A history of an island civilisation that ended in 1965 is likely to draw people back to Achillbeg, Co Mayo, writes Sylvia Thompson
'Many a night I left Marty Mac's in John's company with a beer-mat with somebody's phone number scribbled down on it," writes Jonathan Beaumont, in acknowledgement to one of the many locals who fed his appetite for detail during the writing of Achillbeg: The Life of an Island. The first book on this small island (326 acres in total), which lies at the southern tip of Achill, Co Mayo - itself the largest of Ireland's islands - is a social and historical document of life in a remote rural community in the west of Ireland.
Beaumont's gift is his incredible dedication to the task he set himself (he works as a senior bank official in Belfast by day) and the book will be of interest to those keen to understand how farming communities survived on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Drawing material from census statistics, articles in old publications, maps and personal accounts of life on Achillbeg as well as the recollections and memories of former inhabitants, Beaumont writes dispassionately, only giving the wider historical context where necessary.
"I loved doing the research, sitting in a library or talking to one of the islanders, and once I'd found something out, I'd write it down," explains Beaumont, who started work on this book in September 2001. He received a millennium award from the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland to cover research costs. Beaumont previously wrote Rails to Achill and now plans to write a book on Inisbiggle, the island on the other side of Achill which he says is "dying on its feet". So from where did the fascination come to write about these islands on the western seaboard?
"As a child, we used to stay on Achill or in Mulranny every year for our holidays. That was in the late 1960s, and then I grew up and brought my own family there. I've made a lot of friends over the years. It's like home," explains Beaumont, who lives in Lisburn, Co Antrim.
"I remember driving with my parents on the Atlantic Drive in Achill and listening to them talking about the pattern of the fields and the land, wondering whether Achillbeg was part of Achill - and that sense of mystery and beauty stayed with me."
However, rather than write something poetic or fictional about what he experienced, Beaumont instead chose to chronicle life on the island, with a particular emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. So readers discover how, during the 19th century, teenage boys and girls often accompanied older siblings, parents and relatives to work in the potato fields of Scotland to earn money to survive the rest of the year. This seasonal emigration meant that mothers and younger family members were left behind to do the harvesting work on the island.
As in many other places along the western seaboard, emigration was a feature of life on Achillbeg. However, Beaumont says that the islanders weren't badly affected by the potato blight which led to the Famine of the late 1840s because, apart from potatoes, they grew turnips, wheat, oats, rye and beetroot to feed humans and animals alike. They also fished.
Most householders also owned a few cattle, pigs and hens alongside 30 to 40 sheep, and donkeys were bred for transport. Of the 326 acres on the island, only about 80 were deemed to be arable land, while around 200 acres were kept in commonage for grazing animals. One of the hazards of raising cattle on the island was their tendency to fall into the sea.
Cleveland, Ohio was the most common destination for emigrants and to this day Cleveland contains thousands of people of Achill and Achillbeg descent, with names such as Corrigan, Kilbane, Gallagher, Lavelle, Sweeney, Patten and O'Malley. Achill Island and Cleveland were officially twinned in 2003.
GEOGRAPHY ENTHUSIASTS WILL be interested in the speculation that Achillbeg might have been joined to Achill or to the Corraun Peninsula on the mainland at one time.
"Between the island and Corraun, underwater sandbanks suggest that the sea broke through a land barrier in prehistoric times," writes Beamount. "To the north of Achillbeg, there is a cluster of rocks with the remains of a fortified settlement on them, which, it is believed, related to another ancient fort which guarded a narrow strip of land which probably connected Achill with Achillbeg."
Further support for this theory comes from the fact that old maps refer to Achillbeg as Kildownet island and Kildownet nowadays refers to a nearby townland on Achill. However, Beaumont is ultimately more interested in the social history than the natural history of Achillbeg and he dedicates an entire chapter to Francis Hugh Power, or the Paorach (an Irish translation of Power), who was the teacher at the school on Achillbeg from 1913 to 1922. Originally from Co Tipperary, Power spent some time in England (he is believed to have studied in Oxford and Cambridge) and then went to sea. Some years later, he joined the Gaelic League in England and returned to Ireland to train as a teacher, deciding he wanted to teach in a remote rural community so that he could play his part in the preservation of the Irish language, then in decline.
Choosing Achillbeg, Power was surprised to discover that almost everyone was bilingual, having learnt English from the coastguard workers there since the 19th century and/or through summer work in Scotland and England.
"His insistence on reverting to teaching through Irish was not well-received at first by the islanders or the educational authorities, but he succeeded," writes Beaumont. In fact, Power went on to give adult night classes in Irish.
The Paorach is remembered by Achillbeg people for his great enthusiasm for learning and, according to Beaumont, he managed to hold the attention of the pupils without resorting to corporal punishment - a rare thing in the education system of the time. He was also an expert sailor, owned a yacht and taught many pupils to sail, swim and play backgammon, chess, the bagpipes and the violin. He co-founded Scoil Acla, the Achill Island Summer School, whose participants included Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner Seán McBride and the first president of Ireland, Dr Douglas Hyde. The summer school, which was discontinued for many years after Power left Achillbeg, was revived again in 1985 and attracts large numbers of students in the summer months.
Beaumont also describes in detail the two-room stone cottages that were home to almost all the islanders and explains why, although Achill was connected to the grid in 1952, electricity only reached Achillbeg a year or two before the last people left in 1965.
"Growing car ownership and the advent of radio and television emphasises the isolation of many rural communities and electric fairy lights were to have but one Christmas to light up Achillbeg homes," Beaumont writes. From a population of 200 in the mid- to late 1800s, the island became uninhabited in 1965. Much of the land is still owned by families of those who left and many surviving Achillbeg islanders live within sight of their old island homes.
"Achillbeg itself now plays host to grazing sheep and birds, and is a haven of peaceful solitude . . . In recent years, several of the old cottages have been renovated as holiday homes and the electricity link remains to service both these and the automated lighthouse. But the rest stands silently, abandoned under the wide western Mayo sky," writes Beaumont.
It is perhaps these last few poetic words that will draw many readers to explore this tiny island, which has up until now been less publicised than its neighbouring islands to the south, Inishbofin, Inishturk and Clare Island. Beaumont's book will join accounts of these other islands as a valued record for historians, holidaymakers and novelists.
Achillbeg: The Life of an Island by Jonathan Beaumont is published by Oakwood Press, €19.95; www.oakwoodpress.co.uk