The Aran Islands | Page 4

Irish, east island,--like the middle island but slightly smaller. They lie
about thirty miles from Galway, up the centre of the bay, but they are
not far from the cliffs of County Clare, on the south, or the corner of
Connemara on the north.
Kilronan, the principal village on Aranmor, has been so much changed
by the fishing industry, developed there by the Congested Districts
Board, that it has now very little to distinguish it from any fishing

village on the west coast of Ireland. The other islands are more
primitive, but even on them many changes are being made, that it was
not worth while to deal with in the text.
In the pages that follow I have given a direct account of my life on the
islands, and of what I met with among them, inventing nothing, and
changing nothing that is essential. As far as possible, however, I have
disguised the identity of the people I speak of, by making changes in
their names, and in the letters I quote, and by altering some local and
family relationships. I have had nothing to say about them that was not
wholly in their favour, but I have made this disguise to keep them from
ever feeling that a too direct use had been made of their kindness, and
friendship, for which I am more grateful than it is easy to say.

Part I

I am in Aranmor, sitting over a turf fire, listening to a murmur of
Gaelic that is rising from a little public-house under my room.
The steamer which comes to Aran sails according to the tide, and it was
six o'clock this morning when we left the quay of Galway in a dense
shroud of mist.
A low line of shore was visible at first on the right between the
movement of the waves and fog, but when we came further it was lost
sight of, and nothing could be seen but the mist curling in the rigging,
and a small circle of foam.
There were few passengers; a couple of men going out with young pigs
tied loosely in sacking, three or four young girls who sat in the cabin
with their heads completely twisted in their shawls, and a builder, on
his way to repair the pier at Kilronan, who walked up and down and
talked with me.
In about three hours Aran came in sight. A dreary rock appeared at first
sloping up from the sea into the fog; then, as we drew nearer, a
coast-guard station and the village.
A little later I was wandering out along the one good roadway of the
island, looking over low walls on either side into small flat fields of
naked rock. I have seen nothing so desolate. Grey floods of water were

sweeping everywhere upon the limestone, making at limes a wild
torrent of the road, which twined continually over low hills and cavities
in the rock or passed between a few small fields of potatoes or grass
hidden away in corners that had shelter. Whenever the cloud lifted I
could see the edge of the sea below me on the right, and the naked
ridge of the island above me on the other side. Occasionally I passed a
lonely chapel or schoolhouse, or a line of stone pillars with crosses
above them and inscriptions asking a prayer for the soul of the person
they commemorated.
I met few people; but here and there a band of tall girls passed me on
their way to Kilronan, and called out to me with humorous wonder,
speaking English with a slight foreign intonation that differed a good
deal from the brogue of Galway. The rain and cold seemed to have no
influence on their vitality and as they hurried past me with eager
laughter and great talking in Gaelic, they left the wet masses of rock
more desolate than before.
A little after midday when I was coming back one old half-blind man
spoke to me in Gaelic, but, in general, I was surprised at the abundance
and fluency of the foreign tongue.
In the afternoon the rain continued, so I sat here in the inn looking out
through the mist at a few men who were unlading hookers that had
come in with turf from Connemara, and at the long-legged pigs that
were playing in the surf. As the fishermen came in and out of the
public-house underneath my room, I could hear through the broken
panes that a number of them still used the Gaelic, though it seems to be
falling out of use among the younger people of this village.
The old woman of the house had promised to get me a teacher of the
language, and after a while I heard a