Primitive Communism and The Blasket Islands

Paul O’Brien

ganisation of pre-class societies. Morgan’s study of the family relations of the Iroquois Indians was the intellectual basis for En- gels Origins of the Family Private Property and the State. Engels visited Ireland on three occa- sions, in 1856, 1867, and in 1870. He was collecting material for a ‘History of Ire- land’, a project he never completed. In Houses on the Blasket Islands in the 1920’s 1856 he visited West Galway, and in his let- ters he says he found a post-famine Ireland that was ‘broken and demoralised’ and in- capable of raising itself up again. It is a In the fifty volumes of the Collected pity he never ventured to the South-West, Works of Marx and Engels there is very especially to the Blasket Islands. I suspect little speculation as to what a future so- Engels would have been fascinated by what cialist society might look like. The reason he found there. for this as Engels makes clear in The Ori- gins of the Family Private Property and the The Blasket Island is situated about State is that we cannot know how people four miles of the Southern tip of the coun- freed from class oppression will choose to try. There is evidence of stone-age occupa- live their lives. tion on the Island, but it is the later occu- But Marx and Engels had a real inter- pation of the Island that concerns us. In est in the past and how people lived in the 1750s about forty or fifty people lived pre-class societies. Though little was then on the Island. In 1841 this had grown known about the past - particularly the to approximately one hundred and fifty, social relations of pre-class society. They and in 1901 had reached one hundred and were interested in the evolution of society eighty. From then on there was a slow for a number of reasons. Firstly, because decline in numbers, especially among the they wanted to illustrate that the organi- young people, until the Island was evacu- sation of society and the social relations on ated in 1953 when the population had de- which it was based was not static or perma- clined to about forty souls. nent. Class struggle is the motor of history, What was so interesting about this Is- where changes in the social relations of any land was the fact that because of its isola- society, reflect the changing material rela- tion it had escaped the modernising effect tions of that society. Secondly, they were that had destroyed the old Gaelic way of interested in pre-class societies because of life across most of Ireland in the nineteenth the insight they might throw up as to how century. Because it was cut off from the people freed from class oppression might Mainland this cultural destruction was de- live their lives. Marx and Engels relied on layed for over sixty or seventy years. The the American anthropologist Lewis Henry Island was owned by the Earl of Cork but Morgan’s book, Ancient Society (1877) for the Islanders had stopped paying rent in much of their information on the social or- the period following the famine. On oc-

32 casions the landlord’s agent sent a raiding the coast of Europe. party to the Island to seize goods or cat- tle owned by the Islanders, but they were repulsed by the women of the Island who Family Structure assembled at the top of the cliff and hurled Nearly all marriages on the Island were ar- rocks down on the agents boat. After that ranged to cement communal ties, though they were left in peace to get on with their there was the odd love marriage. De- lives. This was a close knit community spite this the status of women was not based on kinship and co-operation. Soli- diminished. In the Iroquois society Mor- darity was a condition of survival. This gan had noted that descent was reck- was what John Millington Synge called an oned through the mother and the high ‘unalienated environment’. There was in- status of women reflected this arrange- sufficient material wealth on the Blasket ment. This was not the case on the Blas- for there to be inequality, but it was rich ket, but women were valued. In many in social capital. cases women retained their maiden name on marriage. Young men were identi- Co-operation fied by their mother’s name. As story- tellers, which was a highly regarded ability, If Engels had visited the Island on one women were seen as the equal of men. The of his trips to Ireland he might have ex- distinction of parent, grandparent, uncle, perienced a community who ‘gave accord- aunt, or cousin was blurred on the Island ing to their ability’ and received ‘accord- in relation to child rearing. There was al- ing to their need’. However, this was not ways a loose collective approach to child some utopian community. The harsh ma- rearing. The Island also had a more lib- terial conditions on the Island made co- eral approach to sexual matters that that operation a necessity rather than a choice, of the mainland. The people were very re- in order to survive. Fishing and subsis- ligious, but it was not a faith that was me- tence farming was the mainstay of the is- diated exclusively through the church or a land. Land was held in common. Each local priest. There was no church or priest family was allocated a field - the size and on the Island- and as a result this was not needs of the family determined the size of a ‘priest ridden’ community. The moral- the field. Field ownership was not perma- ity on the Island reflected that of the more nent but changed over time according to liberal Gaelic past rather than the Victo- need. Turf banks were allocated on the rian strictures that dominated the Catholic same basis. That accounted for the best Church at the time. land, about sixty acres just above the vil- lage, the other twelve hundred acres were Money held in common. Fishing was organised on a communal There were no monetary relations between basis, usually two boats with three men in the islanders. There was no shop or pub each boat. Trust was an important factor on the island, but money was needed for in building a sense of community. Each goods such as sugar, flour, and tobacco member of the crew knew that the oth- that were purchased from the jobbers and ers held his life in their hands, as they shops on the mainland. But the islanders faced out in the canvas covered currachs had no experience of buying in order to into some of the most dangerous seas off sell. No money circulated on the Island

