Aer Arann

by Peg Hernon

The first flight of the day had just taxied out from Inis Mor airport this blustery morning when the Postman arrived and backed his van down the ramp into the garage. The outgoing Post for the 10:15 Aer Arann Islands flight from Inis Mor included a large shipment of island-made baskets individually wrapped in brown, knobby packages in assorted shapes and sizes. One crewman started weighing them while the other went for a tarpaulin to secure them on the baggage trolley. The baskets are a large load, but light, and the trick this gusty day will be to keep them from flying off the trolley while being loaded onto the aircraft.

Inside I got the tape dispenser and a notice for an island pub quiz and headed to the long counter at the back to hang it up. In summer, the back counter is crowded with flyers advertising island accommodation, restaurants, and live music in the pubs. The counter is no less crowded in winter, but now the flyers are about community events and the various study courses available in winter. I hung the Pub Quiz flyer between Irish for Adults and Weight Watchers. On either side of this trio fluttered notices advertising Yoga lessons, English for Adults and an upcoming computer course offered by the Comharchumann, the island co-operative. Winter is a time for learning on Inis Mor. In my winters here I’ve learned to knit, to play the bodhran, and I’ll be learning about gardening the rest of my life. I couldn’t master the fiddle, but I learned I could clear the house of husband, dogs and cats just by dragging the bow across the strings, which produces a sound like the screech of fingernails on a chalkboard, only louder. Two separate attempts to learn Irish nearly killed me twice, but I bloomed in the writing course given by poet, Mary O’Malley. Satisfied with the look of the back counter, I went to the desk to check-in outbound passengers for the 10:15 flight.

The passengers who disembarked from the inbound flight included the lady who teaches organic gardening to island farmers, and the music teacher who commutes regularly once a week in winter from Inis Oirr for an overnight stay on Inis Mor. During the day he teaches children in the island schools, and at night he hosts a Seisiun in a local pub for adult students learning to play traditional musical instruments. Whether you strum, pluck, tootle or bang, the Seisiun is where you can improve your individual skill and learn to play with other musicians in a group.

When the 10:15 flight departed for Inverin with the Post load of baskets, I took a moment to check our own baskets that are used for decoration and storage in the passenger waiting area. A sturdy square creel houses fire logs and a bucket of coal at one side of the fireplace, and a round mackerel basket holds magazines at the other. Above the stone fireplace hang several round, flat baskets grouped around the brass plaques that commemorate awards received by Aer Arann. In the summer months, the small round baskets are used at the outside seating area to hold island maps and brochures. I love baskets. They’re beautiful and useful, and the craft of basket making is nearly as old as Man. The only maintenance a basket ever needs is to be put outdoors in the rain once a year to keep it from becoming dry and brittle. I considered a bare corner near the door. A basket would look good there; something tall to hold umbrellas, and the leafy philodendron on the back counter would look better in a willow planter.

I was out on the tarmac with the crew to meet the 11:30 Aer Arann Islands flight when it occurred to me that a willow trellis would look great against the white wall of the airport building. The aircraft arrived and parked; it would be sitting out with us until the afternoon flight session began in a couple of hours. I asked a crewman to cover the desk for me and hopped on the airport bus with passengers bound for the village.

Everyone on Inis Mor knows Vincent McCarron, the island basket maker. Summer days you can find him weaving baskets at the base of Dun Aenghus Fortress; on this winter day I found him in his workshop in Eoghanacht, turning out “starter” baskets for the occupational therapy courses that he gives at the island nursing home and at a home in Connemara. He was finishing a base, flipping the willow wands as if they were ribbons, the fledgling basket turning steadily in his hands. I breathed in the grassy aroma and looked around. Standing against one wall are sheaves of harvested “sally rods” that he grows himself and the ceiling is hung with baskets of every size and type: round shoppers, oval garden trugs, cunning birdhouses, and seaweed baskets that have an open-work base to allow seawater to drain when bringing seaweed up from the beach. Dried seaweed is a good fertilizer still used on Arain to cut the dense, shallow clay and turn it into soil for our gardens. The centres of Vincent’s baskets are woven in the distinct grid-work pattern characteristic of Arain style. Baskets were stacked on the floor and spilled over into a rocking cradle. I found a tall planter for the airport brollies, a squat one for the philodendron, and added two medium creels – you can never have enough creels. I puzzled over a curved basket with a wide opening that hung flat against the wall. “It’s a May basket” said Vincent from his work bench, “you fill it with furze and blackthorn - the first flowers to bloom in spring - and you hang it on your front door, but you mustn’t bring them into the house. It’s said in the old tradition that if you bring those flowers into the house, the men of the house will leave”. Charmed by the May basket and its folklore, I added it to my pile. In the corner by his workbench were several baskets partly wrapped for shipping that no doubt will show up at the airport soon. Vincent & I talked about trellis size and design until a honk from the airport bus told me it was time to leave. Passengers for the outbound 2:45 pm flight were to be picked up in Kilmurvey and Kilronan villages.

When the 2:45 pm flight had departed I popped the philodendron into its new home and put the best of our wind-battered brollies into the planter in the corner. I got the new St. Brigid’s cross woven in the style of Arain, a gift from Vincent, and hung it up next to the old cross woven in the style of Kildare. Spring is Brigid’s season and we’ll be ready for it whenever it blows in. I looked at the collection of course flyers and felt that Merlyn would approve of the winter students on Arain. In the classic by T. H. White, when Arthur pulled the sword from the stone and became King Arthur, Merlyn’s final advice to the young king was to never stop learning.

“You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lay awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewer of baser minds. There is only one thing then – to learn. Learning is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, never dream of regretting. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theosophy and geography and history and economics – why, you can begin to make a wheel out of wood, or spend fifty years learning to beat your enemy at fencing. After that you can start on music, until it is time to learn how to plough, or to dance.”

T. H White, The Once and Future King (London: Putnam, 1939)