Letters From The Great Blasket

"'Perhaps the most powerful hymn to the Great Blasket is a work by another woman - Eibhl�s N� Sh�illeabh�in. N� Sh�illeabh�in is chronicling a world and a culture in death's throes in Letters from the Great Blasket. They're her correspondence with Londoner George Chambers over a 20-year period, written in blundering yet elegiac English, her second language. ""My dear there is no place like home,"" Eibhl�s wrote in 1931. ""The very day I'll have to leave it won't be a pleasant day for me. I think my dear heart will break that day."" Words say a lot about ways of thinking. Throughout the literature of the Blaskets, the writers speak of being ""in"" the island. From the island they always went ""out"" to the mainland; they came home ""into"" the island. The Great Blasket was the centre of their universe. Later, in February 1940, N� Sh�illeabh�in writes of a harsh life: ""Meat and food and flour are all gone up in prices and they with other hardships of Islands together leave no hope at all for Islanders. Indeed, can't you see that the Island is bare with only one child and three at school with no hope or promising of any other but just a face telling you from day to day that this Island will be with none at all but rabbits some fine evening and it is not fit for any other nature, Islanders see nothing before them these days"". Her prose reveals an island encircled by implacable seas that is very different to the summer visitor's experience. It's an island that is loved. An island that is feared. An island that ultimately must be abandoned.' - Lorraine Courtney, Irish Times"