33 and there were no master/servant relation- or no meaning for them. When Peig Say- ships. The islanders were bound to each ers heard about the 1916 Rising in Dublin other by close ties of blood, marriage, and and the destruction of the city, she spoke interdependence. All of them were en- of how ‘strangers’ had burnt the city to gaged in the same occupations and faced the ground. Peig had little concept of and the same dangers at sea. Meitheal is an almost no connection with the great his- old Irish word for co-operation that is still torical events that were unfolding at that current in some rural communities. On the time. Island co-operation was at the core of all activity. Whether it was fishing, build- ing a house for a newly married couple, Culture or looking after the old and the infirm the Marx and Engels had used the term primi- islanders looked out for each other. In tive communism to describe these pre-class the books of Tomás Ó Crohan and Muiris societies. The social and economic struc- O’Sullivan there are many stories of fisher- tures on the Island up to about the 1920s men returning home and leaving a few fish fits this description. There was no division for an old or infirm couple. Turf was cut of goods based on a top-down hierarchy. for them, rabbits were provided, and the Rather, it was a society of mutual support community took responsibility for the old. and a real humanity, without which no-one on the Island could survive. For that rea- Democratic son alone the Island community is worth consideration. There are echoes of a people’s democracy But this was also an Island that was from ancient Greece or of people’s assem- highly cultured with an oral tradition that blies in the way decisions were made. One harked back to the old Gaelic bardic tra- of the houses on the Island was known dition of poetry and story-telling. George as the Dáil or parliament; where the is- Thomson a young student who had stud- sues concerning the community were dis- ied classical Greek at Cambridge Univer- cussed. Votes were not taken but issues sity arrived on the Island in 1923. He was were thrashed out and an informal con- born in England to Irish parents and in- sensus reached. It was a form of self- spired by the revival movement he wanted government. There was no police or law to learn Irish. He was directed to the Blas- on the Island. As Séan Ó Criomhthain has ket Islands as they were reputed to speak recorded; if an offence was committed, or the purest form of Irish. somebody did something wrong ‘the peo- In his book, Island Home about his ple would not be content to let it pass. connection with the Blaskets he describes You had to keep to the straight path, oth- his amazement at the language and cul- erwise people would intervene and correct ture of the inhabitants: ‘when I first heard you’. A visitor once asked Tomás Ó Cro- those ragged peasants speak it was as if han what was his attitude to Home Rule, Homer had come alive’. The relative iso- an issue that was convulsing the coun- lation of the Island preserved a language try at the time. Tomás replied that ‘the and culture where the lyrical and musical Islanders never had anything but Home value of the spoken word had been devel- Rule’. An indication both of their indepen- oped to a high degree. This was a tradition dence and their isolation from events on that stretched back to the seventeenth- the mainland. The British state had little century Gaelic speaking Munster of Geof-

