The Pirate Princess: Return to the Emerald Isle

by Matthew Morris

  The ocean waves rolled and crashed around them and the wind blew in a steady gale, but the girls handled the boat expertly the whole trip. As they pulled into the sheltered harbor on the opposite side of the island, Paddy got up from his seat in the bow and joined them, again, saying nothing. But his smile showed he was seemingly satisfied of their ability to take care of his boat.

  It was late afternoon and jet lag started to set in on Meg as they tied up to the pier and gathered their bags. She let out a big yawn.

  “Don’t fall asleep, honey. If you take a nap now you will never adjust to the time difference,” Shay commanded.

  “But I’m sooo tired.”

  “We’ll have to stay busy until nightfall to hold off on falling asleep too early.”

  On their way up from the docks Paddy led them past a beautifully carved Celtic cross, to a place called The American Bar. It was a yellow, two-story building with a mural that showed New York City and the Statue of Liberty with a Galway hooker sailing by. Meg loved the mural, especially the touch of the Galway hooker. Paddy told them that a local man fell in love with an American girl and never left the spot where he said goodbye to her. He eventually built a bar and restaurant named after the place where his lost love came from. They walked into a dark bar and everyone in the pub looked up when they entered.

  Shay walked up to the bar and ordered two pints of Guinness, one for herself and one for Paddy, and a soda for Meg. Although the pub was busy it was not packed, and there were two musicians playing Irish music in the corner of the room.

  “It’s nice here at this time of year,” Paddy said. “Most of the tourists are gone and ya can actually find a seat in the pub. I wouldn’t come here normally, but I wanted ye Yanks to feel at home.”

  “We know all about tourists. We live in a popular tourist destination in America. Thanks for the gesture, but we didn’t come this far to be in an American bar,” said Shay.

  “Sorry about that, Mrs. Murphy,” Paddy said, a bit taken aback by Shay’s words. He took a sip from his drink then looked at Meg and Shay with a twinkle in his eye. “I have to say, you are definitely O’Flaherty girls by the way you handled me boat. I was a little nervous when we met on the dock, seeing as you were two wee lasses, but I’d say you can handle her better than meself. You’re fine sailors, the both of ya.”

  “My mother learned how to sail as a child on Inishbofin and taught me everything she knows.”

  “Me too” proudly added Meg, with a big yawn.

  “Stay with me, Meg,” Shay said, patting her on the shoulder as a reminder to stay awake.

  “I have charts in the cabin for the whole west coast, but ya probably don’t need ‘em, do ya? Bein’ O’Flahertys and all.”

  “We are not magicians, just good sailors, and we will definitely use the charts. Does this mean we can have her?”

  “She’s yours for the week.”

  While Paddy and Shay exchanged details of the boat charter, Meg diverted her attention to the people around her. She could always pick out the tourists with their backpacks and cameras back home, and there were only a few here.

  Seated next to where Meg, Shay, and Paddy were sitting two old men, hunched over their Guinnesses and deep in conversation. Meg tried to listen in, but they were speaking in Irish, which sounded like no language Meg had ever heard. Other than a few words here and there, she had never actually heard Irish spoken. There were a lot of throaty, hocking sounds in the language. The men also talked in very hushed tones, almost mumbling, and barely cracking their lips open to talk. The strange thing was that even though they were speaking with words she did not know, Meg recognized the intonations and rhythm of the way they spoke. Her Nanny talked the exact same way, and Paddy did, too. His mumbled English, which Meg sometimes had a hard time understanding on the boat ride over, had the same cadence of the two old men speaking in Irish.

  After his drink was finished, Paddy stood up and shook Shay’s hand. “Well, good day to ya, and take good care of my girl.” He nodded towards the boat tied up to the pier. “I’ll see ya’s in a week.” The two old men Meg had been listening to looked up when Paddy spoke. They gave him a nod in recognition, and on his way out, Paddy gave each a pat on the back. “I’m tired, Mom. When can we go to sleep?” Meg said with a big yawn.

