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The Islander: A More Provocative Tomás O’Crohan

2014; Philosophy Documentation Center; Volume: 18; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/nhr.2014.0046

1534-5815

Thomas F. Shea,

Irish and British Studies

The Islander:A More Provocative Tomás O’Crohan Thomas F. Shea Since its publication as An tOileánach in 1929, Tomás O’Crohan’s autobiography has afforded the world only a skewed image of the godfather of the Blasket writers.1 O’Crohan’s original writings were materially shaped by his editor, Pádraig Ó Siochfhradha, better known by his pen name “An Seabhac.”2 With an agenda of presenting O’Crohan as the epitome of the Gaeltacht man and a model of authentic Irishness for the new Irish Free State, An Seabhac excised thousands and thousands of O’Crohan’s words. A long-established editor of several Gaelic League periodicals, An Seabhac consistently sought to promote images of Irish cultural purity. To this end, he fashioned O’Crohan’s writings to present “his picture of a pure, essential man, pitting himself against the elements, untainted by learning or knowledge of the wider world.”3 Tim Robinson characterizes the “romantic nationalism” that An Seabhac and others were fostering during the early twentieth century as a pursuit of “the rediscovery of the Celtic soul”: at the end of this quest, “this ancient, mysterious, spirit guide of the nation was to be called forth from the humble cottages of the last living representatives of Celtic purity, the Irish-speaking farm and fisherfolk, and pre-eminently those of the western seaboard.”4 [End Page 93] When Robin Flower published his translation, The Islandman, in 1934, he was restricted by working from the Irish text that An Seabhac had covertly bowdlerized and, in some ways, forged; nonetheless, the Flower translation proved enormously popular.5 In his efforts to fit Tomás O’Crohan into such a mold of “Celtic purity,” An Seabhac offered a tamed, distorted version of the exuberant man and storyteller we now see and hear more fully through the passages O’Crohan originally inscribed. The Islandman known to most readers—whether in Irish or in the English translation—affords only a partial picture of Tomás O’Crohan and of life on the Blasket. In 2002, however, Seán Ó Coileáin—professor of Modern Irish at University College, Cork and an expert on the relationship between O’Crohan and An Seabhac—presented a new, definitive edition of An tOileánach that resurrected the passages deleted in the 1920s. This “complete and unabridged” Irish text has been translated by Gary Bannister and David Sowby and now appears in an English edition titled The Islander (2012). The reinstated passages afford an English-language audience a more complex and intriguing rendition of Tomas O’Crohan, the man and the writer. For instance, The Islander expands our appreciation of Tomás’s early and vital romance with Cait Daly from the neighboring island Inishvickillane. Through the restored passages, we hear more vibrantly, and develop a greater feel for, the intensity of his thwarted love for “the most pleasing young woman on the blessed earth.”6 In addition, restored accounts of two trips from the Great Blasket to the Iveragh peninsula prove to be more provocative than the original publications ever conveyed. We now read of the Islanders taking full advantage of these trips as opportunities for liberating adventures and serendipitous discoveries. O’Crohan’s descriptions of these trips also prompt an exploration of his overlooked early writing career. The dynamics of matrimony that operated in West Kerry during the nineteenth century are essential to understanding O’Crohan’s tale. In the middle of the autobiography, Tomás recounts his burgeoning interest in a young woman [End Page 94] from the neighboring island, Inishvickillane, a six-mile row from the Great Blasket. Encouraged by his uncle Dermot, Tomás wooed and was intent on marrying this never named “young woman I’d met on the island” (I 128); her name was, in fact, Cait Daly. Traditionally, West Kerry marriages were arranged unions, requiring the blessing of the prospective bride’s and groom’s parents. Tomás’s eldest sister Mary stepped in just as his Uncle Dermot, as matchmaker, had almost concluded the deal with Tomás’s parents. Mary succeeded in sabotaging the entire arrangement. She convinced her parents that Tomás’s marriage...