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The
Great Blasket was once home to 170 people, living in stone
houses on a steep slope facing the mainland. Even into the
middle of the last century their life could be described as
medieval: they had no source of power but the burning of turf
from the hill, no source of food but the sea and the animals
they kept and the few crops that could be grown on such
miserly land. There was fresh water from 20 springs and milk
from the cows. The work was communal and money seldom changed
hands.
Scholars
came to examine this strange place, where the people spoke a
form of Gaelic not heard elsewhere for centuries and gathered
by firelight to hear stories passed down through millennia.
The Great Blasket became famous in
Ireland
and the diaspora. Some people,
including former Irish President Eamon De Valera, saw the
community as a model for life in the new republic. The words
of the best storytellers - Peig Sayers, Tomas O'Crohan,
Maurice O'Sullivan - became best-selling books. Then it all
went wrong.....
The
island was abandoned...The story of
its evacuation in 1953 was full of heroism and tragedy. The
search for survivors took me to
New England
, where, remarkably, the island
community had regrouped. The elderly men and women there had
never lost the hunger for their old home, even though they
were so far away and the village was in ruins.
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It's
difficult to imagine anyone living on these remote rocky
island outposts. But Irish historians believe monks
inhabited the Blaskets in the fifth and six centuries
and that the Vikings used the islands as jumping-off
points for raiding the Irish mainland in the ninth and
10th centuries. Later, the islands were home to several
notable poets and writers of the Irish language
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Ferry
leaves Dunquin pier 1/2 hourly from 10am weather
permitting.
Dunquin
Pier, Dingle, Co. Kerry
Tel: 066 9156422
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