Fleeting Wor(l)ds

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 I belong to the Otherworld.
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. Built with two facing doors, one always open during the day to bring light inside. If North wind blew, the southern door opened and its shadow gave time. When South wind blew, the other door opened.
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 Otherworld, 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 where I left all my troubles.

Specialists couldn’t get along about Galways’ name origins: was it only a stony river or is it named after the daughter of Breasal, the Mythical King? Whoever Galway was, during this last week of Lent, the town is celebrating and my heart is asleep.
Galway was, for a while, the English assimilation symbol, invaders had indeed become more Irish than Irish themselves. The Normans – it’s how English were called back then – used to be freshly shaved and hair cut; two or three generations later, the ones stayed in Ireland to rule had long shaggy hair and beard like the Native Irish, they were singing their song and drinking their beers. Therefore, the Normans government decides in the 14th century to reaffirm its authority and establish order with the Statutes of Kilkenny. Settlers are sent to cut their hair and they are Englishly told – politely and a silver spoon in the ass – to stop fucking up: they are forbidden to speak Irish, to sing Irish, to drink Irish, to dress Irish or to make Irish love. English make then the royal mistake to create two different people, one of which would be an Irish rebel identity confirmed by Henry VIII’s religious schism: Native Irish are Catholics when settlers are as Protestant as their King. This cultural and religious division inescapably doomed the alliance between the two islands.
And as I go back in time throughout Galway history, I finally get Cork’s mystery: Irish life before Celts. Being so naïve, I thought, like Gaels before me, only gods could have built dolmens and other architectural riddles, especially when the island was deserted when they arrived. It was a beautiful story to read before sleeping… They did arrive on a desert island but it doesn’t mean life didn’t exist before them. Archaeological excavations and scientific studies prove there was a prehistorical life in Ireland, Lebor Gabala Erenn confirm it. Even, if it names the first peoples as gods.
Everything started with Cessair people, one of Noah’s daughters (yes, the one with the ark and all the animals). Although Capa, Laigne and Luasad were the first men to discover the island, they never actually lived there: Cessair and her compatriots are then the first people of Ireland according to the Book of the Taking of Ireland. They flee to Ireland before the Flood and land at Bun na nBanc with dramatic losses. Only survive fifty women for three men, including Cessair’s husband, who are supposed to share all those women in order to save the specie. They spend forty years on the island, men die of too much love one after the other. Cessair finally dies as well, her heart broken in the middle because of her husband’s death.
Three centuries later and after seven years turning around the foggy island, Partholon and his people land. Ireland knows how to be longed but certainly welcome them by bursting seven lakes from the ground. Partholonians establish the first ancestral customs: language, fosterage*, druidism, agriculture, etc… They are the first to fight Fomorians, titans and demons of the Celtic mythology. Partholonians rule for five centuries, changing the barren land into four nourishing plains, until they died of plague.
Nemedians follow. All their ships got lost at sea, except one that has turned around the world for a year before reaching Ireland. One would say they are only the poor man’s Partholianians, they don’t invent anything, however they do burst new lakes and flourish new plains, they also fight Fomorians, until the last Battle that wipes them out.
And who are those ardent Fomorians, this people of warriors? They would be Ham’s descendant, Noah’s less loved son. Giants or Elves, depending on who is speaking, head of a goat or a horse, they only have one eye, one leg, one arm, and cut they enemies’ nose. They are the demons from underground, evil forces incarnations, only defeated by Tuatha de Danaan’s light. They both represent the endless fight between light creative energies and dark destroying forces.

* The practice of a family bringing up a child not their own