34 frey Keating (Foras Feasa ar Éirinn) and son described it as a little ‘library the likes Brian Merriman (Cúirt an Mheán Oíche). of which is not to be found in any other And as George Thomson recognised - back language’. A small number of them are of to the Greek tradition of Homer. One com- outstanding merit in both literary and his- mentator described the islanders as ‘walk- torical terms. They have been translated ing libraries’ where the heroic tales of the into many languages and are read all over Fianna and Cú Cúlhann were mixed with the world. The first of them An tOileánach religious tales, aphorisms, and genealogies was written by Tomás Ó Crohan in Irish in a culture where the past was alive in the and published in 1929, followed by an En- present. Tomás Ó Crohan writes about the glish edition The Islandman in 1937, which poet Piaras Ferriter as a man who walks was translated his friend Robin Flower. the hills with him and who was his com- panion at work, not as someone from the past who had died almost three hundred Twenty Years A-Growing years ago. This was followed by Muiris Ó Súilleab- The purity of language, almost uncor- háin’s Fiche Blian ag Fás which was rupted by contact with the modern world published in both Irish and English in attracted scholars from all over the world. 1933. Peig Sayers autobiography followed In 1903 Dr. Carl Marstrander, a Norwe- in 1936. Both Peig and Tomás were une- gian professor of Celtic Studies arrived on ducated. Tomás only learned to read and the Island, followed by Robin Flower from write in his sixties, Peig was illiterate; her the British Museum, and sometime later book was transcribed by her son, taking George Thomson from Cambridge Univer- notes as she sat by the fire. Both were me- sity. The arrival of outside scholars such dieval in their outlook, but Tomás knew as Marstrander coincided with literacy on his way of life was coming to an end. His the Island. The ability to read and write book ends with that famous line - ‘the likes changed their way of life. It opened their of us will never be again’, Tomás wanted eyes to modernity and to what was avail- to leave a record of his way of life. In able in the world beyond the Island. Tomás’s book there are few descriptions of Robin Flower and George Thomson ar- the landscape, this was a materialist look rived as scholars, but were enchanted by at his society. It’s written in the heroic what they found. They returned year after style that records both the rich culture year, as friends, as part of the community of the Island and the almost brutal ma- where for a few short weeks every year they terial conditions they lived under. Peig’s shared in the life of the Islanders. They book is different; it has no grand narra- understood that this unique way of living tive in the way that The Islandman has. was passing away and they encouraged the Peig was a storyteller. Her book is a se- Islanders to write about their life. By the ries of reminiscences about her life inter- end of the 1940s about twenty books were spersed with legends and myths from the written or transcribed by the Islanders, a past. More than any other Blasket writer remarkable literary output by a commu- the editorial intervention dominates her nity of about thirty families. The Island’s book. Hers is a literature of a pre-literate rich oral culture ranks as ‘the chief sur- society. Her stories and reminiscences col- viving element of Gaelic civilisation’. The lected and transcribed amount to over 8000 books capture the transition from the oral pages - almost a million words. The selec- to the written tradition. George Thom- tion process reflected De Valera’s image of