  “Not yet. We have to wait until it’s night. I have an idea, Meg. Let’s figure out what time sunset is.”

  “Why don’t we just ask someone?”

  “I have an even better idea. Hand me the compendium.”

  Meg reached into her backpack, pulled out the compendium, and handed it to her mom. Up until this point, Meg had sort of forgotten about it. Shay opened it to the instrument with the dials and engravings.

  “This one is called a volvelle. It’s a tool that allows us to figure out how long daytime is based upon the date and our latitude. We first need our coordinates which are on this leaf,” she said flipping to the next tool in the compendium and pointing to the list of words with numbers, “These are names of ports with their latitudes and longitudes.”

  She pointed to Gaillimh on the list.

  “Galway,” Meg said.

  “Yes, Meg! So, we turn this dial to the latitude,” Shay said, turning one disc, “this dial to the longitude,” turning another, “and now we can move this dial to the middle of Scorpio because today’s date is October 28.” She turned the dial to one of the marks of the Zodiac engraved in the brass. “Now, if we look at the sun,” she said, pointing to an engraved sun, “we see that today it rises at around eight.” Shay indicated a pointer on top of the sun pointing to an inscribed numeral 8. On the flip side she showed a moon that had a pointer directed at a numeral 6. “And it sets around six. So we have a couple hours to sightsee before we’ll finally be able to get some sleep.”

  Meg nodded but, because she was so tired, she was not fully following all the movements her mom made on the compendium. Shay folded the compendium back up and handed it to Meg, who put it back away in her backpack. They walked out of the pub and back out onto the road just outside. Just coming out of the dark pub helped Meg wake up. They looked around and saw bikes for rent. They also saw vans for hire and horse and buggy rides available. They decided on a horse and trap, as it is called in Ireland, to go up the large hill to the Neolithic fort of Dun Aengus. The trap driver was an old man who welcomed them by saying, “Fáilte roimh chách, mo chairde, go Inis Mór. Welcome, my friends, to Inishmore. My name is Thomas, and your tour guide today will be the beautiful Aran pony, Johnny Cash.” Meg and her mom both giggled at the joke, and the pony was soon clip-clopping its way up the narrow road.

  Dún Aonghasa, as it is spelled in Irish, is perched high up on one of the cliffs they had sailed past earlier that day. The fort was built of loose stones piled one on top of another. They formed concentric walls that were almost twelve feet thick in places, and that ended abruptly at the edge of the cliff. It was if the walls were full circles at some point in the past, and half of them had fallen into the ocean. They were allowed to walk right up to the edge of the cliff, and they did. Three hundred feet below them they saw the waves of the Atlantic crashing into the cliff. The view was both dizzying and commanding at the same time—it was truly awesome. As they stood at the edge, the wind was whipping them. They soon backed off because it was a little scary. Meg and Shay also spent some time looking at the ruins and a while later returned to the horse and trap for the ride back down the hill.

  All around them they saw tiny parcels of farmland divided by stone walls. The fields here were just like the ones they had been seeing all day on the mainland, only much smaller. The trap driver explained to them how the islanders had converted the inhospitable rock of the island into farmland by layering sand and seaweed to make fertile beds for growing crops. Meg was astounded that people could create farmland out of rock to survive. After just a short time on Inishmore, Meg could see that the Aran Islands were an amazing place.

  In just her first day in Irela
nd, Meg had traveled by bus, boat, and horse and trap, and she had seen in this one day more wonderful things than she had seen in her whole life. The wind blew her hair as she looked out to her surroundings. This is where I came from and this is where I belong, she thought. The cold air kept her awake, but she could feel all the hours they lost flying over the ocean creeping up on her like a warm blanket.

  By the time they sat down to dinner, Meg was so exhausted that, a couple of times, her mother had to save her from falling asleep into her plate of food. After dinner, they finally checked into a small bed and breakfast hotel. They were shown their room, and within minutes Meg blissfully fell asleep.

