Notes
Amazon Book Description
- Maurice O'Sullivan was born on the Great Blasket in 1904, and 'Twenty Years A-Growing' tells the story of his youth and of a way of life which belonged to the Middle Ages. He wrote for his own pleasure and for the entertainment of his friends, without any thought of a wider public; his style is derived from folk-tales which he heard from his grandfather and sharpened by his own lively imagination.
- The Blasket Islands are three miles off Ireland's Dingle Peninsula. Until their evacuation just after the Second World War, the lives of the 150 or so Blasket Islanders had remained unchanged for centuries. A rich oral tradition of story-telling, poetry, and folktales kept alive the legends and history of the islands, and has made their literature famous throughout the world. The 7 Blasket Island books published by OUP contain memoirs and reminiscences from within this literary tradition, evoking a way of life which has now vanished.
Amazon Customer Review
- In Fiche Bliadhn ag fás/Twenty Years ago, Muiris Ó Súilleabháin gives an account of growing up in the Blasket Islands/Na Blascaodaí in Western Kerry at the beginning of the 20th century. It gives a fascinating and well written account of the day-to-day life and practices of the islanders including their rituals and rites of passage from Halloween to wakes, emigration and much more. It is worth a read for anybody interested in the Blascaodaí and is highly recommended.
- I only have two complaints about the book. First is the super-patronising introduction by E.M. Forster which amongst other things calls Blasket life "neolithic civilization1'. This is as inaccurate as it is insulting as it neglects the fact that the islanders are literate, have regular access to newspapers, are aware of world affairs, regularly hear from relatives in America and many have travelled in their lives as can be read in the book itself. This type of occidentalism and looking at remote islanders are 'noble savages', which is also often seen with the many descriptions of Scotland's St Kilda, is inaccurate and patronising .
- My other complaint is the translation. The translators' note says that the "language like the life is largely medieval". The life is not medieval as is already argued above and I'd argue that the language isn't either. The translation tries to give a feel of the original Irish but in doing so, and by using Irish word order and patterns in the English, makes Irish seem old-worldly and old-fashioned and just makes the English difficult to read. This isn't fair on Irish as translating English into Irish in a similar way would make English look equally quaint. This would be just as much the case if we were to translate Spanish, German, French or any other major world language into English this way.
- Read and enjoy but ignore the occidentalism!
Introductory Note
- THE best introduction to this autobiography is its own first chapter. If the reader laughs at the schoolmistress and the matrons, and is moved by the dream of the butterfly inside the horse’s skull — then he is assured of amusement and emotion to come. He is ready to go on to make the great journey from Dingle east, where O’Connor and the girl were so unreliable. He is ready, furthermore, to make another journey: steal out on Hallowe’en and catch thrushes above waves of the living and the dead, and see the Land of the Young in the west, and hear the mother-seal saying to the hunter, ‘If you are in luck you will leave this cove in haste, for be it known to you that you will not easily kill my young son.’ All this — both the gaiety and the magic — can be sampled in the opening chapter, and the reader can decide for himself quickly, so that there is no need to say to him ‘This book is good.’
- But it is worth saying ‘This book is unique’, lest he forget what a very odd document he has got hold of. He is about to read an account of neolithic civilization from the inside. Synge and others have described it from the outside, and very sympathetically, but I know of no other instance where it has itself become vocal, and addressed modernity. Nor is a wiseacre speaking for it; we are entertained by a lively young man, who likes dancing and the movies, and was smart at his lessons. But he is able to keep our world in its place, and to view it only from his own place, and his spirit never abandons the stronghold to which, in the final chapter, his feet will return. ‘When I returned home the lamps were being lit in the houses. I went in. My father and grandfather were sitting on either side of the fire, my grandfather smoking his old pipe.’ With these words the story closes, and it is as if a shutter descends, behind which all three generations disappear, and their Island with them.
- The book is written in Irish, and the original is being published in Dublin. As regards the translators, one of them is in close and delicate touch with the instincts of her countryside, the other, a scholar, teaches Greek through the medium of Irish in the University of Galway. I know the author too. He is now in the Civic Guard in Connemara, and though he is pleased that his book should be translated, his main care is for the Irish original, because it will be read on the Blasket. They will appreciate it there more than we can, for whom the wit and poetry must be veiled. On the other hand, we are their superiors in astonishment. They cannot possibly be as much surprised as we are, for here is the egg of a sea-bird — lovely, perfect, and laid this very morning.
