"That Deep Relationship with the Locale": Community and Place in Dún Chaoin, County Kerry

Abstract

"That Deep Relationship with the Locale"Community and Place in Dún Chaoin, County Kerry Dáithí De Mórdha (bio) psychologies are often rooted in and revealed through place and physical setting. The West Kerry Gaeltacht looms large in the Irish literary imagination: Tomás Ó Criomhthain, Peig Sayers, Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, Seán Ó Ríordáin, Pádraig Ó Cíobháin, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Dairena Ní Chinnéide, Colm Breathnach, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, not to mention Ryan's Daughter, Far and Away, Star Wars, and on and on. This particular landscape operates at a symbolic and cultural level far, far beyond what its population or material resources demand. But for those who live and work in this microcultural and linguistic sphere, the relationship is different. It is individualized, multi-seasonal, and generational. It is a lived experience rather than a textual or visual experience, grounded in memories and emotions rather than in Google maps. In 2021, off the Kerry coast, the aptly named Cú Na Mara trawler netted a tusk. Initially thought to be a mammoth tusk, it proved of more recent origin: an elephant tusk. Slave ships in addition to their human cargo frequently transported elephant tusks to be sold in Britain. In a Doireann Ní Ghríofa–esque moment, the past—a slave ship sailing from Africa to an English (or even an Irish) port, blown off course and sinking off the Kerry coast—reappears in our present. This incident no more than the area's memories of Sir Walter Raleigh, the slaughter of Spanish sailors, and the Lusitania wreckage serves not only to underline the hidden transnational narrative nature of this landscape and seascape but to bring home to us what is hidden in the past, physically beneath us and psychologically within us. Where the summer visitor's eye sees beauty and serenity, a local verbal artist, Peig Sayers, sees a landscape of "internal feelings," a landscape that contains a hidden history, a subterranean narrative. Beneath stunning landscapes, desolate hillsides, ruins, heritage centers, and cafés lies [End Page 55] a deeper, often-forgotten history of power and powerlessness: emigration, eviction, dispossession, inequality, injustice. There exists, Dáithí de Mórdha observes, a "deep intergenerational relationship among people, place, and nature in this place, the most westerly community in Ireland," if not Europe. The following essay explores an insider's "deep relationship with the locale" and how in a small parish on the Celtic fringe of Europe each generation has left evidence of the interaction between the people and the place. brian ó conchubhair, university of notre dame _____ On March 11, 1920, on the Great Blasket Island off the tip of the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, Ireland, Tomás Ó Criomhthain awoke and wandered out after a nighttime storm.1 He described the scene of destruction which lay before him in his book Allagar na hInise (Island Cross-Talk): Bhíos ag máinneáil liom ar an gcuma seo ag tabhairt gach ní faoi ndeara gur chuas i radharc na gcladaí. Ansin is ea a bhuail iontas eile mé, is é sin, an obair a bhí déanta ag an stoirm mhór. Níl aon dabht ná gurb iontach é gnóthaí an duine agus gnóthaí atá déanta ar fuaid an domhain, ach tar i radharc an ghnótha seo a dhein an mhórmhuir le cumhachta Dé agus cuirfidh sé ag machnamh tamall thú. Na stocáin a bhain an fharraige, na hoileáin a bhain sí as a bpréamhacha, na hoileáin mhóra ar bhain sí an croiceann díobh i dteannta an fhéir, na carraigeacha a thóg sí ó cheann den chladach go dtí an ceann eile agus mórán acu nár fhág sí in aon áit. Tá daoine ann agus is olc a chreidfidís uait go bhfuil aon chumhacht eile ann a bhuafadh ar na nithe a chíonn a súil féin. Amadántaíocht!2 I was wandering along like this, noticing everything, until the harbor came into view. It was then that another wonder struck me; the impact of the great storm. There is no doubt about...