"Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky,
In colour though varied, in beauty may vie,
And the purple of ocean is deepest in dye."
_Bride of Abydos._
[Sidenote: THE ARAN ISLANDERS.]
We have thus far spoken of the scenery of the islands, and of their
natural history, of their antiquities, Pagan and Christian, and of their
annals; let us now turn to speak of their people and of what others
think of them. Doctor Petrie thus, in 1841, writes:
"I had heard so much of the Aran islanders, of their primitive
simplicity, and singular hospitality, that I could not help doubting the
truth of a picture so pleasing and romantic, and felt anxious to
ascertain by personal observation how far it might be real.
Collectively, the inhabitants may be said to exhibit the virtues of the
Irish character with as little intermixture of vices as the lot of
humanity will permit.
[Sidenote: A POLITE PEOPLE.]
"They are a brave and hardy race, industrious and enterprising, as is
sufficiently evidenced, not only by the daily increasing number of their
fishing vessels, the barren rocks which they are covering with soil and
making productive, but still more by the frequency of their emigration
from their beloved homes and friends to a distant country, led solely by
the hope that their indefatigable labour may be employed there to the
greater ultimate benefit of their families.
"They are simple and innocent, but also thoughtful and intelligent,
credulous, and, in matters of faith, what persons of a different creed
would call superstitious. Lying and drinking, the vices which Arthur
Young considers as appertaining to the Irish character, form at least no
part of it in Aran, for happily their common poverty holds out less
temptation to the vices of lying and drinking.
"I do not mean to say they are rigidly temperate, or that instances of
excess, followed by the usual Irish consequences of broken heads, do not
occasionally occur--such could not be expected, when their convivial
temperament and dangerous and laborious occupations are remembered. They
never swear, and they have a high sense of decency and propriety, honour
and justice. In appearance they are healthy, comely, and prepossessing;
in their dress (with few exceptions) clean and comfortable; in manner
serious yet cheerful, and easily excited to gaiety; frank and familiar
in conversation, and to strangers polite and respectful, but at the same
time free from servile adulation. They are communicative, but not too
loquacious; inquisitive after information, but delicate in seeking it,
and grateful for its communication.
"If the inhabitants of the Aran islands could be considered as a fair
specimen of the ancient, and present wild Irish, the veriest savages in
the globe, as the learned Pinkerton calls them--those whom chance has
led to their hospitable shores to admire their simple virtues would be
likely to regret that the blessings of civilization had ever been
extended to any portion of this very wretched country."[16]
[Sidenote: RESIGNATION OF THE ARANITES.]
The devotional expressions of the Aranites and the meekness and
resignation with which they bear misfortunes or afflictions is the most
striking feature in their character. "I had a beautiful girl for a
daughter," said an Aranite peasant, "and I laid her in her grave
yesterday, praise be to His holy Name that took her to Himself." A poor
woman asking for charity tells you that "she hasn't eaten a bit this
day, thanks be to God." Another says, "In troth I have been suffering
for a long time from poverty and sickness, glory be to God." Their mode
of salutation, too, is worthy of remembrance. The visitor on entering a
house says, "God save all here." Meet a man on the road, greet him with
a "God save you, sir;" instantly he'll remove his hat and reply, "God
save you kindly, your honour." If you pass by men working in a field,
always address them with a "God bless the work, boys;" they will
answer, "And you too, sir," and if you speak in Irish so much the
better, and how their eyes will brighten up at hearing their
mother-tongue spoken by "a gentleman's honour!"
[Sidenote: THEIR PURITY OF MORALS.]
To the purity of the morals of the Aran women there are many
testimonies. Births of illegitimate children are of rare occurrence
indeed. Sir Francis Head, in 1852, made a tour through Ireland, looking
into every police barrack as he passed, and when all that was done he
published a work entitled "A Fortnight in Ireland." Unsparing in his
vilifications of the Catholic clergy, he is compelled to compare the
people to whom they minister favourably with those of other countries in
the world. Arriving in Galway his first visit was to the police barrack,
where he inquired of the officer as to the morals of the Claddagh
people, when the south isles of Aran thus came to be mentioned.
