by Ice! [V2. 0]
All the while I was thinking of these things, I was also thanking the gods for the easy and safe passage across the Celtic Sea, which had brought me beyond the ken of the French Customs. They'd have a job to catch me now. Cresswell had a good run to the, nor'rard ahead of her, southwesterly winds on the port quarter, and after I departed the Blaskets she made good time. That was important, for I wanted to be off Iceland early in the summer in order to sight as much as I could before the winter set in with its raging gales.
By mid-forenoon, carefully looking out for rocks and shoals, I had worked my way inside the Blasket Sound until I was within sight of the harbor of Slievedonagh. There, as I didn't know the depths, and there were no large craft lying inside the tiny creek, I hove to again. The wind was freshening, girding its loins for the gale due that night, so I started the engine and handed all sail. Very shortly, a small curragh came alongside, with two men in it. The boat was of tarred canvas stretched over bent wood frames. She was about fifteen feet long and had a cuddy fore and aft. She looked very seaworthy indeed, and the men in her knew how to handle their oars, though they had hardly any blades. They rowed out to Cresswell at a good speed with the curragh slicing the waters, yet the blades seemed to glide gently and slowly. One of the men was large-boned, but not heavy, while the other was slight and very dark, almost like an East Indian or a gypsy.
"Cead Mile Fdilte," they both said in low, gentle tones.
"A very good day to you," I replied. Nelson was fascinated. They had fish in the curragh.
"A fine craft ye have there. Is it Belfast ye're from?" asked the larger man.
"The boat's from London, but I'm from Wales."
"Then you have the Erse?"
"Something like it."
"Keanan Blinder's the name, and this is my second cousin Keanan Black."
"Tristan Jones, and it's Mr. Keanan the Postman I'm looking for."
"Well, that's very convenient, for it's him you're looking at," he laughed.
I said, hopping below, "I've a message from Corghain on Skellig Michael." I got the postcard up from the bookshelf. "Is it still alive he is, the auld blatherer?" said Keanan the Postman. "He is, and still setting off the maroons one by one." They roared with laughter.
"Come aboard," I said. "I've a touch of the hard stuff here."
"Is it English territory you're on?"
"Aye."
"Then I'll not put me foot onboard. No offense to you, for it's a fine man you are as we both can very well see, but I was arrested in Liverpool one fine day in the darkness of the Troubles, and when they let me go and I was onboard that mighty ferrycraft to Dublin, I swore by the merciful Mother of God that it's never again I'd set foot nor shoulder onto anything English as long as I live. But sure, there would be no harm in sliding a drop down here as I sit in my boat now, would there, and we'll drink to your fine and timely arrival, for it will be blowing the trousers off the devil himself in very short order." Keanan looked up at the black clouds moving across the water-heavy sky, racing for the Reeks in the east.
"That's for sure, and we do be better to enter the harbor straight," said Keanan Black. He was a quiet man, with weathered eyes and hard hands.
"Then we'll wait until you're safely alongside before your health is tokened," said Keanan the Postman. "Come now, we'll guide you in. What draft is it you have?"
"Two feet and a half," I replied.
"Oh, bejasus, that's no more than a cup in a spilt saucer."
"How's the entrance?"
"Like a dog's hind leg, but sure to a fine sailor like yourself it's no more than the daisies in the mouth of a bull."
"Lead on, Mr. Keanan."
And so the welcome to the Blaskets was made, and in ten minutes Cresswell was cozily secured in one of the tiniest harbors in Europe, if not the world.
The two Keanans, after a dram or two to the health of Corghain on Skellig Michael and the catching of the fine pollock the night before, then escorted me to the post office, which was Keanan Blinder's cottage. This was an old cottage with a thatched roof. Unlike the ones in Wales, the rush thatch rested on the inner edge of the stone walls, so that all around, where the eaves would have been, there was a platform, the top of the wall, which a man could walk around to repair the roof after the wild Atlantic storms had done their worst. On many of the cottages this ledge around the thatch was planted with flowers—a very refreshing sight to see after a week of nothing but the green seas, the fulmar petrels, Nelson, and Corghain's pajamas.