→ E.M. Forster, 1933
Preface
- THE Blasket Islands lie off the Kerry Coast, in the extreme south-west corner of Ireland. The largest of them, the only one now inhabited, is nearly five miles long, and for the most part less than half a mile broad, rising to not quite a thousand feet at its highest point,—a treeless ridge of bog and mountain pasture descending in the west to a wind-swept headland of bare rock. The village is huddled under the shelter of the hill at the eastern end, nearest the mainland, where there is enough soil to yield a scanty crop of potatoes and oats. There is no harbour, and the only kind of boat in use is the curragh, a canoe of wicker framework and canvas covering, light enough for two men to carry on their backs. The distance from the mainland, quay to quay, is two and a half miles — an easy journey in good weather, but impossible in bad. The present population of the Island is about a hundred and fifty. Before the European War it was two hundred. The decrease is mainly due to emigration to America. It is recorded that the population doubled during the Great Famine (1840- 50) when the starving and evicted peasantry of the interior flocked to the coasts in search of food.
- The other islands, similarly featured but smaller and even more exposed, lie to the west and north of the main island. The most fertile of them, Inish-vick-illaun, was inhabited till the end of the last century, and one house still stands, being used in the summer for the lobster-fishing. Inish-na-Bro is a rugged hog’s-back with a remarkable headland perforated by the sea, like the arches of a Gothic cathedral. Tearacht, the most westerly, is a pyramid of naked rock, about six hundred feet high, with a lighthouse on the seaward side. Inish Tuiscirt, to the north, has the remains of an oratory of Saint Brendan, the patron saint of the district.
- Some of the Islanders own cows and sheep, and the pasture yields delicious mutton. Turf is plentiful at the western end. The main industry is fishing — lobster in the summer and mackerel in the winter – a dangerous and precarious livelihood. The nearest market is the town of Dingle, twelve miles east of Dunquin, the mainland village opposite the Island.
- The houses are of the usual west-of-Ireland type —long, low, and narrow. Many of them are dug into the steep slope of the hill, for shelter from the wind. They contain a living-room, with a floor of boards or beaten earth, and an open hearth at the west end. The sleeping-room is usually at the east end, but in some houses there is another small room behind the hearth. There is a loft, but no upper story, and when an Islander speaks of going up or down in the house, he means that he is going towards or away from the hearth. The roof is of tarred canvas, the same material which is used for covering the curraghs. There are a number of spinning-wheels on which the women spin their wool, but the old local dyes are going out of use. There are no shops of any kind. The nearest chapel is at Dunquin, where the men of the Island go to hear Mass every Sunday when the sea is calm.
- Only Irish is spoken and little English is known. Reading is a habit only recently acquired and seldom practised. The pastimes are singing, dancing, story-telling, and conversation. The literature, which has been preserved entirely by oral tradition, includes ancient legends, some of them older than Beowulf, poems and songs dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and a wealth of folklore, still only partly collected. The people are fond of poetry and music. The art of impromptu verse composition in intricate metrical forms survived within living memory, and in recent years they have shown considerable skill in making and playing violins. The dances are the hornpipe, jig, four-hand reel, various country figures, and most popular of all, the ‘sets’, a descendant of the old quadrille.
- The language, like the life, is largely medieval -vigorous, direct, rich in oaths and asseverations, and delighting in neat and witty turns of phrase which are largely lost in translation. In these respects it resembles the speech of other peasantries, but it also possesses an elegance and grace which is due to its peculiar history; for, when the clan system on which Irish culture was based finally broke down in the seventeenth century, the poets and scholars were scattered among the common people.
- This book is the story of one of the Islanders, written by himself for his own pleasure and for the entertainment of his friends, without any thought of a wider public. In the first part of the book he gives an account of his childhood in the Island; in the second he goes on to describe how he left his native place and went to Dublin in order to join the Civic Guard, the new Irish police force. It is the first translation into English of a genuine account of the life of the Irish peasants written by one of themselves, as distinct from what has been written about them by the poets and dramatists of the Anglo-Irish school. He was subject to only one literary influence. When he was a boy, a copy of Gorky’s My Childhood found its way into the Island. He read it, and it made a deep impression on him.