Sir F. Head. "How long have you been on duty in Galway?"
The officer replies, "Only six months."
_Question._ "During that time have you known of many instances of
illegitimate children being born in the Claddagh?"
_Answer._ "Not a single case--not one; and not only have I never known
of such a case, but I never heard any person attribute immorality to the
fishwomen. I was on duty in the three islands of Aran, inhabited almost
exclusively by fishermen, who also farm potatoes, and I never heard of
any one of their women (who are remarkable for their beauty) having had
an illegitimate child, nor did I ever hear it attributed to them. Indeed
I have been informed by a magistrate who lived in Galway for eight
years, and has been on temporary duty in the isles of Aran, that he has
never heard there of a case of that nature. These people, however, when
required to pay poor-rates, having no native poor of their own in the
workhouse, resisted the payment of what they considered a very unjust
tax. In fact they closed their doors when the rate was only partially
collected."
Three and twenty years after Sir Francis Head wrote the above we read in
the writings of Frank Thorpe Porter, Esq., a member of the Irish Bar,
long a divisional magistrate for the city of Dublin, and some time
acting chief justice for Gibraltar, a further testimony of the worth of
the islanders. On his return from Spain, he visited his son, Mr. Frank
Porter, M.D., medical officer of the islands,[17] and whilst he was
there several cases of typhus fever of a malignant type occurred.
[Sidenote: THEIR KINDNESS.]
The cottages are, with three or four exceptions, thatched and without
any upper storey. The invariable course adopted during the prevalence of
the epidemic was to nail up the door of the patient's apartment, to
take out the sashes of the window, and render it the sole means of
external communication. The medical attendant, priests, and nurse
tenders had no other means of ingress and egress, and no objection
appears to have ever been made to the system. Doctor Porter was stricken
down by the disease, and although ten days had elapsed before a medical
gentleman arrived from Galway, the doctor surmounted the fearful malady.
"I spent," writes Mr. Porter, "each night in my son's apartment, and
during the day he was attended by a nurse. Almost every night I heard
some gentle taps outside the vacant window, and on going over to it, I
would be told 'My wife is afther making a pitcher of whey for the poor
docthor, you'll find it on the windy-stool;' or 'I brought you two jugs
of milk to make whey for your son.' When the crisis had passed, and
nutriment and stimulants were required, I would be told, 'We biled down
two chickens into broth for the docthor, I hope it will sarve him.'
Rabbits, chickens, and joints of kid were tendered for his use, and a
bottle of 'rale Connemara Puttyeen,' was deposited on the window-stool.
The people were all kind and anxious, and when he became able to walk
out he was constantly saluted and congratulated; but no person would
approach him if they could avoid it. They were all dreadfully
apprehensive that he might impart the dreadful contagion. I brought him
home as soon as possible, but he and I will always remember most
gratefully the unvarying kindness and sympathy we experienced in Aran
where they refused to take a farthing either for gratuity or
compensation."
[Sidenote: THEIR HOSPITALITY.]
On September 3, 1886, Mr. R.F. Mullery, clerk of the Galway Union, thus,
in answer to my letter to him, writes:--
"The present poundage-rate, one shilling in the pound, is
exceptionally low, owing to a grant of L440, under the 'relief of
the distressed Unions Act,' having been made to the islands. The
average rate for the last ten years was three shillings in the
pound. We never have islanders. There is no hospital, though there
ought to be one, on the islands, as the sick poor are deterred from
coming thirty miles by boat to the workhouse. The general health is
exceptionally good, and very many live to a very old age. I have an
opportunity of knowing this, as I have to examine the registry of
deaths at the end of each quarter. The islanders as a rule are very
intelligent, and quick at picking up anything they can either hear
or see; and, best of all, they are a moral people, a case of
illegitimacy scarcely ever occurring in the islands, and then it is
looked on as a crime of the blackest dye.
