Words of Inspiration
by Peggy Hernon
The wind rises a bit in autumn, but on Inis Mór the air is so clean and crisp it feels good just to breathe. And although the days are getting shorter, the light here has a golden quality that keeps photographers snapping at a furious pace in an effort to capture it. The members of the photography club who arrived yesterday on the 4.00pm Aer Arann Islands flight started snapping pictures at Inverin airport and snapped and clicked right across Galway Bay. On disembarking at Inis Mór, they performed a virtual flamenco of clicking and snapping around the pilot and aircraft. A man with a small rucksack introduced himself as the club’s secretary. He asked me about their bus arrangements and I took him over to meet the driver. We stood by the bus and watched the rest of the club members claim their tripods, camera bags, laptops, film bags and personal luggage from the trolley. “This is all I need”, said the man, pointing to the compact camera slung around his neck. “Small is beautiful”, I said. “And less is often more” he replied.
I’m off today and determined to get out of the house and into that crisp air and golden sunshine. Wet wash into the dryer, chicken out of the freezer, I grabbed a candy bar for me, dog biscuits for retriever Lilah, and we’re out the door.
On the side of the main road was a group of people with bicycles who had stopped to shed woollen jumpers and rain gear and pack them on their bikes. A startled scream from one of the women and a whoop from another told me Lilah was working her way through the crowd, goosing people from behind. It’s her way of getting attention and we’ve never been able to break her of it because it works. With everyone watching her, Lilah sat and raised her right paw in a plea for goodies. Indignation melted and half a ham sandwich, several cream biscuits, and part of a chocolate Tiffin bar were dug out and offered. Lilah finished her snack about the same time that I finished apologising for her rude behaviour.
We left the main road and went in to the dunes where grass is waist high. The dunes are criss-crossed by narrow footpaths that are shared with visitors in the summer. When we pass each other we smile and give the thumbs up like soldiers from different platoons crossing in the jungle. Today the footpaths are empty. Lilah and I are headed to the Clochans, two stone beehive huts on the tip of the eastern foot of Inis Mór. These Clochans are not mentioned in most guide books as they are unexcavated. They are also a good distance from the main road. I can spot them from the air if the Aer Arann Islands aircraft is landing on Inis Mór’s 32 runway, but on foot they are hard to find in a sea of high dune grass unless you know what to look for. The Clochans are two grassy mounds, the larger only about a metre in height as most of the surface has been buried with the passing of time. You will know that you’ve found them by the circular pattern of the stone work still visible through the grass. In a time when landscapes change rapidly it’s good to lean against a little hut that has stood in the same place for about 1300 years.
Lilah went exploring while I settled down at the leeward side of the Clochan facing east, or “facing Ireland” as islanders say. My husband Michael and I are going to Dublin for a short break next month to see the Yeats exhibit at the National Library. You have to give Michael credit. He didn’t flinch at hearing the words “short break” and “National Library” in the same sentence. But then, he willingly climbed the tower at Ballylee and wandered through Coole Park with me in the pouring rain. We had sunshine at Drumcliffe and probably two or three weather fronts above us at the massive Ben Bulben.
I discovered Yeats when I was 15 and carrying a torch for Kevin Foley, captain of Power Memorial’s champion basketball team. We met at the back-to-school mixer, talked about our classes and he asked me to dance twice. My hopes and hormones rose like a floor shot to the basket. They came crashing down when he dropped me for Eileen Donovan who wore a black lace brassiere under her white nylon school blouse at the next after-school mixer. By Halloween they were going steady. The torch I carried was only surpassed in size and weight by the one held aloft by Lady Liberty. “Time heals all wounds”, said my mother; “Act as if it doesn’t matter”, urged my sister Annie, and my best friend Patsy asked, “Have you seen the football team?” They meant well but they didn’t understand that for some souls, love is forever. When class resumed after term break we sat down to 20 th Century Poetry. I opened the textbook at random and read:
A Deep-Sworn Vow
Others because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.
