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From: Tom Rue
Subject: Innisfree: Island of Ghosts
Date: 1997-11-15 13:22
Priority: 3
Message ID: 2D252F43D55DD1118AEF00805FFEE00C
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Swiped from: <http://www.nlsearch.com/>, forwarded for your possible interest. If it doesn't, delete. ;-)
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Title: Innisfree: Island of Ghosts
Summary: Back in the 1940s when I was a boy, I used to spend my summer vacation on a little island off the Donegal coast called Innisfree.
Source: an Scathan; Ethnic News Watch
Date: 31-AUG-1996
Document Size: Short (up to 2 pages)
Subject(s): FOLKLORE/TRADITIONS (MYTHS/LEGENDS); GEOGRAPHY/COUNTRIES (IRELAND); TRAVEL (SUMMER, VACATION)
Citation: V.2; N.8; p. 11
Author(s): Campbell, Pat
Document Type: Article
Back in the 1940s when I was a boy, I used to spend my summer vacation on a little island off the Donegal coast called Innisfree.
It was the home of my grandparents, Tim and Bridget Gallagher, and I loved to pack my bag and go there and not leave until it was time to go back to school in September.
Innisfree had no telephones, no electric lights, no indoor toilets and no automobiles or bicycles, and the inhabitants of the thirty-two houses had a lifestyle that had remained unchanged for centuries.
The attractions Innisfree had for me were an abundance of beaches, fishing from the rocks along the perimeter of the island, and two close friends who became my inseparably companions during the summer.
One might imagine there was little to do during the long evenings after an exhausting day on the beaches, but this was not so. Adults and youngsters liked to visit their neighbors during this part of the day, and a lively mixture of gossip and storytelling provided better entertainment than some of the high rated shows on television today.
The stories I liked best were the ghost stories that always were told at some time during the evening by one of the adults who were present.
These stories were never rehearsed or staged, and they always were told as an extension of some other topic under discussion. When someone began to tell a ghost story, the entire room became quiet, and it was obvious that all who were present believed absolutely in the existence of ghosts and were always willing to suspend judgment on the credibility of any given story and accept it as the truth and nothing but the truth.
Like the rest of those present, I too believed firmly that the landscape at night was full of restless spirits who wandered the narrow roads of the island, and my greatest fear was that I would meet one of them when I was alone at night.
I tried to make sure this would never happen by walking back to my grandparent's cottage with at least one other person. There were times, however, when all those listening to the ghost story were from a different part of the island and I would be forced to walk up to a mile - alone - with only my imagination for company. I suppose I could have asked one of the others to walk me home, but this is something I never would never done. No growing boy in Ireland would admit to being afraid of ghosts, and so I had no alternative but to make my way home alone.
If it was a moonlit night, I would run all the way home with my eyes half-closed so there would be little chance I would see anything that might be there. I would also talk aloud to myself, as though I had someone with me. I knew full well this would not deceive the ghost, but the noise of my own talk helped me distract myself, so that I did not focus entirely on the supernatural.
I was a good runner when I was a youngster, and it seemed I could cross the mile-wide island in no time at all during the day. At night, however, the journey seemed to take forever - at least twice as long as during the day - and I would arrive at my grandparents' door frightened and exhausted by the tyranny of my imagination.
Of course, if the night was overcast, which it often was, then I could not run home because the unpaved roads were full of holes. One had to navigate with the held of a flashlight, and running was out of the question, so the journey took much longer.
I did not like the idea of using a flashlight at all - as a matter of fact I hated it - but I really had no alternative. To walk on those roads in absolute darkness was to risk tumbling into a hole and breaking a leg or a neck. The thought of lying there helpless and at the mercy of some spirit who might come upon me made me carry a flashlight no matter how much I disliked it.
My dislike of flashlights was based on several experiences I had on my way home from these storytelling sessions.
On the first occasion, I had been badly frightened by a story a man told about meeting the Devil one night on the road that ran through the center of the island - the road I was taking home that night. Later, when I was going home alone that night in pitch darkness, picking my way carefully around the puddles, I heard what I thought was a moan off to my right. When I probed the darkness with the beam of the flashlight, the beam picked up a set of white horns and two large eyes, and for a second I thought I was in the presence of the very Devil Himself. But it was only a cow.
Still, I was panic-stricken and weak with fright, and I blamed the flashlight for my condition. If I had not had the flashlight, I reasoned, I would not have seen this apparition.
Something similar happened several weeks later when I was walking home on the lonely road that skirted the south side of the island. I was halfway home when I became aware of the sound of footsteps behind me - sounds that continued even after I picked up the pace.
I was hyperventilating when I got up the courage to turn around and focus the flashlight on what was following me. Embarrassed, I discovered it was only a stray goat that decided to walk me home. But in the instant before those horns and that elongated muzzle registered as a goat, the sharp focus of the flashlight on its face made me think of the Devil again, and I was sure I had been sent for.
After my grandparents died and I moved to the United States, I rarely visited Innisfree again, mainly because most of the original inhabitants had moved to the mainland and their homes were taken over by German, Welsh and English families. The Germans are using the cottages as vacation homes, while the Welsh and English families have settled down there and become small farmers.
Two years ago, I spent a night in Innisfree at the home of one of the few original inhabitants, and I had a very enjoyable evening there talking with my friends and swapping stories with the German, Welsh and English who had come for a visit.
It was like the old days all over again, with to television to watch and the only entertainment that of storytelling around the fire.
But I was amazed as the night wore on to hear one of the Germans tell how the house he had bought was haunted. When he first moved in, he recounted, he could not live there until the spirit had been exorcised. "They helped me" he said, nodding to his Welsh and English companions. "We all stayed up all night with candles and chanted from the Bible."
I felt like laughing as I listened to them, but they were obviously serious, so I did not laugh. Neither did I laugh when a Welsh couple told about the ghost of a young girl who is seen regularly around their barns. Nevertheless, I came to the conclusion that there had to be something in the air in Innisfree that made people of all religions and all races so passionately convinced that the space they inhabits is also inhabited by spirits - some friendly, some not.
After they left, I asked my host if she believed in the stories. She certainly did, she informed me, because she had attended the exorcism and taken part in it, and she had also seen the ghost of the little girl.
At this stage of my life, however, I just could not bring myself to believe in such things. Though I did not tell my host that she and the other islanders were victims of their overactive imaginations, I thought they would do well to spend more time on the mainland and take a break from the aura of Innisfree.
Before I went to bed, I decided to take a walk along one of the island roads. Outside, I soon discovered that the silence was even more profound than it had been when I was a youngster. Only six of the thirty-two houses are now occupied, and the boarded-up houses of those who had deserted this island stood like tombstones in the moonlight.
As I walked toward the center of the island, to the empty hulk of my grandparents' house, a familiar feeling came over me. I began to get nervous - and even the slightest sound of a bird or animal in a bush seemed threatening.
I told myself I was being ridiculous and behaving like a frightened child, but in the end, the haunted landscape of deserted houses and the absolute silence got on my nerves. I retreated back to the beach, where my host lived.
I was too embarrassed to tell her of my disquiet, of course, so when I returned, after spending a long time on the beach, I lied to her and told her I had walked around the island.
I am sure there are places in this world where there really are ghosts, and then there are other places like Innisfree, which can make people who settle there believe passionately in ghosts - whether they exist or not.
It must have something to do with the water, or the air, or the island karma, because no matter how long you stay away from the place, you tune in as soon as you return.
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TOM RUE | Opinions are the writer's alone. | c. 1997.
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