The Strength of the Women

By Cormac MacConnell

THE old man told me last week about the women of Scattery Island which lies in the open mouth of the Shannon Estuary and which is emptied out now except for tourists. 

He talked about the menfolk too, the farmers and the Shannon pilots and the mariners of the high seas. But mostly I will remember his images of the mighty women of Scattery Island. 

I’ve seen a photo of one of them. It was the old man’s grandmother standing proudly in front of a plate camera in the early 1930s. She is in her working clothes and probably then in her fifties. 

She was headscarfed and apron’d and powerfully built. She had the kind of face that had all the wisdom of both the land and the sea inscribed on it. You would not forget meeting her.

The women of Scattery were as good with the curraghs as the men. They had to be because the menfolk were so often away on the high seas, or piloting the big ships up the Shannon Estuary to Limerick, or down the river and out to the seaways of the whole world. So the womenfolk were as comfortable with the curraghs as the men. 

There was a short but fiercely tidal passage out to the mainland at Kilrush. You could not go in a straight line. You had to ride the tides, drift with them, secure in your knowledge of them, both outwards and back home to the ancient island of Saint Senan where, for generations, the majority of the men were called Siney after the saint. 

The women of Scattery knew all the tides, knew how to handle even the two- and three-man curraghs alone. The old man told me, as a boy, he often saw the passage to the mainland crammed with curraghs from Scattery, to-ing and fro-ing, and all of them being oared by women. 

There was one mighty woman when he was young and she was the island schoolmistress. She was originally from the mainland, like many of the wives of Scattery, but she was great to handle a curragh, as good as any man. One time she took a two-man curragh out to the mainland by herself and loaded it up with turf sods for the kids in the school and then easily caught the flowing tide back home.

The women of Scattery had some advantages over their islander sisters on the harsher rocky islands further up the west coast. Their menfolk owned probably the richest farming land of any island anywhere off the coast. You could scarcely better it anywhere, rich loamy land. 

And there was the income from the sea, from the pilotage fees which went to so many homes, from serving the great ships of the ocean as seamen, from the sale of the fat cattle once a year to the dealer who came out from Kilrush and paid top price for the very best of stock. 

The meadows groaned under the weight of the summer hay. The crops of spuds and vegetables were plentiful. Scattery was not an island of poverty. It was the other way around.

Women from the Clare mainland were glad to marry the island men so often called Siney; to come out to the island and learn how to read and ride the curraghs’ eternal tides.

The old man, himself the son of a pilot, told me that life on the island was peaceful and rich when he was a boy. But, of course, the sea always took its toll. 

Many island mariners lost their lives in all the wars of the world that was far away, yet so close to the seaways. Many went down with British merchant ships sunk by U boats in World War Two. 

When the news would come back – and rarely a body – a certain kind of silence would fall down on the island that was almost beyond words. The women of Scattery learned that extra dimension of bereavement that comes when there is loss, sure and certain, but no body to bury.

The women of Scattery had big families in an era of big families. When the younglings of the island came to 16 or 17 then it was time to go for most of them. 

The old man told me he could not wait to get away, he was gone to the navies of the world by the age of 17. The women of Scattery Island, though, saw the most of their beautiful daughters leave at the same age and never ever to return. 

The old man told me the weight of them went to America and to Australia. It was very rarely they ever returned on any tide.

The women of Scattery, young and old, lived with one island pishogue or superstition. They could never ever go underneath the bar which guarded the entrance to the fabled Bed of Saint Senan at the heart of the island.

It was unlucky to do that. The woman or girl who would go under that bar would forever be barren. So they did not go. 

The women of Scattery though, when they were leaving the island forever, brought something special with them from the Bed of Senan.

The old man told me that there was a man called Jack Brennan who was like the keeper of the well. When you were leaving the island you would not go without being presented with Jack Brennan’s medal.

It was made from stones from the saint’s bed, cunningly carved into the shape of a heart by Jack Brennan.

At the American Wake or the Australian Wake on the night before departure Jack Brennan would hang the medal around the neck of the youngling. They would dance a set or two, sing a song, drink a drink, and then it was time for the tide to take the curraghs away out yonder.

There is no continent which has not been walked upon by someone wearing a Jack Brennan medal. There is no port that has not known them. 

And they rest, too many of them, in the beds of all the oceans too. And in the cemeteries of the world. Stones shaped like the heart. Stones from a secret place which the women of Scattery Island never could visit. 

Strange too just to think of it today. And we will leave it there for now.