William Butler Yeats (1917), Yeats’s Poems, Gill and MacMillan, Dublin, 1989)
I sat bolt upright in recognition of another torch bearer who lived with unrequited love. I flipped to the biographical notes and read about actress Maud Gonne, who in 1903 married John MacBride, a leader of the 1916 Uprising. The people in Yeats’s triangle were a lot more glamorous than the ones in mine, but the poet’s feelings and mine were the same. My bruised heart sympathised, empathised and bonded. Feeling comforted, I flipped back to the poetry and read The Folly of Being Comforted and wondered how Yeats knew my mother. I was half-way through his advice to lovers, Never Give All The Heart, when Sister Mary Catherine loomed and asked if I wouldn’t mind joining the rest of the class reading T. S. Eliot.
I was over Kevin Foley by Christmas and I could even say hello to Eileen Donovan without hissing, but I never got over Yeats. His Celtic poems led me to the world of gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines whose adventures were better than Superman’s and were laced with ancient magic that transcended time and place.
Twenty years after finding Yeats, I read in the New York Times that a course on Celtic Mythology was being offered that spring at Columbia University. I figured it was time I got a framework for all those magical beings that had captured my youthful imagination, so I enrolled. When the course ended I asked the professor where in Ireland would I find Celtic ruins and he told me the Aran Islands were a repository of the Celtic tradition. I decided to take the plane from the mainland and asked at the Aer Arann check-in desk for the name of the best guide on Inis Mor. I was told I would find Michael Hernon at the island airport. I did!
No sign of Lilah anywhere. I called her and listened. I heard no thrashing noises that would mean she was actually coming when called, but I did hear the hum of an engine in the distance. I spotted the aircraft and watched it descend and land at Inis Meain. Time to go. I have a chicken to roast and clothes to press for work tomorrow. I started home on the footpath through the dunes and midway along I was expertly goosed from behind.
The wind rises a bit in autumn, but on Inis Mór the air is so clean and crisp it feels good just to breathe. And although the days are getting shorter, the light here has a golden quality that keeps photographers snapping at a furious pace in an effort to capture it. The members of the photography club who arrived yesterday on the 4.00pm Aer Arann Islands flight started snapping pictures at Inverin airport and snapped and clicked right across Galway Bay. On disembarking at Inis Mór, they performed a virtual flamenco of clicking and snapping around the pilot and aircraft. A man with a small rucksack introduced himself as the club’s secretary. He asked me about their bus arrangements and I took him over to meet the driver. We stood by the bus and watched the rest of the club members claim their tripods, camera bags, laptops, film bags and personal luggage from the trolley. “This is all I need”, said the man, pointing to the compact camera slung around his neck. “Small is beautiful”, I said. “And less is often more” he replied.
I’m off today and determined to get out of the house and into that crisp air and golden sunshine. Wet wash into the dryer, chicken out of the freezer, I grabbed a candy bar for me, dog biscuits for retriever Lilah, and we’re out the door.
On the side of the main road was a group of people with bicycles who had stopped to shed woollen jumpers and rain gear and pack them on their bikes. A startled scream from one of the women and a whoop from another told me Lilah was working her way through the crowd, goosing people from behind. It’s her way of getting attention and we’ve never been able to break her of it because it works. With everyone watching her, Lilah sat and raised her right paw in a plea for goodies. Indignation melted and half a ham sandwich, several cream biscuits, and part of a chocolate Tiffin bar were dug out and offered. Lilah finished her snack about the same time that I finished apologising for her rude behaviour.
