'The more you have seen, the more you realise what riches you have at home.' The de Blácam clan gathers for an island Christmas on Inis Meáin, and (overleaf) the O'Callaghan family share their celebrations with guests from far and wide at Longueville House in Mallow. Both families are avid traditionalists, writes Deirdre McQuillan. Photographs: Kate Geraghtyand Patrick Hogan/Provision
Not many people in their thirties in Ireland today have childhood memories of going to bed by candlelight. But that is one of Ruairí de Blácam's earliest recollections of growing up on Inis Meáin, the middle Aran Island, at a time when, as he says, it was 60 or 70 years behind the rest of Ireland. There was no electricity, no running water, a primitive telephone system and an erratic ferry service. "Life in the fast lane", as his father Tarlach, who set up a knitting factory at the time, once dryly commented.
Ruairí is chef patron of Inis Meáin's new restaurant, which he runs with his wife, Marie Thérèse, and Christmas on the island has a special meaning for him. "We had the traditional Christmas at home, but no wren boys like on the other two islands. Here, on the first day of the new year, young boys get up early and visit houses where they are given ceapairí, basically a slice of Christmas cake and some money." It is said that the first young boy to cross the threshold on that day brings good luck. "Little boys today are in great demand because there are so few of them around," Ruairí says, laughing.
What also stands out vividly in his memory is the lighting of candles on the fifth day of the new year (on the evening of the 12th day of Christmas). "They used to light 12 candles and put them in the windows of the houses, candles equally dispersed among the windows. People would walk around the houses - it was a lovely treat and more dramatic when I was young because there was less electricity."
He quotes a poem by Máirtín Ó Direáin, Coinnle ar Lasadh, written in 1939, that calls for a blessing for his mother's hand that will light the candles. The tradition still continues.
At this time of year, he and Marie Thérèse wrap themselves up in their Inis Meáin knitwear on wintry days and set off for bracing walks around the island. They gather sloes or Ruairí will shoot duck on the lake for the restaurant. Food has always played a great part in his life. "From an early age I used to stay with my uncle and aunt when my parents were away for weeks on end, doing what we're doing now. I remember making butter in a churn and killing chickens and it was manual work then. I am really blessed. People here are close to the land, milking cows and growing potatoes, with hens laying eggs all over the place."
The restaurant menu features locally caught seafood such as lobster and crab and locally grown vegetables, all served in a dining room with spectacular panoramic views of what the islanders call "the old sea" and the mainland.
For Marie Thérèse, island life has more of a sense of community than she recalls growing up in Midleton, Co Cork. "We knew we would start a life here, and it would be very different. I love the pace of life, and it is a very exciting time now because people have since moved home and want to live here like us."
Marie Thérèse speaks fluent Irish, which is a great advantage. The pair met in Dublin in DCU, where they were both studying entrepreneurship through Irish. On a class outing to Inis Meáin, Ruairí dared her to go for a swim in the sea "and he said he would take me to dinner if I did. That October bank holiday weekend, he brought me to Cookes." They were married last December in Brazil.
Though circumstances are different, Ruairí's life echoes that of his father, Tarlach, a graduate in Celtic languages from Dublin who came to live on the island when his wife Áine, an islander, was expecting Ruairí, their first child. Determined to find a way of living there, they began what was to become a hugely successful knitwear business, which both Ruairí and Marie Thérèse now help to run. What started in an old shed with a domestic knitting machine more than 30 years ago is now a business with an annual turnover of more than €1 million, selling luxury knitwear to upmarket stores all over the world.
The vision of a generation who wanted "to be able to live full lives all year round" as Tarlach once resolved, has been inherited by the new generation equally bent on creating sustainable lives on an small windswept island in the most westerly part of Europe. Though conditions are now greatly improved and access to and from the mainland is facilitated by a regular air service, some aspects remain the same.
Ruairí and his younger brother Eoin remember the wrench of being sent away to boarding school in Blackrock College for their secondary education. "The first couple of years were tough and I didn't even speak English, but to be honest, I loved it as a school because there was something for everybody," Ruairí says.
A spell working in a brasserie in Germany fostered a love of cookery in Ruairí, and the restaurateur Johnny Cooke was a later influence, especially in his approach to food. "He encouraged me to go away and learn more and I went to Italy, not speaking a word of Italian." The idea of starting his own island restaurant really took root when he worked with John Desmond in his restaurant on Heir Island in Cork.
The de Blácams travel a lot, promoting the knitwear business and the restaurant, and when we spoke they had just returned from a two-week visit to the US, calling on some of their prominent stockists such as Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue in New York. "When you see the shopping and the madness at this time of the year, it is great to be able to come back here and take a walk around the island. The more you have travelled," he says, "and the more you have seen, the more you realise what riches you have at home. I always wanted to come back."
See www.inismeain.com for details of Inis Meáin restaurant and suites