Christmas offshore

“The spiritual and pastoral world chronicled by Kavangh remains intact on the islands”

Speaker’s Corner

Áine Ryan

IT’S shortly after 9am on Christmas Eve. And Hilary is refusing point-blank to do what she’s told. She arches her back and screeches. It’s blood-curdling. I jump in fright. Eeek! She runs for cover behind the tree. It trembles. Meeeeow! What do we do? The cars are loaded. The boat for the island is at 11am. But there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell we’ll get her into that bloody cage. Not without serious personal injury.

Fifteen minutes later, the crisis is resolved. Our cantankerous cat, Mz Hilary (Rodham Clinton) was now spending the festive season home alone in Westport while Lorella and Gearóid would provide a daily meals-on-wheels service in our absence.

Cat crisis averted, we set off in a convoy of three cars to Roonagh pier. By 11.15am the Island Princess is rolling across a lazy and dispassionate Atlantic. She is more laden than Santa’s sleigh with gifts, toys, turkeys, bags of brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, boxes of Celebrations, Milk Tray, bottles of Paddy, Jameson, Polish vodka.

Meanwhile, crew man, Keith Moran, is serving complimentary whiskey and chocolates. Sláinte! Cheers! Ahoy! Clare Island.

In the afternoon, the four of us go for a walk, along the southern shores of the island, back through Glen and Gurteen, Kille and Lecarrow. We stop at the graveyard and reflect quietly on absent friends: Kathleen Bessie, the girls’ grandparents, Katie Ann and Austy Bob.

Guests at the Clare Island Yoga Centre – invariably a motley group from at home and abroad who wish to avoid the traditional Christmas – trundle past in clusters of two and three. It’s not surprising they stop on the road just above the Cistercian abbey to behold the poetic contours of the bay. The uninhabited Mweelauns and holy island, Caher, stand to the fore of Inishturk with Inishbofin’s low nose barely visible. A sombre Croagh Patrick dominates the Faberge-egged inner bay while Mweelra and the Twelve Pins guard the deep secrets of Killary Harbour.

The following morning (Christmas Day) at a Mass in the historic abbey, Father Ned Crosby reminded the congregation of their forbears’ many struggles with this rugged and awe-inspiring land and seascape. He talked of the delicate threads of history and nature that united today’s islanders with those who had eked out livelihoods on this same outpost for hundreds of years. Their stories continued to echo in the cry of the gull and the crash of the wave, he said.  

The night before, at the Christmas Eve Mass – in the candle-lit warmth of the church – he had asked everyone to take a straw from the crib after the service and to put it under their Christmas dinner plate. It was a symbolic reminder of an old thanksgiving ritual acknowledging a plentiful harvest and the cyclical seasonal vulnerability of the peasant family whose fate was dependent largely on the whims of nature. 

The spiritual and pastoral world chronicled so beautifully by poet Patrick Kavangh remains intact – albeit challenged and endangered – on the offshore islands. Many of the sentiments and observations in his poem A Christmas Childhood still resonate on Clare Island.

“My father played the melodeon/ Outside at our gate;/There were stars in the morning

east; /And they danced to his music.”

The sound of the melodeon echoed across Fawngloss and Capnagower late last Saturday night. It enticed schoolchildren and students out on the floor of the Community Centre bar for the Stack of Barley and Shoe the Donkey; the Connemara Set and some sean-nós dancing. As this writer walked home across the strand road, the ghost of Patrick Kavanagh hung silently in the salt-soaked air. “Cassiopeia was over/ Cassidy's hanging hill, /I looked and three whin bushes rode across/The horizon - the Three Wise Kings.”

The following morning – back in the real world of Westport – Benazir Bhutto, Bertie Ahern and Joe Dolan dominated the headlines. And Hilary Rodham Clinton miaowed smugly.