IT IS easy to liken the isolated Co Mayo island of Inishturk to the mythical Celtic isle of Hy Brasil. From some mainland vantage points, all it takes is a mere wave of nature’s wand and it melts into a misty shadow over the horizon.
Like many of the rosary of rocky jewels that surround our coastline, Inishturk teeters on the edge of our imaginations.
It is a world apart; a world that basks in mystery and myth, tradition and simplicity. It is also a world of fragile realities for the plummeting population of 50 islanders.
There were six pupils left in tiny St Columba’s national school when it closed recently for the summer holidays. Next September three of these young islanders will set off for secondary school on the mainland, leaving just three pupils on the school roll book.
At present, there are no pre-school children on the island and the long-term future of this microcosmic community reels precariously at the whim of favourable government policy.
Let’s hope that the observation by Minister of State for Gaeltacht Affairs, Dinny McGinley, at the recent annual general meeting of Cómdháil Oileáin na hÉireann (Federation of Irish Islands), was more than just lip service. Poignantly, he told islanders that the country’s depopulated islands were not abandoned by their communities, rather they were abandoned by the people and bodies charged with looking after them. The fact that the Minister’s forebears were natives of now depopulated Gola (off Donegal) assured islanders of his sincerity.
Even on a calm day the nine-mile voyage to ’Turk, as locals call it, is not for the faint-hearted. My recent expedition on a sun-kissed “pet day” reminded me of that marine minutia. During our hour-long odyssey the lazy rolling swell pitched The Pirate Queen ferry into a languorous drunken waltz with the waves, as butterflies of every colour danced dizzily through my innards.
Inishturk and Tory Island, off Donegal, are the most distant of the inhabited islands from mainland harbours. While Tory stands like a solitary sentinel in the rolling open Atlantic, ’Turk lies between Clare Island, nine miles north, and Inishbofin, nine miles south on the Galway coast.
Ironically this exposed settlement – which is 5km long – has an idyllic natural harbour that nestles on its south-eastern face. From the harbour, the winding road curls and climbs past the church (also named after St Columba), the little post office, the community centre and shop and along the cliff-edge southwards.
Then holy island, Caher, Croagh Patrick, Clare Island and Clew Bay disappear as around another corner more distant contours emerge, while the island graveyard and school come into view.
This undulating panorama is overlooked by the mainland mountainous medley of Mweelra, the Maamturks and the Twelve Bens, while back at sea level, Killary Harbour hides its second World War secrets of submarines and U-boats, and low-lying Inishbofin slouches like a sleeping crocodile.
For generations this small community has battled bravely with the anarchic Atlantic to eke out a livelihood far from the rugged west coast of the mainland. Survival is etched deeply in the communal DNA. And while there is no official word of relocation to the mainland or the withdrawal of services, the government- supported evacuation of the Inishkeas in north Mayo in 1935, the Blaskets in 1953 and nearby Inishark in 1960 resonates deeply for all island communities.
But this is a community that outwitted its 19th-century colonial landlords, the Earls of Lucan. Back then, this notorious ascendancy family owned 61,000 acres of lands throughout Mayo. During the Famine of the 1840s, their impoverished tenants were paying rents of £100,000 annually. Unsurprisingly, the starving tenants on the rocky outpost of Inishturk were unable to pay their rents. By 1851, the 250 inhabitants were subsisting and struggling, in dire straits. Like in the many congested districts along the western seaboard, death, disease and emigration were commonplace. Repeated potato failure caused by the blight had taken its toll.
Renowned as a cruel and sadistic landlord, Lord Lucan sent a navy gunboat with an armed force of bailiffs and constabulary to the island. Their mission was to evict the entire population and to level their little botháns and cottages. The terrified community was transported at gunpoint to the workhouse in Westport.
But Lucan’s treacherous act had not gone unnoticed. The MP for Mayo, Ousley Higgins was so outraged he challenged the Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Francis Baring, at a sitting of the British House of Parliament.
“Has it been, sir, with the sanction of the Government that Her Majesty’s navy was so placed at the disposal of the landlords of the west of Ireland for the purpose of extermination?” asked the MP for Mayo.
Ironically, the islanders ultimately had the last laugh. Over the following decades, one banished family after another returned to rebuild their houses and restock and cultivate their tiny patches of precious land. Islander Martin Prendergast would subsequently ensure this historic vignette was recorded by the Irish Folklore Commission in 1934.
In his book, The Tory Islanders, A People of the Celtic Fringe, Robin Fox writes: "At the very highest universal level Tory represents a hymn to the human spirit. Humanity consists here not only in heroism – although there is that too – but in the many little things that collectively make a viable way of life in the teeth of the odds." Fox could equally have been writing about the Inishturks.