Daniel Coll Again
John O'Shea brought me in to Inis Bo Finne.
Before I had gotten settled into the small cabin he had
arranged for me, he introduced me to Mrs. Mary Cannon McGinley,
who had been the schoolteacher on the island before the
school was closed. She was talking to two island men, Dan
Coll and Tom McGinley. The afternoon was warm and sunny,
and so it would be for much of that summer, so unusual that
even the old men had trouble remembering any other summer
with so much heat and light in it.
Mrs. McGinley had come in to the island just
for the day to visit with her friends and former students.
Aside the path in front of his cottage, O'Shea had constructed
a long bench, from timbers that had drifted on to the island.
It was a good place for people walking over the hill to
the beach at the back of the island to rest on their way.
She was old enough that even Tom, in his seventies, was
her former student. Dan Coll and O'Shea had been among her
early students. Dan's son, Daniel Coll, was a student in
the last class that was held on Inis Bo Finne. That was
in 1981. The school closed then, the building sits in ruins
here. The families with young children moved off the island
after the school closed and took houses on the mainland
so that their kids could go to school.
John O'Shea returning to
his house from the well, Tobermoorish, on Inis Bo Finne,
July 2000.
Without the families, there was no reason
for the others, and so all left Inis Bo Finne. Many still
return in the summer but the island has no permanent residents,
no one from fall, through winter to spring.Mary was re-assigned
by the government to the school in Gortahork, on the mainland
opposite. She retired a few years ago.
 |
| The older
Dan Coll repairing curragh near pier on Inis Bo Finne |
Today, in the presence of Dan, and O'Shea
and Tom, she said she knew it was time to retire, when taking
the role of her students in Gortahork, answering up was
one, "Daniel
Coll", this man's grandson. "Time
to go - three generations of Daniel Coll is quite enough
for one schoolteacher." She said it lightheartedly,
got the knowing laugh from the men around her, but she said
it that way, "…three generations of Daniel Coll."
not "three generations of Daniel Colls." I noticed
this, but didn't give it weight, just a manner of speech
I supposed.
Weeks later, after Tom McGinley had taken
me to the Island of the Bones, and after John O'Shea had
pointed out the place they buried the people without any
names, and after the graveyard mass at Gortahork, I remembered
Mary Cannon McGinley's manner of speech, and began thinking
that maybe they have a different way of comprehending themselves
than do I: Dan Coll is a singular presence in the world
that continues from past to present and God willing, on
into the future. We are each of us, important, unique even,
but something fundamental continuing on and back, clad for
a time in earth and air, is here. Daniel Coll is how they
speak a more lasting presence than the one, or three right
now, so called.
Joe
Ferry
Island
of the Bones