- A few words may be added about the translation. The English language, as commonly spoken in Ireland, differs considerably from standard English, and these differences are mainly due to memories, conscious or unconscious, of Irish speech. The new language has been twisted to fit the moulds of thought and idiom peculiar to the old. Hence we have freely used the Irish dialect of English as being the nearest to our original, and in this respect we are following the example of Synge, who of all writers in English had the deepest understanding of the Irish-speaking peasantry. But rich and highly coloured as this English is, its range is less than that of Irish, and since its literature is mainly in prose and entirely modern, it lacks the stamp of an ancient poetical tradition which is a marked feature of Irish. The range of vocabulary in the translation is less than that of the original, and there is not a word or phrase in the original which is not current in ordinary conversation.
- With regard to the spelling of proper names, we have sought rather to help the English reader than to be consistent. Some Irish names have an English form, others have not; and we have used one or the other, whichever seemed the more convenient.
- We have omitted some passages of the original.
→ Moya Llewelyn & Davies George Thomson, 1933
Postscript
- THE reader will ask what happened to the author after the end of his story. The task of enforcing the law was not congenial to him. After the book was published, he left the Civic Guard, built himself a house, married, and settled among the Connemara peasantry. There he lived happily till he was drowned bathing in 1950, leaving a widow, son, and daughter.
- His hostess in Dublin, one of the two translators, is also dead. As for the Blasket Island, all the old people who figure in the story are gone; the school was closed many years ago; and the village is in ruins. The population has been reduced to five households, comprising twenty-one persons, with only one child. The mainland is being devastated in the same way. Nearly all the young people have emigrated. Everything seems to show that this corner of Ireland is destined to become as desolate as parts of the Scottish Highlands.
- And yet it may be doubted whether this is so. The creeping paralysis of depopulation and decay is liable to be overtaken by other changes that are sweeping across the world today; and in that event there will arise out of the infinite suffering involved in the dispersal of this fine people a new Ireland, replenished by her exiles and their children returning from overseas.
→ GEORGE THOMSON, 1951
Contents INTRODUCTORY NOTE – V
PREFACE – Vii
- IN DINGLE – 1
- MY FIRST JOURNEY HOME – 16
- THE ISLAND – 28
- A day’s HUNTING – 36
- VENTRY RACES – 44
- PIERCE’S CAVE – 75
- A SHOAL OF MACKEREL – 79
- HALLOWE’EN – 87
- THE WHALE – 95
- THE WAKE – 103
- A NIGHT IN THE INISH – 120
- THE WAR – 139
- THE SHIPWRECK – 152
- THE WANDERER – 164
- THE LOBSTER SEASON – 183
- MATCHMAKING – 190
- THE WEDDING DAY – 201
- AN AMERICAN WAKE – 2l6
- THE STRANGER – 220
- MY LAST JOURNEY TO THE INISH – 230
- I LEAVE HOME – 240
- FROM DINGLE EAST – 247
- THE CITY OF DUBLIN – 268
- THE CIVIC GUARD – 278
- CONNEMARA – 290
- CONCLUSION – 297
Note
- a is pronounced like aw in shawl, e like ay in bay, i like ee in bee, u like oo in cool; ia and ua like the vowel sounds in real and truer respectively. The Irish peasant is usually known among his own people by his Christian name followed by that of his father or mother, whichever is the more notable character, sometimes by that of his grandfather (like Tomas Owen Vaun). Nicknames are very common.
In-Page Footnotes ("O'Sullivan (Maurice), Forster (E.M.) - Twenty Years A-Growing")
Footnote 1:
- This is an extraordinary miscategorisation, but is only one word in an otherwise sympathetic and respectful review. The reviewer is rather ‘woke’.
- The review is repeated above. Note that Forster knew the author – though he doesn’t say how.
Book Comment
- OUP, 17 February 1983; Paperback
- Recommended by on old gentleman Julie, Bertie and I met on Laindon Common in April 2026. He was of Irish Catholic extraction and had lived in Ireland, but was born around these parts during WW2 and remembered the doodlebugs flying over. He had a large library and had worked in the Natural History Museum and on fieldwork in Gabon, West Africa, where Albert Schweitzer had worked (see Wikipedia: Albert Schweitzer).
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)