  14

  Sailing Home

  Meg was so tired she could have slept for a couple of days; the fresh island air and the exhausting schedule they had kept the day before could have easily seen to that. But they had to get to Inishbofin. When Meg’s mom woke her up at the crack of dawn, Meg’s head was still foggy with a new dream from the night past: She was riding in a motorboat at high speed, and she did not feel comfortable because of her vow to ride only in sailboats. The motorboat was racing over wave after wave, and water was crashing all over her. She had to get somewhere and it had to be quickly, but she was woken up before she knew where she was going in the dream. Just dreaming about riding on a motorboat bugged Meg the entire time she was getting dressed and gathering her things for the day ahead.

  After getting packed up, Meg and her mom went downstairs to a breakfast of fried eggs, potatoes, and something called a rasher, what the woman at the Bed and Breakfast said was supposed to be bacon but looked more like ham. Meg tried to make a sandwich out of the rasher but it was just not the same as her favorite breakfast sandwich at home. Irish food was something she was going to have to get used to. After breakfast mother and daughter made their way down to the pier and boarded the Cailín Mo Chroí.

  The sun was out and the sea was a little calmer than it had been when they came in the day before. Shay and Meg cast off from the pier. They raised the mainsail and sailed their way towards their ancestral home. The course they charted up the Connemara coast would get them to Inishbofin before the day was over, depending on the wind, which did not seem to be a problem in these waters. Shay called out orders to Meg in a much nicer way than she did the previous day, and Meg carried them out with precision.

  “Hoist the foresail.” Meg trotted up the deck and pulled on the line attached to the red sail until it fluttered and then filled with wind.

  “Let out that line.” By the time her mom called out that order, Meg had already noticed that the sail needed to be let out and was loosening the line attached to the long wood pole that held the bottom of the sail.

  “Watch the spar.”

  “Prepare to tack.” Meg dropped to the deck getting ready for her mom to swing the boat and its sails for the wind to come from the other direction.

  “Tack ho!” Shay turned the tiller and the spar and sail swung gently over her.

  Meg loved to watch her mom sail. Shay was so confident and commanding at the helm of a sailboat that, even when they took friends out on the Muirín back home, they all often just naturally followed whatever she said. Meg’s mom was that way on land, as well, and was the center of attention wherever they went. Her confidence and demeanor outshone her short stature. Shay was everything Meg wanted to be, but wasn’t—at least not yet.

  Meg had never been one of the popular girls at school. Her small size had led her to being very shy around other kids her age, and she found it hard to make friends. She didn’t dance like her sister and, because she sometimes felt short of breath, had never got into sports, two activities that helped Eileen gain a lot of friends. Meg could never find anyone who would just play by the water and pretend the same way she did. Her days were spent in her own little world with her imagination always keeping her company.

  Like most other little girls, there was a time when Meg wanted nothing more than to be a princess. When out playing in the surf, she was always the Little Mermaid, splashing her feet together like a fin. Her mom said she had no fear of the water when they first took her to a beach, and would have walked right out into the sound and drowned if they hadn’t stopped her. As a toddler, whenever Meg took a bath, she would always try to stick her face in the water, a habit that drove her parents crazy. Meg was convinced she could breathe underwater like her princess hero Ariel.

  After Meg had outgrown the princess stage, some days she pretended to be a famous sea explorer combing the ocean floor for new kinds of fish. When she was out on her mom’s boat she was always a pirate captain sailing to find buried treasure. Shay and Mark found it unusual that Meg was always by herself, so they often tried to pair her up with some of their friends’ daughters and sons. Meg tried to play with them, but no lasting friendship ever bloomed as a result. The problem was that the other kids never wanted to do things Meg’s way, and Meg was stubborn and only wanted things her way.

