the sun on the walls of the fields to cure. When they were hard as boards they were tied up in threes—an undersized fish could be passed off sandwiched between two big ones—and a “hundred” threes, that is three hundred and sixty fish, would buy a boatload of turf from Connemara. Hard-working times—those fishermen were also farmers with cattle and potato-fields to tend, and they kept their children busy every hour they were not at school.
What changes in the island since Pádraicín’s childhood! His worries about his own children in these strange times, he told me as we made our way through the twilight back to the village, are those of a city parent. Drugs are coming into the island; youngmen coming in for the summer season are sniffing something—he doesn’t know if it’s cocaine or crack or what, but it’s not snuff!—and sharing it with local lads; the gardaí are said to be “watching the situation.” Children might be visiting certain homes where they are allowed to watch who knows what sort of rubbish on videos. Pádraicín often supervises the Hall in Cill Ronáin when there is a dance, and afterwards has found teenagers hanging around in the street at two or three in the morning. With thousands of tourists pouring in during the short season, some islanders are so busy they have no idea what their kids are up to; they throw them the most expensive presents to be bought in Galway—but what those children are not getting is love.
Pádraicín, hunched over his burden, was breathing heavily as we climbed the path to his house. Love! It was as if at the very threshold of home he had stumbled on the word we had been searching for through the gathering dark. I could have founded this chapter on it, had I known it was going to turn up.
THE FITZPATRICKS
As one walks the road from Iaráirne towards Cill Éinne, the old farmhouse known as Killeany Lodge comes into view on the hillside above the harbour. A pair of tall monuments on a rocky terrace below it attracts the attention, obviously with the intention of making a public statement. But it is not easy to get close enough even to gather the nature of this statement, for they do not stand by the present way up to the Lodge, nor indeed by the older way shown on nineteenth-century maps, and when one has scrambled across field-walls to reach them one finds that they are sited so close to the brink of a scarp that viewing the inscriptions on their northern, and clearly frontal, faces, is awkward. They stand a few yards apart like huge gateposts, but there is no easy access to the past through them. However, the name “Fitzpatrick,” repeated inthe inscriptions, catches the eye; clearly these are cenotaphs to people of consequence, who presumably lived in the Lodge or some predecessor of it.
The two monuments are rectangular masonry pillars with pyramidal caps surmounted by stone crosses, about twenty feet in overall height and eight by five in plan. Each has four plaques lettered in bas-relief, one set into each face. A few yards to the east is a much smaller monument not noticeable from the distance, with just one plaque.
PRAY FOR THE SO VL OF IOHN FFITZPATRICK WHO DYE D THE 3 DAY OF FEBRUARY ANN OD 1709
So one is bidden by the front of the tall cenotaph on the east. Its back says:
PRAY FOR THE SO VL OF SARAMSW EINY WIFE TO IO HN FITZPATRIC K WHO DIED THE 5 DAY OF NOVEMBER 1709
The left and right sides ask one to pray for the souls of a Florence Fitzpatrick who died in “Iannary” of that same year, and a Rickard Fitzpatrick who died in 1701. Two of the letters “Z” are back to front.
The western cenotaph has rather more elegant lettering, in which the uprights of the letter “H” in the words “THE” and “THEIR” also serve as uprights for the T and E, and the spacesbetween the words are marked with a small diamond-shaped point. The front and sides commemorate three Fitzpatrick men who died young: Dennis died in “Disember” 1753 aged
What changes in the island since Pádraicín’s childhood! His worries about his own children in these strange times, he told me as we made our way through the twilight back to the village, are those of a city parent. Drugs are coming into the island; youngmen coming in for the summer season are sniffing something—he doesn’t know if it’s cocaine or crack or what, but it’s not snuff!—and sharing it with local lads; the gardaí are said to be “watching the situation.” Children might be visiting certain homes where they are allowed to watch who knows what sort of rubbish on videos. Pádraicín often supervises the Hall in Cill Ronáin when there is a dance, and afterwards has found teenagers hanging around in the street at two or three in the morning. With thousands of tourists pouring in during the short season, some islanders are so busy they have no idea what their kids are up to; they throw them the most expensive presents to be bought in Galway—but what those children are not getting is love.
Pádraicín, hunched over his burden, was breathing heavily as we climbed the path to his house. Love! It was as if at the very threshold of home he had stumbled on the word we had been searching for through the gathering dark. I could have founded this chapter on it, had I known it was going to turn up.
THE FITZPATRICKS
As one walks the road from Iaráirne towards Cill Éinne, the old farmhouse known as Killeany Lodge comes into view on the hillside above the harbour. A pair of tall monuments on a rocky terrace below it attracts the attention, obviously with the intention of making a public statement. But it is not easy to get close enough even to gather the nature of this statement, for they do not stand by the present way up to the Lodge, nor indeed by the older way shown on nineteenth-century maps, and when one has scrambled across field-walls to reach them one finds that they are sited so close to the brink of a scarp that viewing the inscriptions on their northern, and clearly frontal, faces, is awkward. They stand a few yards apart like huge gateposts, but there is no easy access to the past through them. However, the name “Fitzpatrick,” repeated inthe inscriptions, catches the eye; clearly these are cenotaphs to people of consequence, who presumably lived in the Lodge or some predecessor of it.
The two monuments are rectangular masonry pillars with pyramidal caps surmounted by stone crosses, about twenty feet in overall height and eight by five in plan. Each has four plaques lettered in bas-relief, one set into each face. A few yards to the east is a much smaller monument not noticeable from the distance, with just one plaque.
PRAY FOR THE SO VL OF IOHN FFITZPATRICK WHO DYE D THE 3 DAY OF FEBRUARY ANN OD 1709
So one is bidden by the front of the tall cenotaph on the east. Its back says:
PRAY FOR THE SO VL OF SARAMSW EINY WIFE TO IO HN FITZPATRIC K WHO DIED THE 5 DAY OF NOVEMBER 1709
The left and right sides ask one to pray for the souls of a Florence Fitzpatrick who died in “Iannary” of that same year, and a Rickard Fitzpatrick who died in 1701. Two of the letters “Z” are back to front.
The western cenotaph has rather more elegant lettering, in which the uprights of the letter “H” in the words “THE” and “THEIR” also serve as uprights for the T and E, and the spacesbetween the words are marked with a small diamond-shaped point. The front and sides commemorate three Fitzpatrick men who died young: Dennis died in “Disember” 1753 aged
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