35 Ireland where ‘comely maidens danced at houses and how the young people would the crossroads’. The book was state pub- pair off and go up the back of the Is- lished and was a key text in the school cur- land. Peig was a beautiful and sensual riculum. Peig’s narrative was edited and woman, but nothing of this appears in censored to match the conservative moral- the book. According to one source, Peig’s ity of the Irish state. All the earthiness, papers contain a description of a contra- the sensuality, and the fun was removed. ceptive device the women used on the Is- The editing process was not kind to Tomás land - bee’s wax shaped into a cervical Ó Crohan’s book either. His book went cap. But all of that was to change; Eibhlis through many hands before it saw the light Ní Shuilleabhain records in a letter in the of day. Despite the academic disputes over 1930s that the ‘missionaries came, mixed issues such as the editing of the original bathing and dancing were forbidden’. W Irish manuscripts and the effect this had B Yeats remembered some poems by a on the published version of An tOileánach; Blasket Islander which were circulating in this was Tomás’s book and he had some- manuscript form that ‘pleased a Gaelic thing to say that was unique. He spoke scholar’ whose judgement he valued, but of his own experience of life on the Island, were ‘too Rabelaisian to please the eye of but it was also a communal voice that ar- Government’. ticulated the collective experience and cul- George Thomson met Muiris Ó Súil- ture of the Islanders. Tomás exercised a leabháin when he first stepped ashore on great deal of artistic licence for the sake the Island in 1923. They were roughly the of imaginative truth. He was a creative same age and became firm friends. It was writer with a full appreciation of ‘the artis- Thomson who encouraged Muiris to record tic significance of form’, always conscious his life. Muiris was only twenty five years of improving on the actual events he was old when he put pen to paper. His book, describing. Fiche Blian ag Fás, has all the enthusia- In recent years a new edition of An sism of youth. The title is from the first tOileánach has gone back to the original line of an old Irish proverb that spells out manuscripts in both Irish and English and the different stages of life. Muiris wrote these unexpurgated and newly translated about his ‘Twenty Years A Growing’. This editions illustrate what a wonderful liter- is the story of an idealised childhood where ary creation it always was. In the orig- the sun always shines - unlike the time- inal edition all the earthiness and sensu- worn resilience and resignation of Tomás’s ality was removed from Tomás and Peig’s book. But it is more than just nostalgia for book. In the new edition Tomás tells the a lost childhood. It’s about the joy of liv- story of the young men who stripped off ing in a society where children are valued to go swimming and when they emerged and culture is part of their lives. one of a group of girls on the beach stood her ground and stared at the young men. Reception Tomás’s remark that ‘she saw a baptism long before she saw a wedding’ gives us The Irish state showed no interest in the an insight into the sensual lives on the Is- material lives of these Irish speaking com- land that was not disfigured by the false munities scattered along Western seashore. Catholic sexual morality that prevailed They appropriated a sanitised version of on the mainland. Many of the books their life to promote a vision of an Irish- tell of the dances that took place in the speaking society that was locked into a

36 backward poverty-stricken way of life - one to the Island who could only see dignity in that denied the benefits of modernity to the peasant’s hut; Thomson also saw the communities that it alleged it cherished. hardship of their lives and understood that That is why the project to restore the there is no dignity in poverty. In the 1930s Irish language in post-independence Ire- Thomson taught classical Greek through land failed. Irish was associated with Irish at Galway University. He set him- poverty and backwardness. The Irish state self the task of saving the Irish language. failed to offer a vision of an Irish speak- He believed that Irish speaking communi- ing community linked to progress and an ties could only be saved by engaging with improvement in living conditions. It be- modernity and developing a standard of came clear to large sections of the Irish living that could sustain the community. peasantry that if they wished to make a But this transformation should take place place for themselves in the community or on their own terms and in the context of in the wider world they must first ‘bow to their own culture. Thomson set about his the language of their masters’ and discard project in the Galway Gaeltacht, organis- that ‘infirm language, hiding it from the ing meetings and outreach classes trying sight of strangers’. to build a movement that could start the About half the population spoke Irish process of transformation. But the local in 1841; by 1851, in the immediate post- clergy were terrified of an English socialist famine period that figure had fallen to 23.3 stirring up the people and banned Thom- percent, and by 1891 only 14.4 percent son from using any of the local halls or claimed to do so. Very few were literate facilities. The project came to nothing in Irish, which became more and more a and Thomson in despair returned to Eng- language of the home while English was land and continued his career in academia the language of public life. and in the Communist Party. Thomson is one of the finest Marxists to be asso- ciated with this county. His book, Island The Irish Language Home is a wonderful insight into the life and culture of the Blasket Islands. His vi- Unfortunately socialists have a poor record sion of the Blaskets was the yardstick by with regard to the Irish language. Social- which Thomson measured progress. His ists have had little to say on this matter. books on classical Greek drama especially Those who did speak up usually suggested Aeschylus and Athens are still highly re- that any attempt to promote Irish was a garded today. He suggested that Greek reactionary or backward step. We need tragedy owed something the primitive col- to look to a different tradition, that rep- lectivism that he had experienced on the resented by Marxists like George Thom- Blasket Island. When it was published son and Tim Enright. Thomson arrived on Thomson insisted that a cheap paperback the Island as a young academic wanting to edition should be issued as well. He be- learn Irish. What he experienced changed lieved that workers should have access to his whole outlook on life. He departed a the higher things in life as well as the rich. socialist, and in time a Marxist, who went His pamphlet on Marxism and Poetry in on to play a leading role in the Communist 1947 was a welcome break with the ‘so- Party in Britain. Thomson saw that there cialist realism’ school of Marxism that was was a link between the communal way of dominant in critical circles in the Commu- living and the cultural richness of that soci- nist Party. ety. Unlike many of the scholars who came

