Áine Ryan: An Irishwoman’s Diary on returning to Clare Island for Christmas

After last year’s hiatus on the mainland, I am taking to the high seas off the wild west coast of Co Mayo once again to celebrate the Christmas shenanigans on Clare Island, my one-time home.

I have assured the pirate princesses (my O’Malley daughters) that I have no intention of secreting a flat bottle of brandy on my person on this occasion, unless there is another Ophelia or a Portia lurking over the horizon. I’ve told them that, of course, I understand their embarrassment at having to almost carry me onto the ferry two years ago due to my hysteria over a north-westerly gale that was still miles down the coast, albeit battering the bejaysus out of the Aran Islands.

Moreover, I have promised I will desist from singing the chorus of Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer over and over again even if it worked – to some degree – as a calming mantra while we rocked and rolled through marine potholes bigger than the Wolfe Creek crater. (Well, the secret slugs of brandy also had a most mellifluous medicinal effect.)

Instead, I plan to approach the four-mile voyage from Roonagh pier to Clare Island with the equanimity befitting a woman of a certain age. Sobriety will be my soubriquet as I board the ferry laden down with boxes of booze, cartons of cream, plum puddings, Secret Santa pressies, bags of baubles, beheaded turkeys.

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Whether the ocean is calm or rough, basking under the benevolence of high pressure or growling at a deepening depression, the salt- kissed (but most likely salt-soaked) deck will fill with ripples of expectancy, choruses of hilarity, plans for parties.

Aboard will be a gaggle of twentysomething and thirtysomething year-old islanders – university students and teachers, tour guides and nurses, environmental officers and film editors – all reverting to their secret dialect, learned in the playground of their tiny primary school, which sits in the shadow of the Cistercian Abbey, burial place of that pirate queen of some repute, Granuaile.

Escaped

They have escaped their working lives – frenetic and fast, stressful and gridlocked – in cities such as Dublin and Cork, Brussels and Berlin, to sail to the Clew Bay outpost where their hearts dance to a different tune. A melody that furrows deep into the past from the pathos of a sean-nós song to the staccato of a favourite polka or reel – usually

Shoe the Donkey

or

Toss the Feathers

. Although these days the rap-rhythm of news and gossip is broadcast through social media instead of the traditional method of the bush telegraph – Instagram has replaced the church gate; Facebook Cannons’ Corner or the slipway wall. The island is no longer a world quite so apart as selfies from Machu Picchu or Ayers Rock whizz across time zones faster than Santa Claus can crank up his sleigh.

‘Slightly delayed’

Meanwhile, if Roonagh harbour is free from surges of swell and breaking waves, the ferry will happily wait for that “slightly delayed” spinster aunt or widowed uncle whose lives have been spent in Nottingham and Coventry, Chicago and New York.

Their economic emigration during the 1950s, 1960s, and even the 1970s, was during a time when thatched cottages were lit by Tilley lamps and candlelight; the turf was brought home in cleaves and the hay cut with a scythe. These days that “foggy boggy” airport in Knock offers a proximity to their ancestral home – displacement is no longer a life sentence.

“Don’t loosen the ropes yet,” the roar echoes from high in the wheelhouse. “Pat ‘The Shoe’ and Lizzy Ann Bob are in a taxi the other side of Louisburgh.”

Across the waters the sleeping whale outline of the island fades into dusk, as finally the Clew Bay Queen, or True Light, heads for home.

Twenty-five minutes later, as we approach the promontory at the head of the island harbour where Granuaile’s castle stands guard, we are greeted by an extravaganza of twinkling lights, rosaries of candles, all across the villages of Fawngloss and Capnagower, Kille and Strake, Tormore and Gurteen. There will be no need for a GPS when Santa skids along roofs in the early hours.

Along the pier a convoy of jeeps and tractors splutter and choke while the boat is emptied. There are whoops of joy and hugs that squeeze the breath clean out of a body. Oilskinned fish-farmers tighten ropes and check clanking chains.

Back in the church the choir sings Adeste Fideles, the final run-through before Midnight Mass. Suddenly, a sliver of incensed air rustles through the crib and outside in the great expanse, the earth stops spinning. Just for a moment.