My mother's family originated in County
Mayo. Her maternal grandparents, "Big Martin" O'Malley and Anne Moran, came from Clare Island; when I visited one of my mother's three surviving second cousins, Michael Joe O'Malley, in 1973, the stone ruins of a house in which Martin and Anne and some of
their 13 children lived still stood in Ballytoohy, the island's
northern townland. Walking on the island, my friend Gerry Valenti and I encountered islanders who, in satisfying their curiosity about what two teen-aged Yanks were doing in such a place in November, told us they knew who my great-grandparents were. Eighty years after they left.
I haven't been back to the island since 1973. Michael
Joe O'Malley died in 1989 after having to leave the island to receive dialysis treatments in Galway. He was cared for in his last years by a young woman named Ciara Cullen, who, like me, arrived on the island when she was 19. Whereas my stay was brief and stormy -- as recorded in a St. Patrick's Day essay I wrote some time ago -- Ciara's has been long and fruitful. She inherited Michael Joe's farm and has made a go of earning a living the way he did, raising sheep. With other islanders, she has also founded the Centre for Island Studies, which played a part in convincing the Royal Irish Academy to carry out a reprise of its historic 1911 multidisciplinary scientific study of the island.
Clare
Island is famous in history as one of the
strongholds of the powerful O'Malley
Clan of the 16th century. A tower that rises above the island's harbor is called Graine's Castle after Graineuaile or Grace O'Malley, the most celebrated of the clan's leaders (the island manager, Donal O'Shea, is reportedly leading an effort to raise money to restore the structure). Another historic building on the island is the ruin of a
12th century Cistercian abbey, the putative burial place of Graine.
There is a carved stone tablet set in the wall of the ruins that bears the clan arms (lacking in heraldic lingo, I'll describe it as a boar prancing above a sailing ship) and the mottoTerra Marique Potens -- "Strong on land and sea."
The island is in a part of Ireland that had much of
its life scoured away by the Great Famine that began in 1845 and which was followed by an unbroken 150 years of emigration. In 1841, as Ireland's population reached its peak, more than 1,500 people lived on Clare Islands 9 square miles. The population now stands at about 150 or so, a slight decrease from the 180 residents of a quarter century ago. Like much of the poor, lonely reaches of Mayo, tourism, a wave of curiosity about Irish culture and history, and the European Union's economic efforts have put Clare Island on the map and on the Web. A Norwegian company arrived in the late '80s to start a salmon farm; formal island accommodations -- restricted in 1973 to Chris Grady's Bayview Hotel, have spread and now include the lighthouse that sits atop the 400-foot cliffs on the north coast; story-telling seminars have become a regular summer occurrence; a big new ferry sails from Roonagh; and the landing at Roonagh Quay has been improved.
(On the other hand, not all is "progress": McCabe's, the quayside bar, has just closed after more than 100 years in business; and the island post office, run by the same McCabes, has also shut down.)
I'd like to put up a more systematic collection of
writings about the island and its people. For starters, I've put a
1982 article I wrote -- "American and Irish: the fading of the green" -- online. And I'm in the process (fall, 2003) of posting my 1973 journal, too. I'd like to hear from anyone who knows the island, has news from it or who has family connections there. I'm in the process of tracking down some of the extensive scientific writing on the island -- considered one of the richest geological sites in Europe -- and will assemble a bibliography. Really I will.
In the meantime, here are links to a few sites that feature the island:
September 28, 2003