The fish would always be filleted on the naomhóg immediately after they were caught. The guts would be thrown overboard into the ocean. The gulls loved the feast it would create. My father taught me how to fillet a fish properly. But my brother Maurice was better at it than me.
After catching fish, the islanders somehow had to get them to market in Dingle to sell them. There were two choices. You could row your naomhóg all the way to Dingle, or you could row to Dunquin and then borrow a horse and cart for the trip to Dingle. Neither way was quick or easy.
In the summer, of course, the main business was lobster. It was a cash crop. We never ate the lobster ourselves because it was too valuable. There was a lobster buyer from France, named Pierre Trehiou, who came to the island every year in his big motorboat to buy the catch. The islanders stored their lobsters in good-sized lobster pots down near the pier until he came around. Trehiou had a wooden leg as a result of a wound from the First World War. He had a lot of energy and could manoeuvre around his boat like a young fella. He was a jolly kind of fella.
Trehiou visited the island about every two weeks in the summer. We would see him coming in his motorboat around the coast of the mainland beyond Slea Head. His arrival always involved great excitement. He would pay for the lobsters in cash, but he also brought lots of fishing equipment and supplies like lines, nets, hooks and salt for sale to the islanders. His boat was like a floating hardware and fishing supply store. The islanders invested a lot of their hard-earned money in equipment purchased from him.
Trehiou spoke only broken English just like us. He spoke a few words in Irish, but not much. So communicating with each other was a problem. He had a big tank in the hold of his boat where he would store all the lobsters. At the end of the season, he would sail back to France with a boatload of lobsters and sell them to restaurants and hotels.
One autumn, the bay got infested with crawfish because we had unusually warm weather that particular year. The islanders made quite a bit of money selling them crawfish to our French friend. It was an unexpected boon. The fishermen always hated the crabs that lived in the ocean, because they would get into the lobster pots and steal our bait. And there was no market for crab in them days. So we used to take the crabs and whack them against the gunwales on the naomhóga to break their backs to make sure they didn’t get any more of our bait. But times change, and today crab is sometimes worth even more than lobster.
I used to do a little fishing off the rocks when I was a boy. We’d throw a line out into the ocean with a crab for bait. It was a regular pastime. Sometimes we used a gaffe, like a spear, to catch mackerel. We’d stick it in them and grab them. Once in a while, the mackerel would shoal on the beach and we would scoop them up with a net. Then we had fresh mackerel for supper.
The fishing business was always a topic of conversation on the island. The decline of fishing was part of the decline of the island. There were too many people fishing and prices went way down. After a while, you could not make a decent living at it. Towards the end of life on the island, fishing had declined so much that lobster became the main catch.
Islanders also raised sheep that would graze high up on the hill. At one time, there were about 600 sheep on the island. My father had seventy or eighty sheep that he would graze up there. We had to go and check on them from time to time. Our sheepdog Kerry would herd them for us. The sheep all had a special paint mark on them right in the wool behind the horn or on the neck or the back. Every family had its own designated colour. My family’s official colour was green. Sometimes they would put a clip on the ear with an initial, or put a special notch in the sheep’s ear to mark it. My father insisted that he could identify his sheep just by seeing them; the build of them and the look of them. I think he was right. He knew each one of them very well.
We would shear the wool from the sheep once a year, on a day in June. I always looked forward to it, because the children would get a day off from school to help out with the job. The sheep would be herded up and brought down to a gravel area at the back of the strand called ‘tráigh ghearraí’. The adults would shear the sheep with hand clippers. The children had to pick up the wool and put it in bags. The sheep were always a lot skinnier and a lot lighter at the end of the day. The wool would be washed in the salt water and then sold in Dingle. Some would be kept on the island for spinning yarn for knitting clothes.
The islanders would castrate their young lambs on the same day as the shearing. This would fatten them up for market, so that good money could be got for them later on. John Moore, the butcher in Dingle, bought sheep that were raised on the island. My father worked for Moore on a regular basis.
My father would cast his eye around and pick out the best sheep from all the owners on the island. With our sheepdog, he would herd the sheep he selected to a grassy area down near the strand. Then he would tie their legs and put them in a naomhóg and take them to Beginish for a month or two. Moore owned Beginish and he used it for the final fattening because it was very grassy. Once a month, Moore would come with a motorboat and move his sheep from Beginish to Dingle for slaughter. Working for Moore was good steady income for my father.
The island knitting crew. Standing (l–r) Máire Ní Dhónaill, the instructor, Bríd Ní Chatháin, Siobhán Ní Chearna, Cáit Ní Chonchúir, Máire Ní Shúilleabháin; sitting (l–r) Máire Ní Ghuithín, Cáit Ní Ghuithín and cousin Eibhlín Ní Chearna.
Whether it was fishing or raising sheep, the islanders approached work on a shared basis. They had to rely on each other to get all the work done and they split up the proceeds in some way that was fair to everybody involved. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why the islanders got along so well. You couldn’t carry a grudge, because you would need others to help you with the daily work of the island. Cooperation was a necessary way of life.
