EMIGRATION is a sad fact of life for Ireland’s remote island communities – but three years ago Aedín Ní Thiarnaigh decided to go in the opposite direction.
The island she adopted off the coast of Galway has fewer than 200 residents, and it couldn’t have been more different from her upbringing in Wexford on the opposite coast of Ireland.
Inis Meáin – the most remote of the Aran Islands – has embraced her as she has embraced it, and this week she helped organise what must be Ireland’s most unusual – and tastiest – festival.
Aedín noticed that at this time of year the island celebrates the humble blackberry. They bake cakes in its honour and crochet blackberry brooches. And they even have their own name for it – not the normal Irish of sméara dubha, but puiteachaí, a word they are very proud of. And so last year Féile na bPuiteachaí was born.
This weekend the community came together again in honour of the tiny fruit. The island’s children took part in a blackberry treasure hunt and punnets of the berries were gathered to be used in all sorts of activities, including making cocktails.
Prizes were handed out for various blackberry-themed crafts – the cake pictured here that won first prize wouldn’t last long in Dúlra’s house.
Aedín had first flown to Inis Meáin six years ago to film a traditional music festival, but when she set foot on the island, something special happened, something magical. “It’s a wild, windswept place and if you weren’t in the middle of the town, or beside one of the modern buildings like the school or the airstrip, it would be easy for a person walking about Inis Meáin to imagine that a time machine took them there instead of a wee propellor plane,” she later wrote in Irish.
The sun was splitting the trees on the weekend of her first visit and when the sun shines, the island is like heaven itself.
Aedín says that autumn is her favourite time of year on the island. “When you walk the roads at this time of year, with the sun going down and the island lit up in a soft pink light, there’s no place nicer or more peaceful on Earth,” she wrote.
The blackberry cake that won the Féile prize
Of course, it’s also the tastiest time, with those roads lined with brambles weighed down with blackberries. Aedín – along with many islanders – walks these roads “without a care in the world”, filling bowls with the berries, “strengthening my stomach and my soul at the same time”.
She says the islanders are so obsessed with the puiteachaí that they even write poetry in their honour – the best win prizes at the festival as well.
In Belfast, the blackberry is so common it’s usually overlooked. But this week, inspired by the people of Inis Meáin, Dúlra decided to pick a few for himself.
People often want rid of messy brambles which quickly form ditches, but these ditches don’t just supply blackberries, they give great cover for animals and birds. A forest or group of trees left to its own devices will naturally be bordered with brambles, and so on Tuesday Dúlra visited Valley Park in North Belfast, where there are plenty of mini-forests amid the maze of paths.
He wasn’t to be disappointed. Tuesday’s bright autumnal sun glistened on the blackberries that bordered every path. Some were so ripe they dropped off the stem into his hand. Dúlra left the park after an hour feeling like he’d just had an energy drink.
He just wishes he had a recipe for that cake…
• Last week Dúlra wrote about the disastrous fall in swift numbers in recent years, which local experts said was noticeable again this summer. However, it seems that one area of West Belfast is bucking the trend.
Reader Caoimhín says there were around 20 zooming across the sky over Gransha this year. “I was even surprised to see four doing their swansong two weeks ago before their departure,” he says.
That’s great news, Caoimhín – and it would be good to find out where they are nesting so we can ensure that the roof cavities that they need are protected.
• If you’ve seen or photographed anything interesting, or have any nature questions, you can text Dúlra on 07801 414804.