We left the main road and went in to the dunes where grass is waist high. The dunes are criss-crossed by narrow footpaths that are shared with visitors in the summer. When we pass each other we smile and give the thumbs up like soldiers from different platoons crossing in the jungle. Today the footpaths are empty. Lilah and I are headed to the Clochans, two stone beehive huts on the tip of the eastern foot of Inis Mór. These Clochans are not mentioned in most guide books as they are unexcavated. They are also a good distance from the main road. I can spot them from the air if the Aer Arann Islands aircraft is landing on Inis Mór’s 32 runway, but on foot they are hard to find in a sea of high dune grass unless you know what to look for. The Clochans are two grassy mounds, the larger only about a metre in height as most of the surface has been buried with the passing of time. You will know that you’ve found them by the circular pattern of the stone work still visible through the grass. In a time when landscapes change rapidly it’s good to lean against a little hut that has stood in the same place for about 1300 years.
Lilah went exploring while I settled down at the leeward side of the Clochan facing east, or “facing Ireland” as islanders say. My husband Michael and I are going to Dublin for a short break next month to see the Yeats exhibit at the National Library. You have to give Michael credit. He didn’t flinch at hearing the words “short break” and “National Library” in the same sentence. But then, he willingly climbed the tower at Ballylee and wandered through Coole Park with me in the pouring rain. We had sunshine at Drumcliffe and probably two or three weather fronts above us at the massive Ben Bulben.
I discovered Yeats when I was 15 and carrying a torch for Kevin Foley, captain of Power Memorial’s champion basketball team. We met at the back-to-school mixer, talked about our classes and he asked me to dance twice. My hopes and hormones rose like a floor shot to the basket. They came crashing down when he dropped me for Eileen Donovan who wore a black lace brassiere under her white nylon school blouse at the next after-school mixer. By Halloween they were going steady. The torch I carried was only surpassed in size and weight by the one held aloft by Lady Liberty. “Time heals all wounds”, said my mother; “Act as if it doesn’t matter”, urged my sister Annie, and my best friend Patsy asked, “Have you seen the football team?” They meant well but they didn’t understand that for some souls, love is forever. When class resumed after term break we sat down to 20 th Century Poetry. I opened the textbook at random and read:
A Deep-Sworn Vow
Others because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.
William Butler Yeats (1917), Yeats’s Poems, Gill and MacMillan, Dublin, 1989)
I sat bolt upright in recognition of another torch bearer who lived with unrequited love. I flipped to the biographical notes and read about actress Maud Gonne, who in 1903 married John MacBride, a leader of the 1916 Uprising. The people in Yeats’s triangle were a lot more glamorous than the ones in mine, but the poet’s feelings and mine were the same. My bruised heart sympathised, empathised and bonded. Feeling comforted, I flipped back to the poetry and read The Folly of Being Comforted and wondered how Yeats knew my mother. I was half-way through his advice to lovers, Never Give All The Heart, when Sister Mary Catherine loomed and asked if I wouldn’t mind joining the rest of the class reading T. S. Eliot.
I was over Kevin Foley by Christmas and I could even say hello to Eileen Donovan without hissing, but I never got over Yeats. His Celtic poems led me to the world of gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines whose adventures were better than Superman’s and were laced with ancient magic that transcended time and place.
Twenty years after finding Yeats, I read in the New York Times that a course on Celtic Mythology was being offered that spring at Columbia University. I figured it was time I got a framework for all those magical beings that had captured my youthful imagination, so I enrolled. When the course ended I asked the professor where in Ireland would I find Celtic ruins and he told me the Aran Islands were a repository of the Celtic tradition. I decided to take the plane from the mainland and asked at the Aer Arann check-in desk for the name of the best guide on Inis Mor. I was told I would find Michael Hernon at the island airport. I did!
No sign of Lilah anywhere. I called her and listened. I heard no thrashing noises that would mean she was actually coming when called, but I did hear the hum of an engine in the distance. I spotted the aircraft and watched it descend and land at Inis Meain. Time to go. I have a chicken to roast and clothes to press for work tomorrow. I started home on the footpath through the dunes and midway along I was expertly goosed from behind.
