Blasket Islands (Co. Kerry)

The Blasket Islands / Na Blascaoidí are a beautiful and haunting archipelago off the end of the Dingle Peninsula. Some can be reached by speedboat from the Marina at An Daingean / Dingle and by passenger ferries from the harbour at Dun Chaoin / Dunquin, where an hour or two in the Blasket Heritage Centre in is also highly recommended.

Now uninhabited apart from a few summer homes, the islands supported an Irish-speaking community as late as the mid-C20^th. Because of their isolation, the language spoken by the islanders was regarded as being of great purity, and they were the subject of much anthropological and linguistic study around the end of the C19^th and beginning of the C20^th. Several islanders were encouraged to write or dictate memories and stories of the islands’ traditions and way of life, including Tomás Ó Criomhthain’s An tOileánach (The Islandman), Peig Sayers‘ Peig and Muiris Ó Súilleabháin`s Fiche Blian ag Fás (Twenty Years A-Growing). The English Celticist and translator Robin Flower also lived locally, as recalled in his memoir The Western Island. All are well-worth reading before visiting the islands.

The etymology of Na Blascaoidí is uncertain: the word was thought by some to come from the Norse word “brasker”, meaning “a dangerous place”.

Onr of the earliest known written records of the Blasket Islands was recently discovered in an archive in Samancas, Spain. The ship’s captain who left the document, dated 1597, referred to the islands as Las Yslas de Blasques and also stated that the inhabitants spoke fluent Spanish. He may have had an encounter with shipwreck survivors or deserters from the 1588 Spanish Armada, contemporary records of which also refer to the islands by various names.

An Blascaod Mór / The Great Blasket lies approximately 2 km from the mainland at Dunmore Head. It extends 6km to the southwest, rising to 292m at its highest point at Croaghmore, and has magnificent sea cliffs along its western side, dropping vertically into the Atlantic. Splendid walking tracks run high along both sides of the ridge of the island, like a necklace, giving an excellent circuit.

The most visited site on the island is the deserted village. The homes of Tomás Ó Criomhthain and Muiris Ó Súilleabháin are now in ruins but the house in which Prig Sayers spent her last years has been restored, and used to form part of the hostel.

The hostel and cafe that once operated on the island have been closed. This is a result of the ongoing dispute between the Irish State, which wishes to make the island a National Park, and an individual who claims to own the greater part of the island. The individual in question actually owns only the greater part of the island’s freeholdings. The greater part of the island is commonage, over which the freeholders have certain rights.

The population of the island varied over hundreds of years but by 1916 had reached its post-Great Famine peak of 176 men, women, and children. The last inhabitants were evacuated by the Irish Government to the mainland on 17^th November 1953. Their descendants live on the Dingle Peninsula and also form a community in Springfield, Massachusetts in the USA.

Mice on Great Blasket weigh more than their mainland cousins and have larger hind-feet. Local lore puts this down rather gnomically to their arrival with the Vikings 1,100 years ago. Others like to think of the phenomenon as an example of Darwinian adaptability.

Ireland’s second largest haul out of atlantic grey seal occurs here each autumn on An Trá Bán. Several hundred seal come here to pup between September and December. The only bigger colony is on Inishkea North in Co. Mayo.

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Beiginis / Beginish is a low-lying /14m) island in Blasket Sound, between An Blascaod Mór and the mainland. It has a large colony of Arctic Terns, and is also the main birthing site for grey seals.

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Inis Mhic Uileáin / Inishvickillane / Inishvickillaun / Inishvickillaune was intermittently inhabited during the C19^th and early C20^th, by one or more families. There are extensive ruins of stone buildings on the island, which O’Sullivan mentions frequently in Twenty Years A-Growing as a place inhabited by fairies.

The notorious former Taoiseach Charles Haughey owned the island and used it as a holiday home, building a house in the 1970s. He introduced a herd of red deer onto the island.

Inishvickillane holds important seabird colonies, being especially notable for northern fulmar, European storm-petrel and Atlantic puffin.

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Inis na Bró / Inishnabro is separated from Inishvickillane by a narrow sound and rises to 175m. The island looks like it is covered with heather, but this is actually solid Sea Pink. It has magnificent cliffs and a fantastic array of buttresses.

In 1973, the U.S. commercial space pioneer Gary Hudson proposed using Inis na Bró as the launching site for a new rocket system. The proposal only became public in 2003, when Irish Government files from the period were released.

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Inis Tuaisceart / Inishtooskert is the northernmost of the Blasket Islands. The name means “northern island”; it is also known as An Fear Marbh (”the dead man”) due to its appearance when seen from the east. According to local folklore, this huge man was the one who built the Giant’s Causeway in Co. Antrim.

There are extensive ruins of ancient stone buildings on the island, notably St. Brendan’s Oratory, a minor monastic ruin used in more recent times as a domestic dwelling. It is a low-lying, drystone hovel with a smoke hole on top, and a very narrow, low entrance. There is a local story of how the widow of a recently departed corpulent husband got him out through this awkward entrance. She took him out in pieces.

Inis Tuaisceart holds important seabird colonies. Of particular note is the colony of European storm-petrels. With over 27,000 pairs in 2000, this is certainly the largest colony in the British Isles, and possibly the largest in the world.

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An Tiaracht (anglicised as The Tearaght, Inishtearaght or Tearaght Island), an uninhabited steep rocky island 12.5 km west of Dingle Peninsula at longitude 10.70ºW, is the westernmost part of the Blasket Islands, Ireland and Europe.

The island is about 1km from east to west, and 500m from north to south, and is divided into two sections, a larger eastern part (200m high) and a western part (116 m). A narrow neck of rock, with a natural tunnel through it, joins the two parts.

An Tiaracht holds large numbers of seabirds, with internationally important populations of Manx shearwater and European storm-petrel. While Leach’s storm-petrels have also been found there in recent years, They have not proved to be breeding. The number of auks, especially puffins, has apparently fluctuated greatly, though early records are not always reliable.

A lighthouse was established on the island in 1870, and automated in 1988. The lighthouse, maintained by the Commissioners of Irish Lights, is 84m above high water.

Foze Rock / An Feo is the most westerly landfall in Europe.

Books about the islands include:

Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O’Sullivan, translated from the Irish (Fiche Blíain ag Fás),

The Islandman (An tOileánach) by Tomás O’Criomhtháin

Peig by Peig Sayers

An Old Woman’s Reflections by Peig Sayers

The Western Island & The Great Blasket by Robin Flower

The Blaskets, People and Literature by Muiris Mac Conghail

Muini – The Blasket Nurse by Leslie Matson

A Pity Youth does not Last by Micheál O’Guiheen

The Blasket Islands – Next Parish America by Joan Stagles

Island Home – The Blasket Heritage by George Thomson