame of wooden ribs. There were three or four seats, and each naomhóg could carry as many as eight people. They were great around the rocks, because you could manoeuvre them easily with the oars. My father was a good oarsman. He had a very steady stroke. He also made his own naomhóga. It required a lot of skill. My brother Maurice could build them too. I didn’t even try. It was just not my thing.

  The naomhóga were stored upside down on wooden support frames set up on the sides of the road leading up to the village from the pier. This would dry out the skin in the sun and wind. They were very heavy and had to be carried up from the water by at least a couple of men. In fact, a couple of men carrying a naomhóg over their heads became a kind of a symbol for the island.

  It took about forty-five minutes to an hour to row across the Sound between the island and the mainland, depending on the weather. Of course, if the wind and the waves were up too high, you couldn’t even attempt a crossing. Then you were stuck until better weather arrived. You needed to be at least thirteen or fourteen years old to handle a naomhóg. We used to practise when we were children. We used to try it on our own down by the pier on the island, when there was nobody watching us. I wasn’t much of a rower.

  Getting the naomhóg in and out of the island was a scary proposition. There is a big rock on the right-hand side as you come into the cove by the pier. The movement of the ocean would toss you about as you were trying to land on the slipway. In my estimation, that rock should have been blown up out of there a long time ago. I suppose nobody had the money to do so. And the pier over in Dunquin with its steep and winding access road was not much better.

  Nobody on the island had a motorboat in my time there. Towards the end of life on the island, however, Tom and Pat Daly bought a small motorboat. They owned the island of Inishvickillane and needed the boat to get out there to take care of the place. I often thought that if we had motorboats in my day that the island might still be inhabited today.

  Rocks and calm water frame a view of three islanders with a naomhó
g. Tom Daly is squatting in the middle. A naomhóg, or currach, was a standard form of ocean-going transportation all around Ireland. There are many different designs for these canoe-type vessels that are essentially local in origin. The structure of a naomhóg was complex and building them required great skill.

  Economy

  Fishing was the main business of the island. There was a big market for mackerel and other fish in Dingle. The fishing was best in the summer because of the better weather. The mackerel season is in the spring and the autumn. Winter was tough for fishing because there was too much wind, the waves were rough and the days were short.

  The islanders fished from their naomhóga. They used fishing rods and nets with shell crab for bait. Lines were weighted down with a stone. The catch included lots of different fish like mackerel, herring, pollock, cod, haddock and ling. The islanders were very smart about their fishing. They knew just where to be when the tide turned.

  Since they caught fish in relatively small nets, it took a long time to catch enough fish to justify bringing them to market in Dingle. As time went on, the islanders were out-fished by the big engine-driven fishing boats from the mainland, and from places like Britain and Spain. Those boats used large fishing nets and caught hundreds of fish at a time.

  Once or twice a year, the island fishermen used to go way out on the ocean near Tearaght and Inishtooskert in a couple of naomhóga and go ‘spiléar’ (long-line) fishing. It was always during the night because they felt they would get the biggest catch when the fish were feeding at night. But, of course, the darkness made it more dangerous. They would use two boats and set a line between them with a dozen or more hooks with bait. They would let the line down on the very bottom of the ocean and leave it there for an hour or so. Then they would pull the line up and have a load of big deep-sea fish like hake and ray and haddock, and cod – beautiful cod – and pollock. They were big fish, about 10 to 20 lb each.