I’m driven across County Clare winding roads and enjoy my Irish cliché: green fields parted with small stony and old walls. And sometimes, grazing sheep within. And sometimes, a ruin of a wall, a castle or a tower within; only remembrance left of a hidden past. A few forgotten ghosts might probably still wander trapped into stones. I welcome those little longed and naive dreams.
I land in Cill Ronain and like Synge, I’ve never seen such a barren land; the grey pier, dark rocks in the distance, everything looks so dismal. Haze in my only haven since everything is hazy: Irish land, clouds, sun, horizon between sky and sea. I feel like in a blurry dream.
I wake up with the first lights and, before escaping to the smallest island, I seek for more of Inis Mor. I’m getting closer to Dun Duchatair and can finally hear the wild ocean. In front of that endless blue world, I can understand how people used to think they lived on the edge of the Earth, alone in the whole planet. And I taste every second of that fleeting feeling of being utterly complete. I’m already so moved, when the next landscape is even more stunning and deserves a better elegy.
It’s so huge. So rough. I’m standing between the sharp island and ocean. The unexpected and yet hoped cliff makes me drown, I’m facing perditions which ate so many fishers by sea, so many travelers on earth. I understand now knitwear’s stories: on Aran Islands, each family had its own knitting stitch and when fishers buried in oceans came home, brought by the swell weeks after they had disappeared, stitches were the only way to recognize the dead. Water had been so mean and hungry because of some fallen angels with Lucifer: spared before having completed their fall, they would still be hanging in the air, belonging to no world, neither Hell nor Heaven, and they’d cause shipwrecks and Earth disasters.
I finally hide in Dun Duchatair’s cold and black stones, and dream my own storytelling of forts facing lands. Built like this, not to protect from invaders but to create a barrier to the abyss. I get lost again in my mythological prehistorical time because Aran was the last Fir Bolg’s home, the fourth people of Ireland. Lebor Gabala Erenn, first Irish Myth, says Ireland was colonized by a few people before proud Gaels’ arrival. Fir Bolg were one of them: Nemedians’ descendants – kicked out after a dreadful war with Fomorians –, they land on the island two centuries after their ancestors. Warriors, they rule in Ireland for thirty-seven years until the last Mag Tuired Battle, in which they fight against Tuatha De Dannan, Celtic gods from the North of the world, landed in their cloud of mighty combat of specters. Fir Bolg are defeated by Morrigna’s magic, War goddesses, and take refuge on the Aran Islands.
I struggle to leave Inis Mor vertigo and my Celtic dreams in order to discover smooth Inis Oir. The small island is softer, greener, sandier. It’s like a caress after the morning salty freedom. It simply lies on the ocean, sand storms sometimes revealing its buried secrets. Its ruins of the past have appeared one by one and others are still awaiting in the motherland womb. I passionately look for its mysteries, but it’s only revealed when God decides. Inis Oir is all mine though, because I know where to look.
My feet finally land on the middle island when I would have wanted to plant my soul in its heart. Inis Meain is a wild and desert field, only inhabited by some houses. You can only listen to the silence or swell sounds. How pleasant it should be to live here for a while and be able to discover every centimeter of the island, to happily get lost. For me, I vainly seek for the hungry cliffs described in The Riders of the sea. I look at the wrong side though, and enter a fort where cows didn’t learn how to read, they don’t care about government signs, it’s their new home. Maybe it’s freedom, to have cows shit inside when the State asks you to preserve the site. I only see the cliffs on my way home – Inis Meain wanted to be longed for –; they are so shiny in hazy noon. I promise in the secret of my heart to go back one day and taste every minute of the silent island solitude.
I discover Inis Mor, piece after piece, in early mornings or late afternoons, when everybody is home.
One day, I climb to the ruins of a pagan church in the East, on the exact opposite way from the sunset. It’s the smallest church in the world, I can barely fit into it. Friendly donkeys observe my dreams: our tiny ancestors praising Tuatha De Danaan… Did they build their churches higher to be closer to their gods? I give a last glimpse to the free temple and go to the Atlantic, trying to find my morning’s cliffs. But their horizon is too far from me. I feel so alive, though. I feel like belonging to another world.
My last exploration another day is a disaster, leaving me with bleeding feet and angrier than ever. I try to get the further North of Inis Mor, to the Worm Hole. I cross the island’s heart, surrounded by its tumbledown thatched roof houses, so precisely painted by Synge.
