The history of Clare Island is as visible and tangible as the veins and lines in the skin of an old person. The entire island is furrowed with lazy beds, the potato beds that betrayed our ancestors so cruelly. The lazy beds ripple across the fields, up mountainsides and along the shoreline. They are as integral a part of the landscape of Clare Island as the square castle that sits at the entrance to the perfect half-moon harbour, once the home of Granuaile, the pirate queen of Connaught.
In the mid-19th century, there were 1,600 people living on Clare Island, which lies in Clew Bay, off the Mayo coast. Today there are less than 150, a figure which is apparently proportionally the same as the wider statistics of depopulation for the entire island of Ireland since the Famine.
For the last four years, the Bard Summer School of Storytelling and Myth has taken place each summer on Clare Island for five days. The summer school is described by its organisers, Ellen O'Malley and Sandy Dunlop, as "exploring the relevance of Celtic myth to the contemporary world through storytelling, lectures, poetry, feasting and song". Ellen O'Malley is a former chieftain of the O'Malley clan and her grandfather was an islander. The myth under discussion this year was Deirdre and the Sons of Ushna, focusing on the themes of love, war and exile.
Twenty people made the journey to Clare Island this summer for the event. While most of them were Irish, some had travelled from England and the US. One young woman had come from Prague. Businesswoman Noreen Whalen had flown from Kansas especially to attend. "I'm interested in Celtic history and was intrigued by the idea of spending time with people who had the same interests," she explains. "I suppose I could have found something similar in the States, but it would have been attended only by Irish-Americans and probably held somewhere like Boston or New York, and hell, I figured if I'm coming all the way from Kansas, I might as come straight to Ireland and have the whole cultural experience."
Noreen had obviously picked up a bit of Irish blarney during her week here. "I never travel anywhere without my red shoes," she confided gleefully. "That way I know I can always click my heels and escape at any time."
It was Day Four when I arrived to get a flavour of the week, via the route recommended in The Sawdoctors' beautifully haunting ballad about this part of the world: Are you going to Clare Island? Take the ferry out from Roonagh . . . From Roonagh, the island swells like an inquisitive whale; the mountain of Knockmore on the western side rising high and startled from the blue-grey sea. The ferry was called The Pirate Queen; no vessel named The Sawdoctors in sight.
By Day Four, participants in the school had already looked at the story of Finn MacCumhaill, as well as stories of Saint Bridget and Saint Patrick, and the central focus of the week, the Deirdre story. Anne Chambers, author of a biography of Granuaile, had given a talk. Daithi O h'Ogain had presented a paper entitled A Folklorist's Look At The Deirdre Myth. The islanders themselves had gathered one evening in the hotel bar to tell their own stories, an event which had apparently been wildly successful. "We tell stories all the time. Our mythology has made us who we are," mused Father Jim Finn from Waterford. He says that he refers to Celtic myths in his sermons. "It's a way of working stories into our spirituality. If you look at all the big themes in Celtic myths - searching, journeying, coming home - you can see their relevance in a spiritual context."
With a surname like Dante, no other explanation should really be necessary as to why one would be interested in a summer school with the words "bard" and "story" in it. Marion Dante grew up in England, of Irish parentage. "I`ve come to Clare Island because I'm thinking of coming to live in Ireland and I wanted to spend some time here and learn a bit about Irish mythology as well. I'm a bit muddled on my Irish myths."
Kevin McMahon's family emigrated from Inis Mor during the Famine. He lives in Connecticut, from where he travelled for the school, his soprano saxophone tucked under his oxter on the plane. He entranced the entire bar into silence with his superb playing. Teacher, actor and musician Kevin saw the week on Clare Island as "providing me with opportunities to weave storytelling into each of these areas of my work". While the written word was being celebrated, it was a hefty irony that Clare Island lost its post office in the same week. Now islanders will have to travel to Roonagh by ferry to collect their social welfare benefits. Nobody was yet quite sure what would happen to postal deliveries and collections.
"They've put up a box near the pier, but nobody will trust it," said Oliver O'Malley who runs a shipshape bed and breakfast with his wife Mary on Toormore, at the western side of the island. Both of them are islanders born and bred: Oliver from Clare itself and Mary from nearby Inishturk. "We don't yet know how it will affect our postal bookings for the bed and breakfast, but it's bound to. How can it not?" Oliver shrugged. "Losing the post office on an island is like losing the school."
In the middle of Clare Island is the tiny Cistercian abbey where Granuaile is allegedly entombed. Whatever or whoever lies hidden within the abbey, one thing which has certainly emerged over the last number of years are the fantastical wall paintings on the chancel roof. These are currently undergoing restoration by the State. Amid the yellows and ochres and siennas of the chancel roof, greyhounds, stags, horses, hunters, dragons, griffins, harpers, and birds, are slowly being given life. When they are finished and the abbey is open to the public, the wall paintings will surely contribute enormously to the pull of the island.
On the last full day of the school, everyone gathered together for the Feasta, described by Ellen as being "a feast of fruits of the sea and land, with a Celtic blessing, song and poetry". Almost 40 people gathered in the Bay View Hotel to sit down together that evening, at one big table.
Fuschia tumbled from every pelmet, ferns were scattered across mantelpiece and sideboard, candles gave the illusion of doubling the numbers present by casting our shadows on every wall. For some reason, the curtains were closed against the evening sun. There was quite a bit of stifled giggling up and down the table during the "Celtic Blessing", an invocation to each of the provinces of Ireland, which involved standing to attention and facing in the direction of each province by turn with raised goblets of mead. Well, the Americans liked it.
Yeats's "fish, flesh and fowl" were all present on the table. The fish was represented by a veritable salmon of knowledge, poached pink and magnificent. Brendan Rohan had brought venison from Donegal, which had spent the previous two days steeping in wine, in proper feast-like way. The largest free-range turkey any of us had every seen took the centre of the table. It all began to feel like a scene from Braveheart. We ate, nay feasted.
Afterwards, Galway poet Mary O'Malley stood up and hauled us all back to the real world. She gave an exquisite reading from her brutally beautiful long poem about a hospital operation, Ms Panacea Regrets. I wandered out to look at the moon rising over the little harbour and Granuaile's castle, sustained both in stomach and soul.
