Video: Meet the Cork woman  documenting Sherkin Island's heritage

ST Mona is the patron saint of Sherkin island, and has a townland, Kilmona, a church, St Mona’s, and a proud Sherkin island woman, Mona O’Driscoll, all named in her honour.

“I am so lucky to have a sense of place, and Sherkin is truly home to me. It’s really grounding to know where you come from, and I have so much to be grateful for having grown up here on the island,” reflected Mona.

Although she has enjoyed living in other places such as Australia, Denmark and the UK, she’s really happy she made the decision to settle back home on the island.

“There are a lot of O’Driscoll families in the area stretching over to Baltimore and Cape Clear, so in these parts the way to distinguish one O’Driscoll family from another is to give them a reference, so my family were always referred to as ‘The Globes’. 

My late father Pat Connie was always referred to as ‘Pat the Globes O’ Driscoll’. He was a native Sherkin man, and my mother Mary Kate came from Lisheen over on the mainland.

“My parents met each other when my father went out to a platform dance outside Minihan’s pub in Lisheen. He crossed over in his punt and moored it in Turk Head, and then walked the couple of miles over to the dance where he met my mother, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

The platform dances were a feature of Irish rural life in 1950s and were often situated at the crossroads. They served as the ‘dance hall’ in rural areas at a time when many people did not have cars, nor the means to travel to towns and cities to frequent dance halls.

Long summer evenings were enjoyed by young and old at many of the platform dances in West Cork and beyond, when local musicians would accompany the enthusiastic dancers, and, just like what happened between Mona’s parents, they were places where romance blossomed.

“My parents were wonderful people and they went on to have seven of us,” said Mona. “The first to come along were my two older twin brothers Gerard and Martin, then Kevin, my sister Margaret, John Joe, myself, and then the youngest, my sister Maria.

Three of us still live on the island, myself, and my brother and sister.

“I have great memories of when I was small going to visit my grandmother Margaret Hegarty in Lisheen. She lived in a tiny house with a thatched roof near the church. We would cross from the nearest point on Sherkin, then scramble off the boat in Turk Head, and practically fly up the two miles as fast as our little legs could carry us. She would be waiting for us with a big fry that she would have cooked on her small range. She always gave us biscuits and treats, she was lovely to us. I’ll always remember those visits to her with great fondness.

“As our family got bigger, my mother was not able to get off the island as often as she would have liked to see her, my father was kept busy farming, and it’s not aways easy to get away when cows have to be milked.

“I recently found a letter written by my mother to my grandmother saying that she was sorry that she could not come out as often as she would have liked, she would have to wait until the children were a bit hardier. 

I am sure she missed her though you would never hear her complaining.

“She was a fantastic mother. She did absolutely everything by hand. There were no disposable nappies in those days. She didn’t have a washing machine. She used to bath us all on a Saturday night in the kitchen and wrap us up in a towel beside the fire to dry our hair, of course there was no such thing as having hair-dryers either in those times.

“She’d make a big jug of cocoa and we’d drink it by the fire and we’d beg her to tell us ghost stories. Some of the stories involved spooks that rose up from the sea and carried children away with them. Looking back on it now, I am sure that my mother told us some of those stories to warn us of the dangers of the sea, and especially to keep us away from going near the strand at night, and my father taught us all how to swim. 

A healthy respect for the power of the sea was certainly instilled in us.

“As children, we loved playing on the strand, and my brothers used to go ‘Wrecking’, that is they foraged for bits of things that were washed up on the shore. Then they used them to make their own replicas of the trawlers they would have seen around the island. They painted them and put the names on them and everything.

“We all were expected to work on the farm and help with chores such a feeding the calves and haymaking. I was always fed up having to help out during the summer when the visitors came to the island, and I used to be dying to get away to play with my friends.

