fishing industry for the poverty-stricken islanders. In desperation in 1886 he sent a dramatic telegram to Dublin Castle.
It read: “Send us boats or send us coffins.” When you walk up through Kilronan village you’ll see a tall handsome monument
the islanders erected in Fr. O’Donohue’s memory. It was sculpted by a Dublin stone mason named James Pearse, father of Patrick
Pearse, the leader of the Easter rebellion of 1916.
The islands were owned by successive landlords who extracted rents from the
islanders for their small lots. It's hard to imagine that anyone would charge rent on a piece of limestone and harder still
to fathom how a landlord could evict a tenant because he couldn’t make a living from rocks.
They earned their keep mainly
from the Atlantic ocean around the islands, a very dangerous piece of water. It has taken the life of many an Aran fisherman.
The boat they use, and still use, is the currach, a remarkably seaworthy canoe whose design has hardly changed in centuries.
But the sea and weather around the islands are the fisherman’s mortal enemy. An old Aran fisherman once remarked, “A man who
is not afraid of the sea will soon be drownded (sic), for he will be going out on a day he shouldn’t. But we do be afraid of
the sea and we do only be drownded now and again.”
On their small bits of land they would cultivate potatoes and
cabbage as well as keeping a cow or a pig, the sale of the latter would pay the landlord. In old Ireland the pig was called,
“The gentleman who pays the rent.”
But there was another crop that was harvested on the islands, since the stone
age - the hunting of sea birds, a terrifying and perilous occupation that required great coolness and nerve on the part of the crag
man engaged in it.
A crowd of men would head for the very high cliffs near the end of the day. A rope was tied around
the crag man’s waist and he was lowered down the cliff face by 4 or 5 men up on top. When the crag man reached a ledge where
the razorbills, guillemots, puffins or cormorants were nesting, he untied the rope and the men on the cliff top would go home to their
supper and a good nights rest. As soon as night fell the crag man would begin his dreadful work, carefully inching his way along
the ledge in the pitch dark feeling for birds. When he found one he killed it. He’d tie them on a string and drag them
after him. This would go on all through the long dangerous night and when dawn came the other men, well rested from their night's
sleep, would arrive back at the cliff top and lower the rope. The birds, often as many 300, and a very tired crag man would
be hauled up. On a few occasions crag men lost their footing or balance and fell to their deaths. On the Aran Islands
necessity was indeed a deadly taskmaster.
