There is a traditional Irish dance called ‘The Waves of Tory’. It is a fast-moving, communal dance, which can get pretty wild late at night at a ceilí. The wilder it gets, the closer it comes to its name, for the waves of Tory have to be experienced to be believed. Tory Island is the most isolated of the inhabited islands off the coast of Ireland, not because of distance – it is no more than 12 kilometres (7 miles) away from the nearest point on the Irish coast – but because of the wildness of the seas which separate it from the mainland. Because of this isolation, the people of Tory have always been a race apart – indeed, one translation of the name Tory links it to the Irish word for pirates. The most commonly accepted interpretation of its name, however, is that Tory means ‘Towery Place’, and, approaching the island’s distinctive profile from the sea does give one the feeling of moving towards a battlemented fortress.
As recently as the middle of the 1980s, there were plans to evacuate the island and relocate the remaining families on the mainland – this was after the winter of 1974 when the island was cut off from the mainland for over seven weeks. The people of Tory fought back, however, and now the island has a regular ferry service, plans for a small airport, and a thriving school of local artists. It is also an island whose people have fiercely guarded its traditions, its music, its monuments and its folklore.
The island is 5 kilometres (3 miles) long and at its widest no more than 1 kilometre (half a mile) wide – in places, it is much narrower. It is bare and treeless, made up mainly of rock and bog, with some pasture lands. Despite this, it manages to support a variety of bird life, including water birds such as swans, and sea birds such as puffins and gannets. In summer, it is also the home of the now rare corncrake – in the evenings, their rasping calls from the low hedges and long grass make it seem as if Tory itself is calling out. The island is never silent – between the calls of the birds and the noise of the wind and the sea, there is a feeling of ceaseless movement and turbulence.
The turbulence is reflected in the folklore, for the island was the fortress of the great giant, Balor na Súile Nimhe (Balor of the Evil Eye) – the greedy and merciless giant who could murder with a glance. Balor’s Soldiers (also called the Eochair Mhór) are the sea cliffs which form a line of serrated rock on the northeast of the island, some distance out to sea. Directly aligned with the coast, they act as a second rocky wall of defence for the island at this point in the coastline. This is the highest point of the island, and here its beauty is harsh and uncompromising – unsoftened by any greenery. This peninsula forms the area known as Balor’s Fort, and there are the remaining traces of an Iron Age promontory fort. Four embankments acted as defence from the rest of the peninsula, and the remains of a well and twenty huts have been found here by archaeologists.
The most obvious archaeological remains on the island are, however, the Christian ones. Legend has it that St Colmcille, Donegal’s patron saint and the founder of Iona, founded a monastery here, which flourished for a thousand years – from the sixth to the sixteenth century. There are many legends concerning St Colmcille’s deeds on the island, and there are still impressive remains of a round tower and an unusual Tau or T-cross. Other remains include the bed of the holy woman whose body was washed up on the island – clay from this site is still said to contain magical properties. Parts of the island’s magical heritage were less benign. It is said that the cursing stone, now hidden away from human use, was put into action against the frigate, Wasp, which had been sent with a garrison to enforce payment of taxes by the islanders in 1884. The ship sank off the coast, leaving only six living, and the soldiers whose bodies were recovered were buried in the Protestant graveyard.
In direct contrast to the harshness of their island environment, the people of Tory are friendly and humorous. They have a ruddy, scrubbed look – a natural result of living in a place which must be the organic equivalent of a washer-drier, constantly buffeted by waves and wind. You may well be welcomed to the island by the king of Tory himself, for the islanders have managed to hold onto the tradition of having their own king – a man who acts as a spokesperson for the island in the world of bureaucracy on the other side of the water.
Contact with the mainland is easier now than it has ever been; in West Town, the houses are festooned with satellite dishes – rusty links to the outside world during the long, dark nights of winter. However, the ferry ride can still result in green faces and unsteady legs, even in the height of summer. Visitors come to the island and swear that they will never repeat the trip, but find themselves returning again and again. One such visitor was the English artist, Derek Hill, whose hut on the northern cliffs of the island stands out starkly against a desert of grey rock. Between the clefts in the expanse of rock are crumbled smaller stones, so that the fissures look like mouths with broken teeth. It is hard to imagine a place more exposed to wind and water. Climbing here in the evening, with the wind crying and the sea beating against the rocks at the base of the cliffs, it is easy to imagine the yellow beam of the lighthouse as an all-seeing eye – closing, then opening again in a steadfast rhythm. The lighthouse is Balor’s eye in reverse. This eye shines out not to destroy, but as a comfort and guide to those at the mercy of the waves of Tory.
