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Updated: May 23, 2025
A young married woman I used often to talk with is dying of a fever typhus I am told and her husband and brothers have gone off in a curagh to get the doctor and the priest from the north island, though the sea is rough. I watched them from the Dun for a long time after they had started.
A yard from the sea we stop and lower the curagh to the right. It must be brought down gently a difficult task for our strained and aching muscles and sometimes as the gunnel reaches the slip I lose my balance and roll in among the seats.
The approach to the south island is made at a fine sandy beach on the north-west. This interval in the rocks is of great service to the people, but the tract of wet sand with a few hideous fishermen's houses, lately built on it, looks singularly desolate in broken weather. The tide was going out when we landed, so we merely stranded the curagh and went up to the little hotel.
The morning was so stormy, that in ordinary circumstances I would not have attempted the passage, but as I had arranged to travel with a curagh that was coming over for the Parish Priest who is to hold stations on Inishmaan I did not like to draw back. I went out in the morning and walked up the cliffs as usual.
I returned to the middle island this morning, in the steamer to Kilronan, and on here in a curagh that had gone over with salt fish. As I came up from the slip the doorways in the village filled with women and children, and several came down on the roadway to shake hands and bid me a thousand welcomes.
When the horses were coming ashore a curagh that was far out after lobster-pots came hurrying in, and a man out of her ran up the sandhills to meet a little girl who was coming down with a bundle of Sunday clothes. He changed them on the sand and then went out to the hooker, and went off to Connemara to bring back his horses.
Yesterday we went out in the curagh that had been damaged on the day of my visit to Kilronan, and as we were putting in the oars the freshly-tarred patch stuck to the slip which was heated with the sunshine. We carried up water in the bailer the 'supeen, a shallow wooden vessel like a soup-plate and with infinite pains we got free and rode away.
After a while I took a long spell at the oars, and gained a certain dexterity, though they are not easy to manage. The handles overlap by about six inches in order to gain leverage, as the curagh is narrow and at first it was almost impossible to avoid striking the upper oar against one's knuckles. The oars are rough and square, except at the ends, so one cannot do so with impunity.
Several men I fell in with shook their heads when I told them I was going away, and said they doubted if a curagh could cross the sound with the sea that was in it. When I went back to the cottage I found the Curate had just come across from the south island, and had had a worse passage than any he had yet experienced.
In a moment it jumped over into the sea, and some men, who were waiting for it in a curagh, caught it by the halter and towed it to within twenty yards of the surf. Then the curagh turned back to the hooker, and the horse was left to make its own way to the land. As I was standing about a man came up to me and asked after the usual salutations:
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