An Irishwoman’s Diary: Meeting islanders with Irish ancestry on Montserrat

Take one raw egg, several spoonfuls of oatflakes, some fruit and a glass of Guinness. Blend all together until smooth as cream. Move over Diageo, make room for Dannie Lyons.

“I might have one at breakfast and another any time of the day,” the retired policeman- turned-roadie says of his cocktail, as he negotiates the hairpin bends on the one “highway” through Montserrat.

Lyons slipstreams language as he imparts the recipe, moving between eloquent, expressive English and the far more musical creole. Creole is not part of the school curriculum here or any of the neighbouring Caribbean islands – but perhaps that’s a key to its survival.

So, we wonder if this particular dialect – developed on sugar plantations to poke fun at slave masters – might have some Irish traces? If Erse was the first language of early colonists and indentured servants here, surely not every command would have been imparted in the Queen’s English?

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Lyons isn't too sure, but knows that Irish was spoken on Montserrat until a generation back. The Caribbean island has many Irish surnames and placenames, as well as instruments such as the jumbie drum and babala, resembling the bodhrán. Yet just one Irish word – minnseach, or female goat – still survives in creole.

"Ask around," Lyons advises, and so we do. Joe Sweeney, whose house overlooks the island's harbour at Brades, believes his late father would have been able to recall some Irish phrases when interviewed by Radharc and Channel 4 film crews – the latter led by then sociologist President Michael D Higgins – researching links.

Sweeney can trace his family back to 1671, with Irish roots on both his mother and father’s side. His father was a “fisherman, shipwright, stonemason, smuggler,” he says proudly. He caught turtles for meat, but he also knew how to land brandy and rum.

Sweeney left Montserrat at 24 and remembers being deaf to the wise words that implored him to stay. Drawn to brighter lights, he would only begin to understand his father’s advice after he had alighted on a cold and windy platform in London’s Paddington station.

“My first job was emptying bins, and then a man advised me to move to Slough. I got a job making inserts for toilet rolls and I did that for many years, ” Sweeney says, with no trace of resentment or anger. He was labelled “sambo” and worse so many times that he has lost count. Once, he was asked why he wouldn’t “make brushes” out of his hair

Sweeney’s spirit was sustained over 62 years by frequent visits back home and by his implicit belief that his children would have better opportunities – as they did. Maurice Gibbons, who also lives in Brades, shares a similar emigrant’s experience and takes a similar pragmatic attitude to his island’s complex colonial history

Gibbons worked most of his life in security, after he left for London in 1955. He scrimped and saved enough over 17 years to buy his first piece of island property, and encouraged each of his five children to spend time there. The economy received such a body blow after the 1995-97 volcanic eruption that full-time residency wasn’t realistic. His wish now is to donate some of his land to relatives back in Connemara.

The Soufriere hills are still smoking, and so the constant threat of natural disaster allows little time to be bitter or angry, though there is a sense among some residents that Britain would have loved to have cleared the island after the last eruptions and save on subsidies.

Irish assistance through the credit unions and volunteer repair crews is still remembered, as is the role of Irish priest Fr Larry Finnegan, who lived with more than 80 Montserratians in the emergency shelter he created from his church in Salem .

For his work, he received an OBE and Montserrat badge of honour, and warm tributes in the Montserrat Reporter when he died in Roscommon last year.

Dubliner Martin Healy, and rotating members of the Martin Healy Trad Band maintain the island-to-island connection. Since 2006, Healy, Niall Brosnan, Greg Kenny, Tom Phelan, Tommy Keane, Andy Healy, Gerry Murray and Kellie Butler have taken star turns at Montserrat’s week-long St Patrick’s Festival, with support from Culture Ireland until this year.

The band "roadie", Dannie Lyons, can vouch for the fact that this State funding has been well spent. And there's a particular echo to those renditions of Inisheer and Roisín Dubh as the night air catches the piper's notes over a silky Caribbean.