  Compared to her sister Eileen, the social butterfly who was always on the go, Meg was a hermit. She never wanted to leave the vicinity of her home and its surroundings. Of course, Meg had to go to school like all kids do. In fact, school was kind of easy for Meg because she always loved to read. Meg’s big problem was doing her homework. After coming home from a long day at school, especially when it was nice out, she went straight to the docks or to the shore to play. When it wasn’t nice outside, she stayed up in her room snuggled up with Finn and reading.

  While Meg’s test scores in school were always good, her grades suffered because her after-school activities took up the time she really should have spent doing school work, so she lost homework points almost every day. Her parents never punished her for her bad grades because they knew she was smart, but they often told her how disappointed they were with her school work. The last thing Meg wanted to do was disappoint her parents, but since they were usually still out on their boats when she got home from school, she found it hard to sit down and concentrate on her homework when there were so many other worlds to discover on her own in a book or outside in her backyard. The course Meg plotted was her own, but like most sailing trips, she had to either follow the way the wind carried her or beat against it in the direction she wanted, and she almost always chose the latter.

  As they sailed up the coast, Meg and Shay marveled at the strange beauty of the west coast of Ireland. Off the side of the boat they saw sweeping vistas of green fields perched upon cliffs and sandy beaches. Meg wondered if those beaches ever saw sunbathers because of the spotty weather in Ireland. The land was rocky and so was the shoreline, and there were numerous islands and coves scattered everywhere. It would have been rough sailing in these waters without the charts that showed the subsurface rocks everywhere. At times, the landscape before them looked more like the moon than a place on earth because it was so barren and rocky. They viewed land and water scenery that few tourists ever got to experience, and they knew it. In spite of the challenging sea conditions, Meg and Shay were really enjoying sailing past peaceful fields and the weather-beaten coastline.

  The boat rose and fell on great swells of water, and Meg thought that the Atlantic Ocean seemed harsher on this side than it did at home. Sure, Meg had encountered some big waves sailing with her mom past Montauk, New York, but they were not as powerful as the ones she was experiencing here. The sailing was hard and their skill was being challenged with every swell.

  They had been sailing hard for a few hours when Shay decided that they should take a break and have some lunch. She steered the boat into a sheltered cove on the lee side of a rocky island sheltered from the wind and dropped anchor. They had packed a couple of sandwiches and, while they ate, Shay told Meg more about this part of Ireland where their family was from.

  In the seventeenth century, England made numerous attempts to conquer Ireland, outlawing the customs and language of the Irish. Ireland was divided into four provinces: Ulster in the north, Leinster in the east, Munster in the sou
th, and Connacht in the west. During one invasion of the English under Oliver Cromwell, now considered a cruel and tyrannical leader, the English adopted his “to hell or Connacht” saying for use when subduing the Irish. Cromwell’s campaign of subjugation drove the Irish from the fertile farmland of the other provinces to the rocky land of the west. But even there the Irish were not safe. A murderous crusade raged across the land, with punitive laws being enforced on the mainland. As a consequence, the Irish were forced to escape to the islands to preserve the language and the culture they loved.

  In the long term, even after Ireland gained its independence from England in the 1920s, the damage to the language had been done, with only a small number of Irish people still using Irish as their primary language. The number of people who continue to speak mainly Irish grows smaller each year. Irish, or Gaelic, as it is also called, can still be heard in tiny pockets in the country and scattered along the coast in places like the Aran Islands. These areas are called the Gaeltacht (pronounced gale-takt). Although learning Irish is mandatory in all schools in Ireland, and the language will never completely die, its time as a common language has long passed.

  “Mom, I want to learn Irish to keep it from dying.”

  “That is very noble, Meg. You know, since I only know just a little, maybe we can learn it together.”

  “I would really love that, Mom.”

  The thought of spending more time with her mother made Meg very happy. They finished their lunch and were soon sailing fast up the coast. They passed another rocky cliff with a scraggily green field on top, and Meg imagined how hard it must have been for people to live on such inhospitable land. Just the thought of a family needing a way to grow crops and figuring how to “build” farmland with seaweed and sand on top of rocks made her proud of the kind of people who were her family’s ancestors.