The only other kind of business we had on the island was knitting socks. In 1938, the year after I left the island, the government set up a small workshop that involved women knitting socks for sale on the mainland. Ten knitting machines were sent into the island with an instructor. The idea was that if the women were in business, they would be more likely to stay on the island.
But the knitting lasted only about four years before the government shut it down. When the workshop was closed, the government relocated my first cousin, Eileen Kearney (Eiblin Ní Chearna), my uncle Pats Tom’s daughter, from the island to work for the government on a similar workshop project in Dublin. She was only sixteen years old at the time.
Islanders conducted their business in cash: with paper money and coins. They certainly didn’t have bank accounts. Instead, every family had a safe in its house where they kept their money. It was a trunk, a wooden box with a lock and a key. Other valuables and liquor were kept in there too. There was never any theft on the island. That would have been a sin.
Communications
When Mickey Ó Catháin, the King, would go to the post office on the mainland for mail, everybody would ask, ‘What’s the news today, Rí?’ when he returned. If there was anything going on around the country, the islanders wanted to know about it. What were the big issues of the day? What was going to be done about them?
The King would bring back old newspapers, whatever was left around in the post office. Sometimes they had The Irish Press, the Irish Independent, or The Kerryman. We would spread the news around on the island as soon as it arrived. There was a thirst for information. But, of course, it was always old news by the time it got to the island.
The mail coming from America always involved great anticipation. At Christmas, people used to get letters and parcels from their relatives in America. By the end of the day, everybody knew what everybody had got. Sharing this information was a favourite island pastime.
Seán ‘An Rí’ Ó Catháin, the King’s son, arrives with the mail at Caladh an Oileáin, the island pier. Seán took over the mail duty after his father’s passing.
In the evening, people would read letters from Am
erica out loud for everybody to hear. But the first thing they would do is hold the letter up to a kerosene lamp to see if there was any money inside. Sometimes their relatives would send American dollars. That was cause for great joy!
In 1941, the islanders applied to the government to get a wireless radio system so that they could communicate with the mainland in case of emergency. The radio was battery-powered because there was no electricity on the island. It was operated on the island by another Ó Cearna family, no relation.
The radio was connected to the post office radio system in Dunquin. The radio would ring. Then its handle would be cranked up by the operator and the message would be relayed along with any news. But the radio went haywire all the time. As a matter of fact, it seemed to be out of order more than it was working. It always seemed to be out whenever the weather was bad. So whenever the islanders really needed the radio the most, it was typically out. This lack of reliable radio communications was eventually a big factor in the island’s downfall.
Sports and Games
Our favourite sport on the island was Gaelic football. We played on the strand by the shore. We actually didn’t even have a ball. We used a sock and filled it up with grass. We tied it at both ends and then kicked it around.
The two teams were always made up of players from the top of the village and the bottom of the village. I lived in the middle of the village, so we used to flip a coin or cast a stone to decide which team would get me. They were tough, spirited games. I liked to play Gaelic football. I was big and strong and had a physique that was well suited to the sport.
One time, my aunt Bridget Daly Carney, originally from Coumeenole, sent us a brand-new rubber ball from America. That ball was great. It was much better than a stuffed sock. We’d kick it all around on the strand. I remember that, one day, I kicked that rubber ball right through the school window. It broke the glass, bounced off the back wall of the school and came right back out the hole in the glass. It was a miracle. I got my ears pinned back for that one.
And, of course, we had races from one end of the beach to the other and high-jump contests. It was good, healthy exercise.
Once in a while, we used to have a tug-of-war on the strand. We had six or eight lads on each end of the rope. Again, it was the top of the village versus the bottom of the village. Each team had a captain who would pick his team. Who had broad shoulders and good weight?
We would also have wrestling and boxing matches to see who was the strongest or the best fighter. I was a pretty good fighter, but I didn’t like it very much. These games were hard-fought contests. We sometimes got mad at each other. But after it was over, that was it.
Island children frolic on the strand. Mike Carney is second from left.
Sometimes we played a card game called ‘high-low-jack’. You had to make your bid in a particular suit to score. If you did not make your bid, your score went down. It was great fun. I played it in America, too, where we call the game ‘pitch’.
We played other games like chequers, marbles and ring toss or ‘loops’. We also played a game called ‘puiríní’ with five pebbles where you would aim and try to hit one out of a circle. And, of course, we played hide-and-seek.
When we were little, we would build sandcastles down on the strand and draw outlines of houses and naomhóga in the fresh sand.
We also played a game with mussel shells. We would each get a shell from the beach and fill it with water. Then we’d place it in the cow field where there were lots of flies because of the dung. We would pretend that the flies were lobsters and see how many we could catch in our shell. The person with the most ‘lobsters’ won. It was great fun. It was a pastime, but we always maintained that it qualified you to be a lobsterman when you came of age.