37 The End of the Island escape from the poverty of their home life, but only on con- There are many reasons for the decline and dition that they surrendered their eventual evacuation of the Island in 1953. cultural values. The Government was indifferent to the Is- Some of them paid the price without lander’s pleas for help and support. By regret, others only with a lifelong 1940 the population had fallen to about sense of regret. forty, mainly elderly people. There was For a few the price was too heavy, only one boat still fishing. The school had and they came home. closed as there was only one child left on the Island. Emigration had taken its toll and in the end those remaining just gave Cáit Kearney was one such young up and asked to be moved to the mainland. woman who left the Island to work as The Island was like a ship that requires a maid; she returned home her hands red certain crew and no longer has them. and raw from the work. She was deter- Many fine writers have recorded the mined never to let that happen again. She last days of the Island community and was one of the few exceptions. The young reading about the slow erosion of a gen- people left and by the end of the 1930s uine culture is quite harrowing. There are there were more Islanders living in Spring- many reasons why this happened. The field, Massachusetts than on the Island it- decline of the fishing was one of the rea- self. sons advanced, but in reality they were just overwhelmed by modernity. The in- Legacy crease in emigration in the post-war years stripped the Island of its young people and Their way of life is gone, but their books its vitality. Emigrant’s remittances dis- are a monument to what has been lost. turbed the ‘equality of poverty’ that had The fact that the Blasket authors recorded existed on the Island. Some families has their own stories and culture is what makes access to American dollars, others did not. these books important. These are not the With the advent of literacy came newspa- impressions of outsiders, or anthropolo- pers that opened their eyes to an appar- gists, or historians, but a unique insight ently rich way of life beyond the Island. into a cultured society where co-operation Tomás summed it up when he wrote; ‘a and community support is at the hearth time came when the young people wanted of their world. As Thomson observed they to buy the goods they saw in the newspa- are ‘an insight into what was lost by the pers and on the mainland rather than make impact of modernity’. And equally impor- them themselves’. To obtain them money tant; they are an insight into the future was needed, and all they had to sell was - how people freed from the oppression of their labour power. The only place work class society might live their lives - but this was available was in America. Every Sum- time in an age of plenty. mer after the harvest four or five young men and women headed off. That is what Notes and Reading List destroyed the energy and vigour of the Is- land. George Thomson caught the mood Almost all of the books written by the Is- of the time in a beautiful piece of prose: landers are in Irish and most of them are available in translation. The Blasket li- To those exiles America offered an brary has grown to close on forty books

38 by the Islanders themselves, and spawned to a handful of key books that the reader an academic industry that would fill many can access in both English and Irish. shelves. I have restricted my reading list

Tomás Ó Criomthain, An tOileánach, (Helican Teoranta, Baile átha Cliath, 1980). Tomás O’Crohan, The Islander (Translation), (Gill & MacMillan, Dublin, 2012). Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, Fiche Blian ag Fás, (An Sagart, Má Nuad, 1981). Maurice O’Sullivan, Twenty Years A-Growing, (Translation) (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000). Peig Sayers, Peig, ClÓlucth an TalbÓidigh Teoranta, (Baile áta Cliath, 1933). Peig Sayers, Peig: An Old Woman’s Reflections, (Translation), (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000). Peig Sayers, Labharfad Le Cách: I Will Speak To You All, (Bi-lingual with two CDs), (New Island Books, Dublin 2009). Robert Kanigel, On an Irish Island, (Alfred A. Knopp, New York, 2013). George Thomson, Island Home, (Brandon Books, Dingle, 1988). Robin Flower, The Western Island, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1967). Irene Lucchitti, The Islandman: The Hidden Life of Tomás O’Crohan, (Peter Lang, Oxford, 2009). Muiris Mac Conghail, The Blaskets: People and Literature, (Town House, Dublin, 2001).

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