A Trip to the Stags

Photo: Mary Swander

“Don’t go in the water,” my guide told me. “Don’t go in the water here for any reason.”

We stood on the northern tip of Inishbofin Island, Willie and I, on the edge of the world. A thin, wispy canopy of cirrus cumulous clouds floated above us, seemingly calm and welcoming, the sun warm and shining down on the sea. But below, the water kicked up, spraying into the air, pounding down on the rocks jutting up from three protruding boulders called The Stags.

“In 1976, two students from Lawrence, Kansas, lost their lives here. They were warned not to go into the water.”

“Were they out there on the Stags?” I pointed to the large, sharp rocks.

“No, just here by the shore. The water may look harmless, but the current is strong.”

Then Willie told of Oliver Cromwell, how the brutal British general had captured Inishbofin in 1652, imprisoning Irish priests in the Barracks, a large, forbidding fortress he’d built to greet every visitor in the harbor. Cromwell tore through the population, forbidding the islanders to speak Irish, and raping all—men, women and children.

Willie squinted into the sun, then pointed toward a series of small caves buried in the cove.

“And see those? That’s where the people took shelter during the Famine in 1845-52.”

Irish farmers, shoved into the rocky Connemara region of western Ireland, paid rent to wealthy landowners for their own land. A kind of feudal system. The farmers planted potatoes, a crop that they sowed again and again in the same field, using the same soil made from composted seaweed that they’d carried on the backs of burros from the Atlantic Ocean.

Finally, their one crop died of potato blight. The farmers had nothing to eat, and nothing to sell for income. The farmers couldn’t pay their rent. So the landowners evicted them. If the farmers resisted, the landowners took a torch to their thatched roofs and burned their cottages and all their possessions.

Starving, barefoot, clothed in rags, the farmers gathered up their families and took shelter anywhere they could—in ditches, gaps in stone walls, and in caves. They foraged for food, eating weeds, seaweed, and even their dogs. A million people died. A million emigrated. A million lived through the Gorta Mor.

Photo: Mary Swander

All the while the country had an abundance of food, harvested mostly from the lush, healthy soils of the Midlands of Ireland. Most of the food was shipped to the British Empire to support its troops stationed around the globe. Land and labor exploited in the name of colonization.

“And why didn’t the farmers just fish and eat their catch? They had the sea all around them. This is the question I get asked again and again.” Willie said.

I’d heard answers:

Because the Irish were never oriented toward the sea.

Because the island and surrounding areas had so few good natural harbors.

Because the Irish were so desperately poor that they sold their fishing gear.

Because the Irish even sold off their pier for food.

“Much simpler than that,” Willie said. “The English simply won’t let the Irish fish. As they wouldn’t let them speak Irish, their native language.

Tools of the conquest trade: displacement, elimination of native languages and culture. Destruction of cultural agricultural practices, often resulting in starvation.

The Quakers set up soup kitchens to try to help the Irish.

The Choctaw Native Americans, who had survived the Trail of Tears, sent money to the Irish from the United States.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Irish “paid it forward,” sending a donation to the Hopi and Navajo tribes to help them survive.

After the Great Famine eased, the Inishbofin islanders survived other, less severe famines. They spoke Irish to each other in private at home. Poverty still prevailed, but they returned to eating a simple Irish indigenous diet, drawing their sustenance exclusively from their own fishing and farming:

Breakfast: Tea and homemade bread.

Lunch: Fish, or eggs and potatoes.

Dinner: Tea and homemade bread.

Small amounts of red meat, usually mutton, were eaten on special occasions, and poultry and geese were also added to the diet sporadically. Fish was the staple of the diet with fresh fish eaten from spring through fall, then dried fish providing food throughout the winter. On first glance, the diet doesn’t sound at all healthy, with no vegetables but potatoes, no dairy, and no variety. One would imagine the islanders having all sorts of health problems.

Yet, in 1893, Dr. Charles R Browne published an ethnographic study of Inishbofin which included a medical report documenting the health of the islanders courtesy of Dr. P.T. Hart, M.D., the local medical officer.

The islanders were of sound mental health, with no signs of insanity, idiocy and imbecility. Epilepsy was not common. Two cases were known. One of these patients stated that “after a fit he believed he’d been with the fairies on the mainland.” Blindness was equally rare. In contrast, the Inishbofin people were known for their keen eyesight.

Measles and scarlet fever had not been seen for some time, although some years before, there had been an outbreak of typhoid, resulting in a couple of deaths.

Malignancies were unknown. Lumbago was common, but the more acute form of rheumatism was not. Bronchitis was common as was pneumonia in the winter. Dietetic disease, mostly flatulence and constipation, were the most frequent complaints of the islanders, which Dr. Hart ascribed to the large amount of tea drinking by the population. And ento-parasites from fish in the diet were the most common of all troubles.

The islanders’ teeth were usually very even and white, and seemed to last well.. Skin issues were often due to rough clothing and fishing ropes. Ringworm was common. Uterine problems were not. And venereal diseases were basically unknown. Accidents were numerous, resulting in burns and abrasions. Fractures and contusions from falls were also common. Cuts from reaping hooks and injuries from livestock were also frequent.

In temperament, the islanders were shy, but once they dropped their reserve to strangers, they were kindly, communicative and courteous. Among themselves, they were social, given to gossip, loved dancing and music, and playing the concertina and melodeon… Begging was unknown and drunkenness, as a habit, did not exist. The islanders generally lived into a ripe old age in the eighties.

Note that Dr. P.T. Hart makes little to no mention of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, lupus, infant mortality, depression or anxiety or any of the other common maladies and degenerative diseases of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Today, even with greatly improved sanitation, the islanders suffer these afflictions as do those on the mainland, as well as the rest of us in the modern world.

A wide variety of foods, both whole and processed are available. Fish and potatoes remain the foundation of the islanders’ fare, but a nutritionist would easily say that the islanders’ diet has greatly improved, with the addition of more meat, vegetables and variety. But based on Browne’s ethnographic study, in general, the islanders were much healthier in 1893 than they are today.

What happened? The same ferry boat that brought tourism and economic development to Inishbofin in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, also brought the standard Western diet. More fruits and vegetables also brought more sugar, refined flour, processed foods, dyes, hormones, additives and preservatives. The introduction of these substances couldn’t have been healthy for Inishbofin.

Photo: Mary Swander

The Browne study appears to have identified an isolated culture on a local diet enjoying good health, a culture that seemed to have walked right out of the pages of Dr. Weston Price’s 1939 book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. In this volume, Price, a dentist, presented his research drawn from his world travels. He argued that as healthy isolated groups abandoned local diets and took up Western eating habits, they developed typical Western diseases, from cavities and over-crowding of teeth, to tuberculosis.

Ironically, colonialism came once again to Inishbofin, in a different form. This time through an abundance of good-tasting food, not a lack of it.

These days the island doesn’t lack for good food. There are at least four good restaurants to choose from, a delicious food festival in the fall where they teach you everything from how to eat lobster to how to make kimchi. But Willie suggested we finish our tour with a stop at his house.

There, he plugged in his electric kettle and offered tea and a generous serving of homemade bread.

Photo: Mary Swander

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