The cottage was one story, and the main part consisted of one large living room, into which the fireplace projected about four feet. This again was unusual, and Keanan said it was to make the room warmer. To one side of the massive chimney was a box-bed on a stone shelf. As in most of the cottages I saw on the Irish Islands, there were two doors, one on either side of the living room. The door facing away from the wind was always left open in the daytime. The walls were whitened with lime-wash, and the only decorations were a picture of Christ holding in one hand his bleeding heart, a photo of Patrick Pearse taken long before he was shot by the British army after the 1916 Easter Rebellion, and a calendar from Nestle's Milk Company in Philadelphia, U.S.A.!
I remarked on the calendar, and Keanan told me that everyone on the Blaskets had relatives in the United States, mostly around New York and Boston, and that, in fact, about three-quarters of the income of the fifteen hundred or so islanders was in the form of remittances from these exiles. The emigration from this part of Eire was still going on in dribs and drabs, but until World War II it had been massive. In 1959, expatriation was mainly to England, where the men were hired by the big construction contractors. Some went on contract as far afield as Nigeria and Australia, building dams and electricity-generating stations. This had been going on for years, and it was always a shock to meet some old man speaking Gaelic, dressed in the simple way of the islanders, with his short, stubby pipe, once-a-week shave, and the sparkling, expressive eyes and gentle voice, and to hear him speak of the time he was building Sydney harbor bridge or the Mersey Tunnel. Their sojourns in faraway distant lands did not seem to affect them one iota, except that they could converse on any subject under the sun.
I remember sitting on a garden wall, looking across to the West, as the sun set over Inishtooskert, listening to one ancient man of about eighty tell me of his days with the British army in India (he had served two years on the Khyber Pass), and how he had been recruited into the Australian police while he was still in India, and how a group of Irishmen and Scots had sailed from Calcutta for Sydney with twenty camels intended for use in the Australian desert! I can hear him now, intoning the tale with every embellishment that a Gaelic Celt can muster, yet with tiny details remembered from sixty years before. He even recalled the colors of the loincloths of the ghilly-ghilly men on the Suez Canal bum-boats and how, as a lad in Liverpool, he and the other Irish recruits had spat on the king's shilling. The sergeant major had lost his temper at them, thinking it was an insult, until an officer ("Sure, a fine, tall, jewel of a gentleman he was, for had he not a hundred acres in West Meath itself with keepers and partridges running around like fishwives on a Friday?") informed the sergeant major that the Irish Islanders seal a bargain by spitting on a coin, which signifies that the promise will be kept regardless of the financial result.
That night the gale blew, and with it came sheets of rain and lightning. As Keanan Blinder walked back through the rain with me, I could see the vague ghosts of people walking around their cottages. Keanan explained that when there is lightning and thunder, they sprinkle holy water on the ground around the walls.
I stayed in Slievedonagh harbor the next day, for the Atlantic furies were loose and screaming vengeance for the bastard son of the king of Spain. After the morning chores, when the sky had cleared up a touch, I went, at Keanan's imitation, to lunch with him. It was a fine nutritious meal of fish and potatoes, goat's butter and porter ale. I asked him about a small flower which was growing wild
all over the village. It seemed vaguely familiar.
"Sure, there was a fine fellow over here before the German War (the last one, for we call the first one the English War), and he came over here all the way from London. We had a few flowers growing here, but he said he would send us some better seeds. One fine day after he'd gone (and wouldn't all the days be fine after that, for he was a devil of a man for knowing everything), he sent us six packets of seeds. Well, when the little flowers showed themselves they were growing wild, for we'd thrown the seeds away. London Pride, they're called."
"How was life in the old days, Keanan?"
