AN IRISHWOMAN'S DIARY

SHE was deaf, she was dumb, she was all of 12 years, and she made the crossing by currach from Inishturk. The passage was little over a mile. Sheep and cattle owned by the "Turk" men gazed out as she was landed at the claddach below the monastery.

Making her way to the graveyard by the ruined church, she lay down on St Patrick's Bed. And fell asleep. When she awoke, she could hear them talking about her. What's more, she could even answer back.

Apocryphal? Perhaps, but one of several stories collected on the holy island of Caher, south of Mayo's Clew Bay, by Irish circumnavigator Wallace Clark over 20 years ago. Here's another: an Englishman sailed into the wedgeshaped island and took away the graveyard's lava stone sea souvenir, it is said, from an Icelandic volcano. The Atlantic was tranquil as he weighed anchor.

Then the barometer began to fall. Westerlies began to blow. So hard that he couldn't make any passage. At last, says Clark, he threw the stone over in desperation. It was back on the old church altar the following day.

Once part of the Reek Sunday circuit, Caher is one of this State's most significant uninhabited locations, overlooking what Clark called a "50 mile cinerama" running from the Nephins in the north to Croagh Patrick's schist, to the imposing Mweelrea, Twelve Bens and Diamond Mountain.

Monastic Site

If its purity depended on splendid isolation, it has now become as vulnerable as any offshore island. Caher may not have a helicopter pad, hardly a harbour, but it is attracting the best and worst of tounspi. The best? The regular, sustainable, link with Inishturk, and visits by archaeologists to study the island's stations or cross slabs and its holy well. The worst? Island hoppers on private vessels or chartered boats, who may not have the same respect for the monastic site.

Surrounded by reefs, the approach to Caher requires local knowledge. Increasingly, as EU policies drive set aside land and reduce fish stocks, local boat owners are turning to island tourism as an economic option. One Galway boat owner, who has transported archaeologists to the holy islands for years, recently described how his lobster take had reduced from 40 to 20 to one, how local boats intended to abandon the fishery till stocks recovered . . . and he expressed great interest in providing regular transport to Caher, all of 15 miles north.

It's an issue which arose this past summer during a European Heritage Campus sponsored by the EU Cultural Affairs directorate and hosted by Clare Island's Centre for Island Studies. A dozen participants, selected from over 250 applicants across Europe, worked on an illustrated inventory of holy and ecclesiastical sites on offshore islands from Erris to Slyne Head. A separate group tackled a policy document for interpretation, conservation and access, while a third group worked on visual interpretation of Clare Island abbey's unique wall paintings.

Studies Centre

"Eclectic" is how Ciara Cullen, of the Centre for Island Studies, describes her charges. Cullen, who founded the island studies centre with Dr Peter Gill in 1989, could be credited with coining the expression "sustainable tourism". It was she who organised the first of several weekend symposia in Clare Island. She was instrumental in the Royal Irish Academy's decision to commission a new multi disciplinary scientific survey there, based on the original biological inventory carried out by Robert Lloyd Praeger and associates in 1910-1911. Most recently, the centre published a population census on the islands. This compared the numbers on one summer's day to winter figures, and it came up with some startling results.

The European Heritage Campus participants hailed from eastern, central and western universities, and the Irish inventory was one of 19 regional initiatives. Others included restoration of the wooden interior of an 18th century Swedish farm rehabilitation of a 15th century fortified monastery in Moldavia, Romania work on a monastery in Corfu and, in Britain, a survey of the Bankside heritage on the River Thames.

Professor Michael Herity, retired associate professor of archaeology at University College, Dublin, and an acknowledged expert on holy islands and hermitages, arrived by air to give of his vast knowledge - holding the group spellbound, according to Cullen. As president of the Royal Irish Academy, he has a particular interest in Clare Island.

Battered Outcrops

But what struck Ciara, and many of those participating, were the risks associated with a lack of any co ordinated State policy towards uninhabited islands - let alone the inhabited ones. While much of the focus in recent years has been on the Office of Public Works' protection of the Skelligs, there is no clear direction on the future of Chapel at Slyne Head, High Island, Inishark, Inishbofin, Crump, Caher, Inishturk, Clare, Damhoileain, the Inishkeas and Inishglora . . . and all those little Atlantic battered out crops which are subject not only to uncontrolled access, but also to weathering and even the hooves of sheep.

Such was the success of the campus that the Centre for Island Studies intends to publish the results of the work this autumn. The Europeans took only memories and left only footprints ... just about. One of the participants, from Spain, could be held responsible for a bit of cultural imperialism, or a simple revival of ancient Irish Hispanic links. She initiated a wave of flamenco dancing on Inishturk!