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Archiver > IrelandGenWeb > 2003-10 > 1067372502


From: "Jean Rice" <>
Subject: [IGW] Irish Island Emigration And Its Legacy
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 12:21:42 -0800


SNIPPET: Per Stephen A. ROYLE, author and lecturer in geography at Queen's University, Belfast, in his article "Leaving the 'dreadful rocks...' in the Summer 1999 issue of "History Ireland" magazine (pub. Dublin) -- the small islands off the north and west coasts of Ireland. have always been what Americans would call "hardscrabble" places. Island life was especially hard in the past. The unusual survival of census documents from 1821 for the Aran Islands demonstrate a subsistence, peasant society where the few resources available had to be exploited to the utmost. Apart from full-time fishermen, mainly in Killeaney village, Inishmore, a number of labourers and some people, mainly widows, who made fishing nets, few people had only one recorded occupation. Sixty per cent of household heads worked the land, but most had to have other jobs, for agriculture on Aran was not easy. Holdings were not that small for rural Ireland, the mean holding size for the three island b!
eing 11.3 ha, but the land often had to be literally "made" by creating artificial soil on the islands' bare limestone by spreading layers of sand and seaweed onto the rock surface. Loose rocks would be crafted into the famous Aran drystone walls to protect the precious soil. Further, the farmers did not own their holdings, the islands belonged to an absentee landlord in Dublin. The secondary jobs, in addition to farming, were usually as fishermen and/or kelpmakers (kelp is seaweed which was gathered, dried and burnt to ash, from which iodine and other by-products were extracted). Kelpmaking was an important feature of the Aran economy as it produced cash, needed to meet rental payments. Further activities not recorded in the census, but known to have existed included sealing, the taking of seabirds and illicit distilling. Wrack (material washed ashore) was avidly gathered - providing wood for building or fuel. The islands provided neither wood nor turf, and the islan!
ders burnt "bualtrach" (cow dung), which would be dried on walls. In short, the Aran Islands in 1821 displayed an economy which was stretched to its utmost with every feasible activity exploited. No wonder then in 1822 when bad weather caused the potatoes to fail there was a crisis on the islands serious enough to require outside help.

Such over-stressed economies were not capable of much expansion and were increasingly unable to satisfy people who, during the 19th and 20th centuries, became aware of the opportunities created by industrialisation in northeast Ireland and Britain, as well as rumoured opportunities in faraway America. And so the islanders left - in droves. Sometimes an island proved unable to sustain a viable society at all and complete depopulation resulted. The 1841 census identify 211 inhabited islands with a total population of 38,138; in 1991 there were just 66 with about 9,700 people and many of these islands are now connected to the mainland by fixed. In percentage terms, the population decline on Irish islands was almost twice the rate of loss from Ireland as a whole during this period. This outpouring of people unwilling to put up further with the hardships of island life has left its mark, in both physical and other ways. Regarding landscapes, on the depopulated islands -!
Great Blasket, Finish, Scattery, Owey and scores of others - are silent, empty, largely tumbled, villages, standing in evocative echo of their lost society. Even islands still with people have empty houses, sometimes empty villages as on Dursey and Achill. Further, all the islands had to be more intensively farmed in the past to enable them to support their greater populations and abandoned fields and lazy beds are mute testimony to this past pressure. Ruined villages and old agricultural systems are now viewed in heritage terms, the deserted Slievemore village on Achill even has a preservation society. Visitors are taken to the islands and may wander around the ruined cottages trying to conjure up the ghosts of the long-gone islanders.

Researchers can also enjoy reading islanders' accounts of their own lives, most of which have been translated. These autobiographies were written in the conscious realisation that the way of life being recorded was the subject of irreversible decay as migration slowly but surely destroyed their community.

The Blasket story is celebrated today by taking people to visit the island itself, boats run there from Dunquin. Further, there is the new Blasket Heritage Centre that stands on the mainland overlooking the island; a splendid tribute to the Blasket heritage. However, the heritage celebrated there is dead. Elsewhere, efforts are being made to try and end the scourge of migration that turned so many island communities into history by efforts by local and national government and the European Union, etc.

Accompanying the magazine article is a photo of three Blasket islanders in a naomhog (boat) c. 1930 (D. Mac Monagle). Also shown are photos of three Great Blasket Island autobiographers: Peig Sayers, who died in 1958; Tomas O Criomhthain;, and Muiris O Suilleabhain, whose narratives you can find in libraries worldwide. Further in-depth reading would include: (1) S. Royle, 'From the periphery of the periphery; historical, cultural and literary perspective on emigration from the minor islands of Ireland,' in R. King and J. Connell (eds.) "Small Worlds, Global Lives: islands and migration," (pub. London 1998); (2) M. Cross, 'Service availability and development among Ireland's island communities; the implications for population stability,' in "Irish Geography," 29.1, 1996; (3) S. Royle and D. Scott, 'Accessibility and the Irish islands,' in "Geography," 81.2; (4) M. Mac Conghail, "The Blaskets: people and literature," (pub. Dublin 1987). Additionally, there are also!
several recently-published books with lovely photographs and impressions by contemporary writers. Check for information on numerous Internet websites, as well.




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