THREE wise women lived on the coastline of Connemara. Witches, some might call them on the mainland, but they were held in great respect by the "gentle folk" who lived on the islands. On a certain day, one of the women received a visit from a couple who were beside themselves as to how to cure their very sick son, writes LORNA SIGGINS
Like any good GP, the woman quizzed them for information. The couple recounted how their boy, Colm, had been repairing a rowing boat with his father and brother. The plank used for the job had been found washed ashore some time back and was a perfect fit. The three men had finished their toil, and were pushing the boat into the sea on a couple of rollers when the boat fell on its side, trapping Colm underneath. It seemed he wasn’t badly hurt at all. Yet for the next few weeks, as he lay on a straw bed on the kitchen floor, he seemed to be fading away.
The wise woman took an egg from the alcove by her chimney, placed it with two straws on the table, and covered her head with a black cloth. Eventually, she cast off the cloth and told the couple that their son was sailing his boat “into a great light”.
That plank was from timber that had been cursed “from the time it was cut in the wood”. It had been used already in a ship that had been lost. The curse had passed onto the couple’s son. As they arrived home they knew, before being told so, that he had already passed away.
The story is one of many recounted by Sean Barrett in an epic – it can only be described thus – which he dictated to his daughter, Margo, and published last year in book form in aid of the Carna lifeboat fund. Entitled The Miracles of the Enchanted Island, the book is about a young couple who lived on Mason island in the west, and how they gave birth to a boy who couldn't see.
The same boy became enraptured by neighbouring MacDara’s island, named after the saint who loved stonemasonry, and was banished by his abbott father from Kildare. Even before he had ever visited it, the boy, Sean Casey, could imagine the outcrop’s every blade of grass.
Connemara archaeologist Michael Gibbons has spoken at Harvard about Barrett’s work because he believes it represents a vital piece of oral history. Barrett in turn credits his grandmother, who related the narrative over many afternoons when “she was meant to be minding me and I was meant to be minding her”.
“I was the youngest and when they were all out working in the fields near where we lived in Baile an tSagairt, An Spidéal, she would sit by the fire on a wooden butter box and you kept quiet when a story was coming,” he says. She had been born on the “islands”, the area of south Connemara now linked by bridges, which was once totally dependent on boats.
Barrett spent many years away from Ireland in construction, as did those before him. His grandfather left Connemara for north America with not a word of English and worked on the transcontinental Pacific railroad. His father also sailed west and was drafted, finding himself back in Europe fighting in the first world war.
Barrett kept a large part of home in his mind’s eye during his time away. Not only can he name each field and rock around his home in an Spidéal, but he can also set up a handloom to weave a crios or belt similar to those woven on the Aran islands, and make an animal trap. Back in 1983 he made a bit of archaeological history when he and his dog Bob discovered ancient butter encased in an animal stomach in Connemara bogland. In April,2000, he won a bronze medal at the Salon International des Inventions in Geneva for a particular design of football table.
He is one of a group of eclectic people embraced by the Cnoc Suain cultural project, which Charlie Troy and musician Dearbhaill Standún have established just outside An Spidéal (www.cnocsuain.com).
Gerry Conneely, another Cnoc Suain “tutor”, remembers that storytelling did well during the last recession. While Sean Barrett is a living, breathing archive of coastal folklore, Conneely takes a contemporary approach. It was thanks to the “European discovery” of Doolin, Co Clare, some four decades ago that young Irish men learned that sex was more than a “theological abstraction” , he recounted during a recent evening in Cnoc Suain.
When the hordes of long-legged European blondes began flocking to south Co Clare for the sessions, it initiated a mobilisation among young native males “not seen since the 1798 rebellion”. A decade before that, the State’s health service had almost collapsed, he recalled.
For some reason which may require postgraduate analysis, black and white television – known as “the set” – was placed on top of the kitchen dresser when it arrived first on the island. Favoured location was “just above the Sacred Heart and photos of JFK”. Almost the entire health budget was eaten up by the cost of treating thousands of “cricks in necks”.
Conneely, who hopes to initiate a storytelling network during the winter, is due to talk about "the night of the television" , about "hippies and other extra-terrestrials" and more, at Cruinniú na mBád in Kinvara, Co Galway. Venue for the show, entitled Tired and Emotional, is Kinvara Court House, 8pm, on August 21st, 22nd and 23rd.