“Everyone helped with the haymaking, and even the summer visitors were roped into it. My mother used to have a dinner whistle, and when you’d hear it across the fields, you knew that food was coming. We would run back to the house and help bring out pots of tea and sandwiches to the haymakers.

“Many people who came to Sherkin during the summer months became our friends for life, and it was great to see their arrival like the swallows, which the islanders always welcomed by leaving their shed doors open for them to nest.

“My mother made her own butter and sold it in O’Neill’s, the Sherkin Shop. She used to roll it into fancy little balls for special occasions. 

The closure of the shop in 2006 was a great loss to the island.

“For us, the island community, it was more than just a shop, it was a meeting place. Everyone used to gather there of a morning and exchange the news and have a great chat. It was a Sunday morning ritual after Mass that you’d meet all the neighbours there. It was also the local post office, and that too was an awful blow to the island when it closed along with the shop. It means that now you have to travel to Skibbereen to the nearest post office, and I feel very sorry for some of the older residents who cannot walk down to the local shop and post office now to collect their pension like they used to.”

Mona said that 15 or 20 years ago there were much better services on the island.

“I remember blood pressure clinics, getting the flu injections and chiropodist clinics on the island, but now all of that is gone.

“When I was growing up, my mother used to take one or two of us out visiting her women friends, this was called ‘scoraíochting’. They would sit around together for hours just chatting and drinking tea and eating fruit cake. It was always a treat to get something nice that was different from what you’d get in your own house, and of course we loved listening in to the conversation.

“I remember the pictures of the American president John F Kennedy and his wife Jackie adorned the walls of the houses, including in my own house, and the women would all be chatting about the style of Jackie O.

“We used to get a box from America from relatives of my parents who lived there. It always contained lovely clothes for us, and one year I remember getting a beautiful bonnet with ribbons which I loved so much I even wore it to bed!

I went to the primary school in Sherkin which has since closed down. 

"For secondary school I went to Skibbereen, but for my third level education I was delighted to be able to do my degree right here on the island, I just had to walk down the road.

“I completed my BA in Visual Art in 2014, which is a TU course on the island, and it was a wonderful experience.

“My father rented a granny flat adjacent to the home of a lady they knew in Baltimore for us when we were in secondary school, previous to that we boarded out with families my parents knew.

“I was around 16 then when I lived with my older siblings, and my mother used to send us out on a Sunday night with cakes, her home-made brown bread and butter, vegetables and supplies for the week.

“We were given a certain amount of pocket money and if you used it up too fast you wouldn’t be long learning how to budget to make it last the week. Looking back now, it was a great life education.

“Everything was organic in those days, all the veg and potatoes were grown on the farm, and we always had plenty of fish to eat. 

My father even used to make his own cod liver oil, and he knew plenty of cures for all kinds of things.

“My mother used to cut our hair, and my aunt told me that my grandmother used to pick chamomile on her walks around the island and rinse her hair with that. Islanders used to pick carrageenan moss and add it to everything, I remember my mother making blancmange with it.”

Mona said they had a great social life through the island rowing club.

“I loved going to the regattas in Schull and other places around, and it was great to learn how to row a boat, a strong tradition in this part of West Cork to be sure.”

She is currently working on a community scheme fund by Cork County Council to document all the names of the townlands and the roads of the island.

“I want to compile all these place names and put them on a map so that they can be seen visually. 

I am speaking with the older residents to do my research, they carry the knowledge of the island. 

"My father knew every nook and cranny of the place, and I feel it’s important to document this before it gets lost forever.

“I am also a presenter on Sherkin Island radio –‘Sherkin Sounds and Surrounds’. It can be accessed on Soundcloud.

“My sister Margaret, who lives in Florida, is delighted to be able to tune in and hear all about what’s happening on Sherkin.”

Creative residents like Mona, combined with the artistic talents of many other residents, ensure that there’s always something interesting going on on Sherkin island.

More info on Sherkin Sounds and Surrounds can be found on their Facebook page