"I have the honour, etc.,
"ROBERT F. MULLERY."
The following extract from a letter written by my learned friend,
Philip Lyster, Esq., barrister-at-law, resident magistrate of the
district in which Aran is situated, bears testimony to the peaceful and
law-abiding character of the islanders:--
"Belfast, September 26, 1886.
"MY DEAR BURKE,
"My absence from Galway upon special duty in the north has prevented
my replying to your note of the 18th inst. until now.
[Sidenote: THEIR INDUSTRY.]
"The Aran islanders as a body are an extremely well-behaved and
industrious people. There are sometimes assaults on each other,
which invariably arise out of some dispute in connection with the
land, and are generally between members of the same family. There
are very few cases of drunkenness. I have known two months to elapse
without a single case being brought up. I should say that for four
years, speaking from memory, I have not sent more than six or seven
persons to jail without the option of a fine. There is no jail on
the islands. We hardly ever have a case of petty larceny. I remember
only one case of potato stealing, when the defendant was sent for
trial and punished. There are often cases of alleged stealing of
seaweed in some _bona-fide_ dispute as to the ownership, which we
then leave to arbitration by mutual consent. I know very little of
the history of the islands. In the last century justice used to be
administered by one of the O'Flaherty family, the father of the
late James O'Flaherty, of Kilmurvy House, Esq., J.P. He was the only
magistrate in the islands, but ruled as a king. He issued his
summons for 'the first fine day,' and presided at a table in the
open air. If any case deserved punishment he would say to the
defendant, speaking in Irish, 'I must transport you to Galway jail
for a month.' The defendant would beg hard not to be transported to
Galway, promising good behaviour in future. If, however, his worship
thought the case serious, he would draw his committal warrant, hand
it to the defendant, who would, without the intervention of police
or any one else, take the warrant, travel at his own expense to
Galway, and deliver himself up, warrant in hand, at the county jail.
I am afraid things are very much changed since those days. Excuse my
not going more fully into the subject-matter of your letter. Duties
here are heavy. Believe me,
"Sincerely yours,
"PHILIP LYSTER."
[Sidenote: THEIR DRESS.]
The dress of the islanders is said, by those who understand such things,
to be picturesque; but beyond all doubt their shoes, or rather slippers,
made of untanned cow-hide with the hairy side out, and without heels and
without soles, are the most unpicturesque foot-dress in Europe. These
they call Pampoodies.
[Sidenote: THEIR PAMPOODIES.]
The raw cow-hide, which is cut to fit the foot, is stitched down the
instep to the toe and also on the back of the heel. Soft as a glove, the
wearer soon acquires an elasticity of step and an erect and noble
bearing in his walk, to which the wearer of the more picturesque boot
can never attain. There are two things, it is said, not to be found in
Aran--corns on the foot and frogs in the fens. The young women on
Sundays have their hair trimmed and bound up very tastily; but what
ornament can these young people put on equal to the virtuous characters
they bear? On Sundays and holy days the churches are well filled, and
the altars well served by priests as zealous as the Catholic Church can
in Ireland lay claim to--the Rev. Father O'Donohoe, P.P., and the Rev.
Father Waters, C.C.
The extreme politeness of the islanders, and their desire to impart any
knowledge they possess of antiquarian lore or of the legends or fairy
tales with which the islands abound, must strike with force the mind of
the observing tourist. Their reverence for the dead, and their affection
for their loved and departed friends, impel them to erect, sometimes in
long lines on the roadside, square stone pillars about ten feet in
height by three feet each side, all of the same measurements, surmounted
each with a well-cut stone cross and with inscriptions such as the
following: "_Sta viator._ Stay, traveller. O Lord have mercy on the soul
of Mac Dara Ternan, who departed this life 26th June, 1842." These
monuments of the dead, who are generally interred in far-distant
churchyards, have by moonlight a ghastly appearance.