I almost touch the cold ocean and I feel so alive. When I get to the upper point of the island, it’s absolutely magnificent: an endless view of the western wild island. I gaze at the desert and untamed piece of land around me, then the ocean around the land, then immensity around the ocean… I’m dizzy, I’m utterly happy… Until I get lost in the rocks once again, and lose track of time, and lose my destination. Inis Mor is so wide, I can’t see all of it. Inis Mor violently keeps its secrets secret. Inis Mor hurts my feet, Inis Mor hurts my heart. But I’m full of hope every step, though, filled with joy.
My last morning is rainy, cold and windy. I would like to go back to the black cliffs to say goodbye, but I feel weary, my feet hurt of my missed Worm Hole and the wind freezes my desire. Fortunately, a shower of sun leads my last hours, oblivious of time and space. I blow a love wind to my heart and reach my fort, my beauty, my lover. I go through sand and freezing quiet ocean, I feel peaceful. I absolutely need to stop, despite the wind, despite the hidden sun, so I can catch the moment and give it freedom. I cherish that minute, and all the minutes before, before departure’s melancholy gets my soul. Drunk with joy, I remember everything with pink colored glasses.
Travel books name all the forts you are supposed to visit on the Western Islands but they forget the essential: Dun Duchatair doesn’t really matter, the rocks where it’s hanging do, the empty ocean below do. I try to tame my fear of high, on the edge of the sea gulf, I’m less scared in the end. And I know that powerful water looking upon me, breaking on the rocks, murderer with only one wave was what I was looking for. The ocean skims with life, it’s like a storm in my heart for my farewell. Its winter fire makes me alive, I love its fury and its danger. I’m fascinated by elements’ violence during cold seasons and I’m longing to get lost in their rage. I would like to go through a whole winter on the middle island or one of its sisters, tamed by the ocean, only protected by turf fires.
The smooth Inis Oir… The untamed Inis Meain… the surprising Inis Mor… I probably approach them in the wrong way, I wanted to eat them all, to embrace them with my short arms. I impetuously pursued a dream, I would have wanted to be the wind, to be the sea, to utterly know them. And the islands lost me, got me quieter, they pushed me to my limits, uncovering the treasures they chose for my tired feet.
I was looking for Synge’s islands and I found mine, I now have their stories in my heart without seeking a forgotten past. Foreign words gathered in crossroads – Teampall Bheamain. Dun Duchatair. Dun Aengus. Tempeal na Seacht Mac Ri. – created the unknown I was looking for. I might come back one day, meet more native people, actually blend into their life. In the meanwhile, I will remember that man with such a red face I thought he was an alcoholic. Then I looked at my own face in the mirror and I understood his face was telling me the story of wind and rough elements’ struggle.
This time, like Synge, I take the hooker to Galway. So happy to have tasted the ocean, the salty wind and my beloved vertigo before leaving, I silently warmed up in my book’s shadow nearby the crowed pub turf fire. I can still feel its taste on my lips. I could have stayed forever there and life would have been so peaceful.
Sailing away, I look at Inis Mor like I’ve never seen it. I think about what Synge told me: young fellows of the past wanted to leave the island, marrying or working, because their world was too narrow for their dreams. And I think about us – him, me, everybody – going there to find a peaceful place… Islands are already vanishing in the haze, immortals in the ocean rage, salty smell on their rocks; and I dream. Did Oisin and Niamh ride the ocean nearby Aran to reach the Eternal Youth Land?
Niamh, princess of the Sidh, is dizzy of her love for Oisin, Fenian warrior and Finn’s son, that she’s never met, but whom she knows every war song thanks to Dannan poets’ magic. Riding her ocean horse, she lands on Ireland shores, her eyes green and pale like the sea, glowing with adoration. Oisin’s heart breaks in the middle so beautifully shinning that God messenger is, so dreamy the life she offers could be; he runs away his arms around his fairy. They live an endless joy in their oblivious world, but Oisin longs for his native land, his father and his friends, he wants to know if they are happy. He leaves, on his beloved wife’s white horse, promising he will soon come back. But he doesn’t recognize the world he finds, his old world is dead; full of despair, he only wants to go home, his new home where Niamh vanishes his tears with her magic song. His horse trips, he falls and instantly turns into a very old man. The horse disappeared in the stars and Oisin loses everything: his past, his present and his future. Only remains memories of an endless night, in between sun and rain; sometimes pierced by ocean laments and immortal Niamh’s love song.
Are my out of time islands on the way to the legendary Other World, when it’s trapped in the ocean? Are they the last stop before Tir fo Thuinn, the land under the swell? Maybe, maybe not. But in my own secret stories, they are the land I left all my troubles.
March 2016
If you like this post, I urge you to read my first Irish travel diaries:
Fleeting Wor(l)ds 