THE BIRTH OF LUGH
A princess, as lovely as a summer’s dawn over the great Atlantic, stands at a tower window, looking over the treacherous sound which separates her island from the mainland. In the distance, she can see the clear line of hills that is Ireland, no more than a few miles from her fortress on the rocks. But it might as well be a different world, for she is locked here in a tower by her father, Balor of the Evil Eye. The wind and the sea are her companions; they talk to her ceaselessly – in a whisper sometimes on the calm days of summer; in a shriek on the wild nights of winter. Her companions are kind to her, for she is easy to be kind to – her nature is sweet and her face is lovely. How strange, her ladies say, that such a mother as the witch, Ceithlinn of the Crooked Teeth, and that hideous monster, Balor of the Evil Eye, king of the Fomorians, should have produced a child as fair as Ethlinn. She is their only child. Balor was told at her birth that his fate was to be killed by his grandchild, so, from her birth, he had his daughter locked in a tower on this lonely island, far away from the eyes of men. Sometimes he comes to visit her – he knows that she draws back from him, frightened by his ugliness, frightened most of all by the great eye-lid that hangs down over the single eye in the middle of his brow. If he were to lift that eye-lid, she would die, burnt to a crisp in an instant. Yet though he sees nothing, Balor likes to think that he sees all, and he knows that his vigilance must increase now – now that his child is a young woman. Her companions are warned at pain of death to let no man onto the island, and, in particular, into the stone tower.
However, it is lonely out here on the island of the towers, and the ladies long for company. So, they are happy that today two gentlewomen have landed on the island. One is old but sharp-eyed, the other one young and muscular with ruddy cheeks. The two ladies explain how they were shipwrecked and are in need of shelter from the wind and waves. Ethlinn’s companions bring them up to introduce them to their mistress, warning them, with giggles behind their hands, not to mention the word ‘man’ – for their innocent mistress thinks that the world is made up entirely of females.
The rocky pinnacles of An Eochair Mhór on the northeast of Tory Island, County Donegal, look like giant soldiers and are known as Saighdiúirí Bhaloir (Balor’s soldiers).
But what has the older woman taken from under her green cloak? Some kind of silver branch, it seems. She shakes it and its little bells make such a lovely sound that all the ladies fall asleep. For once, there is silence on the island; every gull, every meadowlark, wader, pipit, stonechat, every raven and peregrine and rasping corncrake – every one is silent. The swans in the lakes, the puffins on the cliffs – they all put their heads under their wing, hiding their eyes as if it was the dead of night instead of a summer afternoon. The hares sleep in their burrows; even the wind and the sea are silent – every watching eye is closed. Except the eyes of Ethlinn, who looks on in surprise as the young stranger divests herself of female clothes and starts to tell her how lovely she is – what a pearl beyond price. It is not unpleasant, however, to sit here and talk to this strange creature, and soon the sensations that she is introduced to are even more pleasurable than talking. The old woman, meanwhile, takes herself off for a walk along the cliffs, telling the young man – for so he has described himself to Ethlinn – that they must leave before the sun comes up over the eastern sea.
All evening and all night long, the couple lie in each other’s arms. The young man tells the princess that his name is Cian and that he has come to the island to find the cow that Ethlinn’s father stole from him. Biróg the enchantress carried him in the air over the water.
‘And have you found it?’ asks Ethlinn.
‘Forget about the cow,’ he replies. ‘I have no more interest in it now that I have found you. Will you come with me, away from here?’
‘I am afraid,’ says Ethlinn. ‘For you know my father can kill anyone he looks at with one glance of his eye.’
At that moment, Biróg returns to the tower. ‘We must go now,’ she says. ‘The sun is rising and there is no time to waste.’
‘But Ethlinn will come with me, or I will not leave,’ protests Cian, holding the princess more tightly.
Biróg shakes her head. ‘I have not the strength to carry both of you in the air. You must leave her now.’
Cian demurs, but Ethlinn gently pushes him towards Biróg, saying, ‘Go with her. If you stay here, you will die, and if I have to see you die, I will die from grief. I know that you love me, and even if I am forced to stay here for the rest of my life, watched and guarded by my father, I will have the memory of your love with me. Look to the future – all bad things will come to an end. It is for the best.’
So, finally, Cian is persuaded to leave, and only just in time, for Ethlinn’s companions are beginning to stretch and yawn as they awake from their long sleep, and there is the sound of thunder in the air as Balor arrives.
He sniffs. ‘Do I smell a man here?’ he demands. The companions laugh, and Ethlinn asks innocently, ‘What is a man?’ It is lucky that Balor does not open his eye, for his daughter’s face is pink and her eyes are shining.
Nine months later, Ethlinn bears three babies. This cannot be hidden from her father, and he takes the tiny ones from her, where she lies, clutching them to her and screaming, and casts them from the sharp battlemented rocks out into the wild waves at the east of the island.
But Ethlinn, who has pulled herself to the edge of the cliffs, determined to throw herself into the waves after her children, sees what he cannot see. Before the precious bundle sinks under the water, a female figure skirts over the silver waves, and lifts one of the children above the waters, carrying it southwards towards the land of Ireland.
‘What will you do now?’ asks one of her maidens as she sits on the rocks and stares southwards into the eye of the noontime sun.
‘I will watch the sea,’ Ethlinn says. ‘My father will still raid ships, kill sailors, demand the tribute of every third child from the people of Ireland. But I know that out of my father’s dark blood will come a light for the land. As I watch the tide go in and out from my small window to this great ocean, I will know that every time it does so, the time is coming nearer when I will need to wait no more. Each tide brings me closer to the day when my child will kill the tyrant who tried to kill him, and will free the land of Ireland from his harsh servitude.’ She raises her voice and calls over the water, to where she can see the figure of Biróg bringing the baby safely to his foster-mother, Tailtiu.
‘His name is Lugh,’ she calls. ‘He is the bright one – the gifted child. Look after him well.’
