Letters from The Great Blasket

This selection of Letters from the Great Blasket, for the most part written by Eibhlís Ní Shúilleabháin of the island to George Chambers in London, covers a period of over twenty years. Eibhlís married Seán Ó Criomhthain a son of Tomás Ó Criomhthain, An tOileanach (The Islandman). On her marriage she lived in the same house as the Islandman and nursed him during the last years of his life which are described in the letters. Beginning in 1931 when the island was still a place where one might marry and raise a family (if only for certain exile in America), the letters end in 1951 with the author herself in exile on the mainland and the old folk of the island -scatt-ering to their graves. By the time Eibhlís left the Blasket in July 1942 the island school had already closed and the three -remaining pupils left to run wild with the rabbits.It must be remembered when reading these letters that they were written in a language foreign to Eibhlís whose native tongue was Irish. Only very minor changes were thought -des-irable in the letters and these in the interests of -intelligibility. Here, through the struggling idiom and laboured pass-ages, emerges in fascinating detail a strange and different way of life as seen unconsciously through the eyes of a woman. This is not the island of the summer visitor but one intimately known, loved and feared and finally abandoned.