"Not much harder than now, Tristan, but of course we'd no radios to hear the fine experts of Dublin sorting out all the cares of the world. I remember when I saw my first radio and this Dublin man turned on the music. Keanan Buffer—a fine woman she was, such a command of the tongue!—when she heard that, she says to the Dublin man, 'Holy Mary Mother of God, did you ever see the like? Blinder, get the paper and pen out, sure we've to write to America and tell our brother of this miracle!'"
"When was that?"
"Let me see ... the shark washed ashore the same year as King Edward condemned himself to eternal damnation by casting off himself the crown of England and marrying a divorced woman and leaving us nothing to fight but thin air. That was ..."
"1936," I prompted.
"Tis right you are, then it was 1935."
"But radio was invented in 1910."
"Sure it was and all, and who invented it?"
"Marconi, and he was an Italian."
"Right, and was he not a good Catholic son of the Holy Church herself?"
"What have you heard about television?"
"Ach, we'll never have it here. Father O'Rafferty says it's the work of a Scotch Calvinist. What's his name?"
"John Logie Baird."
"Right you are, indeed. 'Tis the work of the devil himself!"
As I walked back to Cresswell that evening, I noticed the crosses stuck in the thatch. Saint Bridget's crosses, they are called. I would not see them again until I reached Taquila, on Lake Titicaca, high up in the Andes. There are many surprising similarities between the Andes Quechua Indian and the islanders of Ireland. This is but one of them. Another one is the clothes they wear, even the brightly colored woven belts and the long stockings, and the leather sandals.
When I took my leave of Keanan the following morning, as he stood on the jetty, I asked him how I was to get the boat and myself officially entered into Ireland.
"Aah, sure, a fine man like yourself, what would we be wanting to do that for? You're here, are you not? We'll let God do the entering of you, and the devil take the office spalpeens in Dublin City."
"Well, fare you well, Mr. Keanan, and thank you for everything. One day I will be back this way."
"Sure, with a double-ended boat like that you might be back sooner than you think, for it's a holy wonder to me you know which way you are going, forward or backward. But God save you and keep the seas kind. Is it to England you are bound now?"
"Scotland."
"Good whisky they have, in the Catholic parts, anyway." His eyes twinkled with humor.
Cresswell edged her way out of the tiny creek, with most of the folk on the island standing on the mole head to see me off. I could hear the women saying, "Holy Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, what kind of a mother can the great man that he is have, who'd send him to sea alone like that and such a ruin of a dog? Do ye never catch pneumonia?" they called out thinly in the keening wind.
"He does not, he catches eight-pound pollock," retorted Keanan.
"Tis a fine craft he has there."
"Aye, bigger than the curraghs of Aran, and him a fine man, to be sure, but no bigger than Keanan Darcy's boy who's short in the head." As I left them out of earshot, I stored in my memory the sights and the sounds of the island next to New York, an island where there is not one tree and where fat people are greatly admired. As it was in the ancient tribes of Israel, where waxing fat women were worshiped for their beauty, so it is still in the Blaskets, where Life has always been too hard and strenuous for anyone to put on too much weight. But if I ever did get beyond my normal 150 pounds and sought a mate, it's to the Blaskets I would go, for the people are handsome, with a grace and carriage which would do justice to a ballet dancer.
Cresswell was soon floundering away in the rough seas left by the recent storm. There was not much wind, and I wished to preserve my ten gallons of diesel fuel. The distance from the Blaskets to the Aran Islands is about one hundred miles between ports, and it took two days to cover. But on the second day the wind piped up and Cresswell danced again, while I sang the Eriskay love-lilt in the starboard shrouds as the green waters flashed by, and Nelson gnawed a fresh sheep bone.
Wales England wed; so I was bred.
'Twas merry London gave me breath. I dreamt of love, and fame: I strove.
But Ireland taught me love was best: And Irish eyes, and London cries, and streams
of Wales may tell the rest. What more than these I ask'd of Life
I am content to have from Death.
Ernest Rhys, "An Autobiography."
