Tom MacSweeney column: Cape Clear had a distinct gansey

I had a fascinating conversation with author, historian, and storyteller Diarmuid O’Drisceoil in his home at Ballintemple, where I learned a lot about the Cape Clear gansey.

Most people will know of the Aran Island sweater, but perhaps not so many about the Cape Clear gansey, which we were discussing in the context of his new book, Island Pieces (Blúirí Oileánda), about the West Cork island.

Ganseys, hand-knitted to traditional patterns, were standard wear for fishermen around the coastlines of Ireland in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Strong, tight-fitting, flexible, and wind and spray-proof, they were ideally suited to hard work in coastal waters.

Patterns could be associated with particular locations and individual knitters, and have been known to assist in the identification of drowned fishermen when bodies were recovered.

It is one of 29 storylines in the 208-page book about aspects of the island, ranging from its maritime history through its harbours, shipwrecks, rescues, to the ditches across its fields, the furniture in homes, the clothes people wore, and the prayer books they used.

Other topics addressed include stone masonry, butter, townland names, emigration from the island, the time before electricity was brought to the island and the changes it made, the birds that make it Ireland’s premier seabird watching location, outbreaks of disease on the island including measles, the dialect of Irish spoken — and much else.

It is presented in an unusual form — a page in Irish and a corresponding one in in English.

Diarmuid’s father came from the island.

“Multiple aspects to do with its history and specifically its social history, have attracted my attention through many years of visiting, experiencing, and enjoying Cape Clear. It is a distinctive island, known by mariners for many, many years, voyaging either along the Irish coastline, or approaching Ireland from the Atlantic,” Diarmuid said.

“It has an area of approximately 1,503 acres divided into at least 1,000 fields, enclosures and gardens.

“Being a relatively small island, Cape Clear’s story is nicely contained within its three square miles or so. My Cape Clear grandmother, uncles, and aunts, through their memories and reminiscences, gave me understanding of what island life was like. They lived the social history I now try to understand.”

That history includes of course, fishing, which was essential to the island economy, until today, as Diarmuid recounts: “From 1880 to the 1920s Cape Clear fishermen led the boom in fishing that transformed the fortunes of the island. The principal catch was mackerel, with a spring and autumn season, but by the 1920s the fishing boom was over.

“The fortunes of Cape Clear were in decline. Many of the fishing boats were sold, others engaged in coastal trading between Cork city and the West Cork islands. Some continued fishing out of the island in subsequent decades, but on a much reduced scale. Today the long island tradition of fishing is maintained by only one lobster boat that works out of the harbour during the summer months.”

While fishing has ended the memory of its heyday of over a century ago is still very much part of island folklore. At the western end of the main pier in North Harbour a large limestone plaque records the names of many of the island fishing boats and their owners that were involved in the Cape Clear fishing boom.

Island poet John K Cotter recalled those glory days: “The lofty spars of North Harbour that were the island’s pride,/ Where are they now? Alas, they’re gone, that braved the raging tide. The billows of the ocean will rock them now no more/ And the gallant men that worked them are on another shore.”

Photographs of the good times for the industry on the island are included in the impressive book which Diarmuid O’Drisceoil has self-published. It costs €25 and is on sale in bookshops and online at: capeclearbook.ie.

He will be speaking at this weekend’s Cape Clear Storytelling Festival which starts on Friday, with which he has been involved for over 25 years. The festival is a valuable economic boost to the island.

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