Stones of Aran by Tim Robinson

Dubh, handing them out one by one to his companion who wrung their necks, and killing thirty score birds at Gleann an Charnáin (both places are towards the western end of the cliffs). In Aran this Ó Maolláin was called Micilín Sara (Sara’s little Michael), from his mother’s name. He was so well known on the cliffs that, as I have been told, the raven would fly across and start swooping on him as soon as he started off down the main road from his house with his rope on his shoulder; then Micilín would brandish his otter-spear at the bird and swear to make a widow of it. According to one of the many stories still remembered of him, constables searching for illicit brews of poitín once came across the remains of large numbers of cliff-birds around his cottage. It was of course illegal to catch them without the agent’s permission, and the fine was five pounds a bird. When all the beaks and legs hadbeen collected up and counted, Micilín Sara was charged with the taking of thirteen score birds. But when the case came to court the judge was persuaded that this was Micilín’s first and last offence, and reduced the fine to a penny a bird.
    Razorbills, guillemots and black guillemots, puffins and cormorants were the birds usually taken on the cliffs. Both eggs and birds were eaten, the young cormorant and the razorbill being particularly prized—though one could get tired of them, and blas an seachtú crosáin, the taste of the seventh razorbill, was a commonplace phrase for a flavour made nauseous by surfeit. The flesh also provided oil for lamps, a horribly smoky oil to which that of the basking shark’s liver was preferred when it could be got. The feathers used to be sold in Galway market, and provided the island itself with its filling for pillows and mattresses.
    The hunt was conducted as follows. The men would walk across to the cliffs at dusk with the rope, which was often a communal investment. One end of it would be tied around the cliffman’s waist and between his legs, and the other made fast to an iron bar driven into a crevice or wedged in a cairn on the clifftop. A team of up to eight would lower the cliffman, guided by signals from a man stationed out on a headland from which he could watch the progress of the descent. The cliffman would carry a stick to keep himself clear of the cliff face while swinging on the rope, and wedges to help him round awkward corners of his climbs. Having reached the chosen ledge the cliffman would remain crouched in it until darkness came. When all the birds had flown in from the sea and settled down to roost he would begin to crawl along, and would silently murder the first bird he came to, putting one arm round it to stop it flapping—for a cormorant with its five-foot wingspan could have knocked him off the cliff—and giving a couple of quick twists to its neck with the other hand before it could raise the alarm. Then he would move on, pushing the dead bird before him until it was up against the next victim, which thus would not feel his hands until it was too late. The dead birds would be strung on a cord by a running loop aroundthe neck. At dawn the cliffman would be hauled up again, bent and rigid with cold and cramp.
    Because his was such a dreadful trade—the sea constantly picking at the unsound rock of the ledges, the weather unpredictably changeable in the middle of the night, the village rope a poor thing of frayed and knotted pieces—the cliffman’s exploits and narrow escapes provided the community with serial stories which were not the least valuable product of the cliff face. Micilín Sara’s little cottage in Baile na Creige was the great talking-shop of the middle of the island, and the young people used to gather there every evening to hear real cliff-hangers, old and new, recollected or reinvented. Some of these stories are still current, and Micilín’s words and gestures, which