11
On the Track of Columcille
The morning of the second day out of the Blasket Islands, the wind shifted round from southwest to the west. Cresswell had been running directly before it for a glorious twenty-four hours; now she was on a broad reach. That means that the wind was blowing from a direction at right angles to the boat, which is the fastest point of sailing, especially in a gaff-rigged ketch, for all the sails get their fair share and more of the wind, and all pull together.
The wind increased to around thirty-five knots by midforenoon, and it was plain, although there had been no warning on the radio, that we were in for a spot of lively weather. I dowsed the jib at eleven and the mizzen at noon. The sky was still fairly clear, and from a noon sextant sight between the scurrying clouds, forerunners of a high wind, I obtained a latitude which put me about twenty miles due west of the mouth of the River Shannon.
If I had had charts for the Shannon entrance, I would have worn in there for safe haven, to wait out the gale; but as I had not, I decided to weather out the blow. Duly I stood the boat out to the west, to put as much sea room as possible between Cresswell and the broken-toothed coast of Ireland. By mid-afternoon I had made a further ten miles out into the ocean offing, and the wind had increased to gale force. The main was reefed down four hands, and I settled down to hand steer her due north for the night. This course would keep me well clear of coastal hazards. During the morning I had made a large pot of burgoo—layers of porridge and corned beef, porridge and bacon, porridge and anything else to hand, each layer laced with a dram of whisky.
All that night it blew, and by midnight, after crawling around on the heaving deck with seas crashing right over, I had the sails down to mizzen and storm jib only. This kept the boat moving through the water, but not fast. Now she was only rearing, bucking, and dropping fifteen feet, instead of twenty, every four seconds, while the strain on the wire rigging and the masts was minimized. Of course, any double-diagonal-built vessel, after working in heavy seas like that for hours on end, will start to take water through the garboard (where the hull joins the keel), and Cresswell was no exception. This meant that I had to pump her out once an hour or so, to keep the water inside the boat as low as possible. Pumping out was heavy work, and I soon found myself wishing I could change places with Nelson, who, as usual in rough weather, was comfortably wedged in between the bulkhead and the table forward in the fairly dry cabin.
The night was thunderous and black, with slashing rain cutting visibility down to a few yards. No lights, no moon, no stars, nothing but the roaring wind and the flailing ocean raging fiercely in the wan light of the small kerosene lamp hanging in the mizzen shrouds. By two in the morning I'd had enough of fighting the kicking wheel, so I struggled forward onto the foredeck and dropped the storm sail—an endeavor something like tryin
g to subdue a berserk mountain bear in the dark while riding on a giant fairground switchback with someone throwing three tons of icy cold water at you every five seconds.
As soon as the spitfire jib was down and lashed, the boat came head-up to wind and sea, weather-cocked with her reefed mizzen, and there we were, in comparative peace and security. I lashed an extra line around the rubber dinghy, which was stowed upside down atop the cabin roof, then went below. The contrast between the noise outside the boat, with every wet, wintry spirit in the Atlantic screaming in the rigging, and down below was amazing. Even though the cabin was heaving up and down like an elevator gone wild, it was a haven of comfort. I managed precariously to make tea, half filled the pint mug, leaves and all, then dropped into wary, one-eyed slumber. Nelson crawled topside to keep watch.
The sky at dawn would have brought tears to the eyes of a bloody undertaker. Greys and blacks low on the western horizon, while slashed across the east was a blood-gutter streak of flaming red across the length of Ireland. It was enough to make Columcille, the holy Saint Columba, throw away his crozier. But I knew I was near enough to the Aran Islands to try to get into their lee before all hell and damnation was let loose on the world from the watery west. Clouds like the eyebrows of John L. Lewis himself. I decided to make a course west of the outermost of the Aran Islands, though I was strongly tempted to run for the nearest shelter, which was the passage between Inisheer Island and the coast of Clare. But I knew that if I did that, I would have the devil's own job to beat to windward, westward, again, to reach the port of Kilronan, on the main island of Inishmore.