Four Fathoms would do it. Twenty-five feet. If the Atlantic Ocean would dip this number of feet, Inishdooey would be part of Ireland, the main land of Ireland. It has happened before, maybe more than once, the stones tell of it to listeners that understand how their history is kept. But not since the last glaciation, tens of thousands of years ago. And only since that ice melted, and the seas rose making this an island, is there any sign that men and women came here.
 

Inishdooey  is a small island, not a mile long from furthest ends. A man with a strong voice on a day the wind was light could make himself heard the length and breadth of it. The sea scours round this rise of tilted rock. It is  grass capped, and has four small hills. The rock tilts down from East to West so that the east side of the island is a wall dropping from of height of 120 feet straight into the sea. The west side of the island slips, not gently, but on a mild slope into the white surf. Going west from the island there is no land until the coast of Labrador, Canada.
 

The wind comes mostly from the western quarter, and having two thousand miles to act upon the sea brings large waves speeding against the westward rocks, They are tumbled; many rocks are round, rounded from their grind of each other, some as big as houses, some the size of soccer balls, some pebble sized so that you can wrap your fist around, or walk on like a beach if you are careful not to twist an ankle. At night the sound is like a billiard parlor between the crash of surf, the clacking of stones settling old scores. Not all the rocks on the west are worn smooth, some are sharp, jagged and brittle. They don’t give a little to the sea’s grind, they hold out against it, then give way of a sudden and fracture at some weak spot the sea finds. Odd, it is the softer sort of rock that crack, the sandstones, the seams of slate. The rounder rocks are the granites and gneisses. There is a pink colored granite that has a rough grain, even those boulders that have been worn round. On some of these pink granites, in the intertidal zone, the holdfast of green algae, and mussels get a good grip, and the rocks are covered. Other rocks, same place, are smoother grained and no algae or mussels or barnacles can hang on beyond the next high tide.

Up from the shore, and topping the cliffs, the island is covered with grasses, heathers and wildflowers. There is not one woody plant on the island, and nothing grows above the height of a man’s knee. Behind a field’s stone wall, some eddy of earth and grass might grow to the height of the wall, but where the wind can go no plants grow. I don’t know why salt hardy, wind tolerant furze bushes don’t make a stand here, there are many flourishing on the coast adjacent here, but I found none on this island. Grass gving way to heathers in the most exposed sections. The heather dominates where the soil is thinner, the grasses elswhere.

In the bit of protection that the hills offer from the wind that blows most constant are the ruins of six buildings. One of the buildings faces east, that gable end having its only window, a narrow arched opening, below which, built into the wall, is a level rectangular stone; an altar. The building faces east, to Calvary on the outskirts of Jerusalem, the flat rectngular stone a grave cap. Elsewhere on the island are three large mounds of stones. If there are bodies buried below they face southeast, the stones’ alignment. This, the direction of a different rising sun, is possibly an earlier human story.

Round the chapel and around the shantees are field stone walls.These walls, where not tumbled down are about four feet high. They are built of granite cobbles, some sandstone and some shards of slate. The fields are not stony, so the farmers that built these stone walls brought all these stones up from the shore - a work of years, for the few people that could have been sustained on this island at any one time. On the higher elevations the walls stand out, in the lower parts of the fields, the soil has somehow risen to cover the walls or the stones have fallen to level with the soil. It is possible to infer the submerged walls from the line of higher walls each side of a vale; from the shadow of the line visible in some lights; from a different colored green flora that grows above stone; and when walking the line, the uncertain give below one’s foot stepping on covered soil or covered stones. The fields enclosed by these lines of stone are only on the parts of the island that are in the lee of a north protecting hill or a west protecting hill. There are no signs of tillage in the grass and heathered ground open to the north and west wind.

These are the signs that the rocks brought to my attention, that others dwelled here, as I landed on Inishdooey. Until that moment the island had been a distant place. Years before I had been been sent by my dad to his birthplace on the mainland three miles from Inishdooey. His brother was sick and could use some help, even from a  city boy, on the farm. Inishdooey is part a string of four islands off this part of the Irish coast. The occupied Tory Island, nine miles off, the most distant. Inishbeg next inward four miles off, then Inishdooey - the island of Saint Dubhthach. Closest in, the seasonally occupied island of Inishbofin - the island of the white cow. My dad’s birthplace is a small farm fronting the coast facing north toward this archipelago. During days working in the fields, I would look up, stretch my back, and I’d see no islands. Again, I’d look up and two or three would be visible, only to slip back into a mist, or a low west rolling cloud. In a minute all four would be seen again, or three or none.
 

There are legends that swirl in mists about each of the islands, the peoples that occupied them, the deeds done. Tory and Inishbofin figure prominently in Irish origin stories that may have something to do with the passing of a way of life circling round sea work - Balor of the Evil Eye and the Fomorians with their attempts to steal the Bo Finne, the white cow from off its little island (Inis Bo Finne), and a way of life mostly pastoral and agricultural -Tuatha Dé dananns, Balor’s killer (and grandson) Lugh, who is remembered in the sowing season feast of Lughnasa.

Closer to us as these mist times begin to emerge into history, my aunt vouched for the holy efforts  of the apostles of Ireland who converted these parts, the generation after Patrick. She told me that St Columba, St Begley, Saint Dubhthach and Saint Finian were having lunch one day over near Bloody Foreland (Neeley’s blood, Balor didn’t get the white cow without a brave fight from its rightful owner, Neeley). The saints decided that whoever threw their staff the furthest would have the dangerous honor of going out to Tory to convert the heathens there. There are different tellings of the exact results but it seems that Columba - Colmcille - threw his staff the whole nine miles to Tory, nearly spitting the island in two - which crack in the rocks can still be clearly seen from the mainland. Finian’s and Begley’s hooked their throws to the east and so went there - Tullaghabegley is still the name of these parts, and Finian’s name still attaches to the chapel near Ray. Dubhthach’s throw was straight but short, ‘landed on that wee island, over thon, Joey” so that’s where Dubhthach went and that’s why the little island has his name.

She told me that they went out there in little boats and told the islanders about the baby Jesus. Some went even further in their boats, wherever God wanted them to go. My Uncle Hughie, a different slant - ‘Scotland, to get away from women troubles, and  for the heck of it’. He scandalized Bridget for complicating the possible motives and faith of  who are known in history as the ‘Peregrinatio Christi’.He had gone to Scotland himself as a young man, knew the dialect of those parts is clearly the same language as he spoke before he spoke English. And any man who knows these coastal waters of the northwest of Ireland, knows the drift of current and the prevailing winds will blow most small boats to Scotland in less than three days.

Bridget’s faith undaunted saw this talk of winds and currents as proof of God’s design for the wandering monks who were taken off to other islands than here .

It is told that these islands were among the last to be converted. In the time of Patrick and later the time of Colmcille and his companions, it was Druids that lived on the islands. And they had in their power, the power to make weather and send it on the west wind over those on the mainland, and under the slopes of the Derryveagh Mountains. The Druids had also the power to bring the mist to make their islands invisible. This I knew to be still true. These facts and stories, myths, legend and mystery  drew me to Inishdooey.

Joe Ferry