Read Online Blasket Spirit by Anita Fennelly - Free Book Online Page A

weeks, until one day a child raced into
Teach an Rí
to say that there was a fire lighting on the top of Inis Tuaisceart. The Blasket village gathered on the northern cliffs and watched the distress fire of Tomás and Peig. There was no let-up in the weather to get a boat across to them. After the day that the signal fire was seen, there was no further fire. There was no smoke from the
clochán
and no sign of anybody moving on the island. All the islanders could do was pray and wait. It took another month before a
naomhóg
could make the crossing to Inis Tuaisceart. In all, the couple had been stranded for six weeks.
    Three men rowed the three miles from the Great Blasket Island to Inis Tuaisceart. The talk in the boat faltered as they got closer to the island. They had no idea what trouble they would find with Tomás and Peig. There was talk of a broken ankle, a rock fall from the roof and flooding, stranded sheep, fever and even the mischief of fairies. As the men hauled themselves up the cliffs, they became even more anxious. The island looked deserted. They called out for Tomás and Peig as they made their way up the sheep path to the enclosure.
    There was no response. A ewe scampered out of their way as they came up to the
clochán
. Again they shouted to the silence.
    Seán was the first into the enclosure. ‘In the name of God!’ He stood in shock. He had seen sheep savaged by dogs before, but nothing like this. The sheepdog lay outside the entrance, surrounded by flesh, bones and blood. The grass was littered with rotting remains. The dog hardly noticed the men as she ripped the meat of a bone between her paws. The other two men stared in silence. Seán called Tomás and Peig’s names again. This time, his voice began to shake. The younger man, Liam, stepped over the carnage to join him. He stopped and buckled to his knees, retching. The two other men turned and instantly recognised what he had found on the grass. In front of him was a human leg bone half-stripped of flesh.
    Seán and Séamus prayed aloud at the entrance before they bent down to peer into the darkness. The steps were sticky and wet. They could see nothing. Inside the
clochán
was dark, freezing cold and rancid. Neither could breathe with the stench. They pulled their jackets up over their mouths and stood paralysed with terror at the foot of the steps. Gradually their eyes adjusted. Through the dim light from the stairway and the chimney hole, they began to see the floor of the
clochán
, which was a bloody mess of putrefying lumps of human flesh. At the end of the steps by the men’s feet was what was left of Tomás Ó Catháin; a bloated torso with its limbs hacked off and missing. Séamus threw up and clambered back up the steps into the air.
    Seán stared into the darkness of the far wall. He could hear what sounded like a terrified animal under the fleeces and woollen blanket. Some kind of devilish animal had done this. In a fit of rage, he ran at it and tore the cover off the creature.
    It cowered there, matted hair caked to its blood-smeared face. The eyes stared out, but saw nothing. It took a while for Seán to recognise the young girl he had once danced with in Dún Chaoin. Peig Ní Chatháin lay starving, half-dead and quite mad.
    She was carried off the island and nursed on the Great Blasket for many, many months. She was not aware of anything that was done for her or of anything going on around her. The islanders said that her spirit had broken away; she had not spoken since the day the men had discovered her. Feelings ran high on both the island and the mainland: everyone had their own version of what had happened between Tomás and Peig. No version painted Peig in a good light and there were some people who would have been quite prepared to take the law into their own hands.
    One day, Peig’s spirit returned to her and she began to see the world around her once more. As she did, she started to talk and tell her story. Nobody who