eveningâfor it was no good going down the cliff on a bright nightâhaving lowered the cliffman onto his ledge, the lads decided not to go back to the village, because it was near St. Johnâs Eve and the nights were short. So they lit themselves a little fire of cowdung in a field and settled down to wait for the dawn. When they got bored with talk they amused themselves by throwing bits of the flaming dung over the cliff. In the morning they pulled the cliffman up again. âAh lads,â he said, âI had a hard night of it last night, fighting with the Devil! But I drove him off at last, though he was putting out sparks to Kerry!â
A MARINE CATHEDRAL
The western wall of Poll an Iomair is formed by An Bhinn Bhuí, the yellow cliff, a long sheer-sided peninsula of awesome gravity and bulk. The lowest level of the cliff is prolonged below its southern sea-façade into a series of great steps the currach-men call An Altóir, the altar; to me, though, the cormorants that stand there wrapping their black wings about them like shawls seem to be playing the role of beggarwomen around the cathedral’s portal rather than of priests before its altar. The field that roofs this rectangular peninsula is fenced on one side by a wall and on three sides by nothing, and it is a fine place from which to marvel at the sublime procession of headlands to the west. However, it is wise to keep clear of the brink, especially in gusty weather; an islander warned me—and I pass on the advice—to beware of “the suckage ,” for “A sort of hurricane could pick you up and whirl you over, even if you weighed ten tons!” All the same, I remember thaton a day when gales made it impossible to see, speak or think near any of the other clifftops, we found a mysteriously becalmed spot on the very tip of this peninsula. It was a day of explosive sunshine , and the waterfalls that usually hang from the shale bands in the cliff faces after wet weather had been reversed by the updraught and were rearing back over the land in dazzling arcs. The gales had lasted for weeks; maddened hills of water were careering around the bays below, and in the distance we could see green surges bursting half-way up the three-hundred-foot cliff under Dún Aonghasa and sending their glittering spray high over the fort itself.
I have visited this place too on a calm summer night by a full moon that laced the sea with mercury all the way across to Clare, and in a wintery dusk when the screaming choughs were blown by like scraps torn out of the night, and a crescent moon and evening star followed the sun down into western cloudbanks. But whatever the play of light and darkness about it the headland itself is always unshakeably majestic; not even Atlantic fog can quite dissolve its materiality. The winter storms are nevertheless battering at its juncture with the land on the western side, where rock-falls have left upside-down staircases in its wall and a deep cove is being rounded out, a process which will someday leave the headland as an isolated stack. A Cill Éinne crew was lost in this cove eighty years ago, through carelessness in a playful sea; they were working too close inshore, and an unexpected swell picked up their currach and smashed it and them against the cliff, a casual sacrifice to the cult of this marine cathedral.
The bay on this western flank of An Bhinn Bhuí used to be very important to the men of Baile na Creige, whose territory this is, in the days when timber was carried as deck cargo and a proportion of it lost overboard in rough weather, and during the World Wars when wrack was plentiful. The semi-circular arc of cliff (called An Cró; the word covers many kinds of round holes and farm enclosures), deeply undercut and floored with shelving rock, is a natural trap for anything drifting in with the prevailing south-westerlies .In the second field west from the headland two short lengths of wall about five feet apart are still to
A MARINE CATHEDRAL
The western wall of Poll an Iomair is formed by An Bhinn Bhuí, the yellow cliff, a long sheer-sided peninsula of awesome gravity and bulk. The lowest level of the cliff is prolonged below its southern sea-façade into a series of great steps the currach-men call An Altóir, the altar; to me, though, the cormorants that stand there wrapping their black wings about them like shawls seem to be playing the role of beggarwomen around the cathedral’s portal rather than of priests before its altar. The field that roofs this rectangular peninsula is fenced on one side by a wall and on three sides by nothing, and it is a fine place from which to marvel at the sublime procession of headlands to the west. However, it is wise to keep clear of the brink, especially in gusty weather; an islander warned me—and I pass on the advice—to beware of “the suckage ,” for “A sort of hurricane could pick you up and whirl you over, even if you weighed ten tons!” All the same, I remember thaton a day when gales made it impossible to see, speak or think near any of the other clifftops, we found a mysteriously becalmed spot on the very tip of this peninsula. It was a day of explosive sunshine , and the waterfalls that usually hang from the shale bands in the cliff faces after wet weather had been reversed by the updraught and were rearing back over the land in dazzling arcs. The gales had lasted for weeks; maddened hills of water were careering around the bays below, and in the distance we could see green surges bursting half-way up the three-hundred-foot cliff under Dún Aonghasa and sending their glittering spray high over the fort itself.
I have visited this place too on a calm summer night by a full moon that laced the sea with mercury all the way across to Clare, and in a wintery dusk when the screaming choughs were blown by like scraps torn out of the night, and a crescent moon and evening star followed the sun down into western cloudbanks. But whatever the play of light and darkness about it the headland itself is always unshakeably majestic; not even Atlantic fog can quite dissolve its materiality. The winter storms are nevertheless battering at its juncture with the land on the western side, where rock-falls have left upside-down staircases in its wall and a deep cove is being rounded out, a process which will someday leave the headland as an isolated stack. A Cill Éinne crew was lost in this cove eighty years ago, through carelessness in a playful sea; they were working too close inshore, and an unexpected swell picked up their currach and smashed it and them against the cliff, a casual sacrifice to the cult of this marine cathedral.
The bay on this western flank of An Bhinn Bhuí used to be very important to the men of Baile na Creige, whose territory this is, in the days when timber was carried as deck cargo and a proportion of it lost overboard in rough weather, and during the World Wars when wrack was plentiful. The semi-circular arc of cliff (called An Cró; the word covers many kinds of round holes and farm enclosures), deeply undercut and floored with shelving rock, is a natural trap for anything drifting in with the prevailing south-westerlies .In the second field west from the headland two short lengths of wall about five feet apart are still to
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