[Sidenote: THEIR HOLY WELLS.]
The reverence of the Aranite for holy wells is great, nor will he suffer
in silence his faith in them to be ridiculed. "Can you," said a
stranger, "be so silly as to believe that that well gushing out of the
hillside was placed there by a saint, in dim and remote ages?" The
peasant replied that a well on a mountain side or on a mountain top
appeared to him to be miraculous. "And isn't it, sir, wonderful to see
water on the top of a hill? And it must flow up the hill inside before
it can flow down the hill outside;" and water flowing up the hill inside
or outside was to his mind miraculous. The stranger answered that, "the
water may have been forced up from some far-off lake on a higher level."
The peasant's answer was, "that may be so and it may not be so, but your
honour does not give us any proof that it is so." Wells in all ages and
in all places are associated with the marvellous, even from the well of
Zem-zem to that on the Aran rocks, and we are not so sure that the
geological stranger was quite satisfactory as to his theory of wells on
a mountain summit.
[Sidenote: THE ISLE OF O'BRAZIL.]
Speaking of the wonders by which the native of Aran is surrounded, what
wonder can be greater than that of the mirage, an island that is said to
rise after sunset from the Atlantic? A phantom island which the people
call "O'Brazil, the Isle of the Blest," upon which a city like the New
Jerusalem is built, and the old men say that that city hath no need of
the sun nor of the moon to shine in it, neither does it need the light
of the lamp any more at all. That island with that city has, they say,
over and over again appeared far away on the Atlantic. Alison, we
remember, somewhere in his charming account of the French in Egypt,
gives a note on the mirage of the desert, where the parched-up soldiers
of the French republic, in 1798, used to see far-distant lakes into
which tumbled the waters of mighty waterfalls. On, on the French
soldiers rushed. Alas! the phantom vanished; and so vanishes the phantom
city seen on a summer evening from the lofty cliffs of the Aran islands.
To follow in search of this "Isle of the Blest" an Aranite peasant once
resolved. He had heard of St. Brendan and of Christopher Columbus, and
of those mariners who, sailing over the seas in search of fame and of
gold, were fortunate enough to find both. The peasant, in spite of all
persuasion, set sail.
[Sidenote: A PHANTOM-ISLAND.]
The phantom receded; he followed. Still following, he never returned to
Aran again, and his mournful fate is thus sung by Gerald Griffin:--
1.
"On the ocean that hollows the rocks where ye dwell,
A shadowy land has appeared, as they tell;
Men thought it a region of sunshine and rest,
And they called it O'Brazil, the Isle of the Blest.
From year unto year on the ocean's blue rim,
The beautiful spectre showed lovely and dim;
The golden clouds curtained the deep where it lay,
And it looked like an Eden away--far away.
2.
"A peasant who heard of the wonderful tale,
In the breeze of the Orient loosened his sail;
From Aran, the holy, he turned to the west,
For though Aran was holy, O'Brazil was blest.
He heard not the voice that called from the shore,
He heard not the rising wind's menacing roar:
Home, kindred, and safety, he left on that day,
And he sped to O'Brazil away--far away.
3.
"Morn rose on the deep, and that shadowy isle,
O'er the faint rim and distant reflected its smile;
Noon burned on the wave, and that shadowy shore
Seemed lovely, distant, and faint as before.
Lone evening came down on the wanderer's track,
And to Aran again he looked timidly back;
Oh! far on the verge of the ocean it lay,
Yet the isle of the blest was away--far away!
4.
"Rash dreamer, return! oh, ye winds of the main,
Bear him back to his own peaceful Aran again;
Rash fool! for a vision of fanciful bliss
To barter thy calm life of labour and peace.
The warning of reason was spoken in vain,
He never revisited Aran again.
Night fell on the deep, amidst tempest and spray,
And he died on the waters away--far away."
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Stokes' "Life of Dr. Petrie," pp. 49, 50.
[17] "Reminiscences of Frank Thorpe Porter, Esq.," 1875, p. 489.