Holidays
At special times of the year, like Christmas or Easter, the islanders would kill a lamb with good meat on it, one of the castrated ones. It was like a feast. And we would also have enough to eat for quite a while. I did not like to see my father killing the lamb. In fact, I hated to see him doing it. I had pity for the poor lamb. He would tie the lamb’s legs and then quickly slit its throat with a sharp knife. He would let the blood drain in a pail. Later, the blood would be used to make black pudding, a delicacy.
At Christmas time, we decorated the houses with holly, ivy and paper chains. We had a candle burning in every window. It was quite magical. We hung up our Christmas stockings by the fireplace in our house. We’d get an apple or two, or maybe an orange, in our stocking in the morning.
One year, I got it into my mind that I would beat the rest of the family to my stocking, right after Santa Claus came. So, in the middle of the night, I snuck over to the fireplace and got up on a chair to grab my stocking.
All of a sudden, my father opened his bedroom door in his white nightgown. I thought it was Santa Claus! My father yelled, ‘Fág ansan é!’ – ‘Leave it there.’ I was so scared, I fell right off the chair and down on the floor with a big thud. I actually dislocated my shoulder. My father said ‘Good enough for ye.’ I got no sympathy at all. My shoulder healed by itself.
We always had a big game of Gaelic football down on the strand on Christmas Day. Later in the day, of course, we would sit down and have a big Christmas feast of lamb and bacon with potatoes and vegetables. It was a big family celebration.
On the day after Christmas, St Stephen’s Day, we celebrated ‘Wren Boys’ Day’ or the ‘Wren’ (Lá an Dreoilín). You dressed up in a home-made costume and painted your face. You would go from house to house and people would give you a sweet or a coin. Then you’d go home and count your haul.
(L–r) Cousins Eibhlín and Máire Ní Chearna, (later Sr Mary Clemens, SP) and Tomás Ó Cearna (unrelated).
The ‘wren’ is a little bird, the ‘dreoilín’. It was very hard to catch; impossible. It is a small brown bird and very fast. They usually came around at that time of year, so that’s why they named the event the ‘Wren’.
Weddings
Lots of weddings were scheduled on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. That’s because in them days, Catholics couldn’t get married during Lent. It wasn’t unusual to have six or seven weddings in St Vincent’s Church in Ballyferriter on the same day.
Islanders sometimes married another islander. But it was hard to find a mate on the island that was not too closely related. This problem got worse as the population went down. It also seemed that there were fewer eligible women than men on the island. There just weren’t enough women for the number of men.
So, in my time, most of the weddings involved an islander and somebody from the mainland.
The older people sometimes made a marriage ‘match’ between a young male and a young female. Or sometimes they would meet at a wedding and the next thing you know, there was another wedding scheduled.
After the service at St Vincent’s, the family and friends would go to a local pub for a couple of drinks. They would sing a song and maybe have a set dance or two. Then it was back to the island. Weddings did not involve a huge celebration like they do today. There was no such thing as a honeymoon.
Wakes and Funerals
When somebody died in a small close-knit community like the island’s, it was a big event. It was the talk of the island. It was always a big loss, because everybody was pretty friendly with the person that died. After a death, a group of men would be sent to Dingle to get a coffin. A carpenter named Mike Boland, a relation of mine, made all the coffins. They were built of wood with metal handles.
The island wakes were held in the house of the deceased. The midwife or specially trained women on the island prepared bodies for wakes; the lamenting women (mná caointe), they called them. There was no embalming. Bodies were dressed either in their best clothes or a long brown gown that looked like a religious habit. They used whatever they had at the time. The body was laid out in the bedroom with rosary beads around the hands. They used to hang white sheets from the ceiling in the bedroom for decora
tion and to remind you of the heavens, I suppose. They used to burn candles too.
Wakes lasted two nights. We had a keg of Guinness and some wine and they passed around a clay pipe for smoking tobacco. We would eat ‘builín’, a type of white bread served with jam.
The people shook their heads and felt sorry about the loss. They prayed the rosary over and over. And the women used to ‘keen’, or weep, with shawls over their heads. They were crying out loudly, lamenting (ologón), and it would go on all night long.
The men were always looking for things to talk about at a wake. They would talk all about the dead person, of course. They would tell stories about the deceased’s life on the island. They were just passing the awkward time. At wakes, the old men used to tell me to take a puff of the tobacco from the clay pipe. But I used to hate it. It tasted terrible and it would knock you out. With all the porter or Guinness and wine, you were then ready for some much needed sleep before the morning came around.
On the third day, weather permitting, everybody would get up in the morning and dress up in their best clothes. The coffin would be carried down to the pier on the shoulders of the pallbearers and placed in a naomhóg for transport to the mainland. Everybody would turn out. Then five, six, even seven boats of islanders would go over to Dunquin for the funeral, depending on the weather.
The funerals were held in St Gobnet’s Church in Dunquin with the burial in the cemetery next to the church. The people from Dunquin would join the islanders in mourning. Then they had a couple of drinks in Ballyferriter or in Kruger’s pub in Dunquin after it opened up. Then it was right back to the island.
From the Great Blasket to America Page 5
