A few months ago we chanced upon a book called Twenty Years A-growing, by Maurice O'Sullivan, about his life on the Blasket Islands about a century ago. It was all about the sea, and the wakes, and singing around the peat fire in the evening, and was quite poetic. Although we were reading an English translation from the Irish, you could hear the music of the language. (In the Toronto Public Library this book is not available on loan, but there is a radio play adaptation by Dylan Thomas).
The maximum population of the Blasket Islands was a mere 176 souls, and it diminished until the last people left in 1953, something like many of the Newfoundland outports. We visited the modern Blasket Centre at Dunquin on the mainland. The islanders led tough lives: there are photos of women working in the fields in long dresses, and barefoot children in the schoolyard. It's generally windy there and rarely warm. Many of them emigrated to the US, and one display showed letters and photos they sent back, looking "like movie stars", their relatives thought.
But this small community produced at least a dozen writers who have been published, including three prominent ones. Of course part of the interest is historical and anthropological, but at least one book had real literary merit.
They were some of the few Irish speakers at that time, although through state assistance, Irish is making a bit of a comeback. Unfortunately, the Blasket Islanders' schooling was in English. I couldn't help thinking of the Manitoba Cree communities where I taught in the 1970s, which were in a similar situation regarding the language. An elder would come into the school to tell stories in Cree, which the children loved. Probably any indigenous community has a wealth of oral culture that is disappearing or has already disappeared.
2025-02-08