HARPOONING SUNFISH ON THE IRISH COAST

Evening Star, Issue 22573, 15 February 1937, Page 11

HARPOONING SUNFISH ON THE IRISH COAST

SHARK-HUNTING IN OPEN BOATS Robert Flaherty’s fine picture, which gained the prize for 1936 awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, will be recalled by the news in recent cable messages of a shipwreck on the Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland, where the film was made (writes Christina M'Askill, in the Melbourne ‘Argus’). On these islands, with their area of less than 10 square miles, 3,000 inhabitants somehow find the means of existence, and unrecorded thousands of emigrants have left them from time to time, chiefly for can shores. The islands themselves are almost treeless and barren, “ mere shelves of limestone lying in the Atlantic.” Ancient “ duns,” or forts, of prehistoric origin l look westward from their headlands over the Atlantic “ waste of seas.” Few of the islanders speak English, but they .have preserved the old Irish Gaelic in so ■pure a form that modern students from the Free State, engaged in the task of reviving Gaelic as a national language, find in these remote islanders their best instructors in the ancient tongue. A hundred ' years ago the Aran Islanders were famous hunters of the great basking shark, or whale shark.’ Numbers of these enormous creatures passed along their coasts at certain seasons of the year; and Zane Grey might do descriptive justice to the feat of their capture by harpoon and line from boats that were mere fishing skiffs, manned by two or three men each—flimsy life-preservers in a shark hunt, while the Atlantic tides swirled fiercely round the rocky shelves of Aran. For the islesmen of. those days, however, a small fortune was at stake in every encounter; a, captured whale shark yielding 30gs to 35gs worth of fine liver oil, .which was used, appropriately enough, for lighthouse supplies, , Then, for some unexplained reason, the great fish disappeared, and the look-out men of Aran looked long in vain for the dorsal fin off-shore above a gliding shadow. After many years the fish reappeared, and they have travelled their old sea road regularly since 1925, but there has been no revival of the once profitable industry. When Robert Flaherty made his island picture in 1932, a generation had arisen to. whom the sun fish-hunt-ing days were but legends vaguely connected with rusty harpoons, long stowed away in the rafters of old cabins. Vainly his Gaelic-speaking “ contactman ” sought information about the forgotten craft of the sunfish hunters, until he found Martin Quinn, a bedridden old man in the village of Claddagh. Martin was “up-and-down to a hundred years of age,” and settling down for his last sleep, but he roused himself to give, in a mixture of Gaelic and English, the proper instructions for harpooning the “ Levawn Mor.” Every detail of his advice was followed, and a party of men, working for the film, captured several specimens, after exciting experiences duly recorded by the camera. Pat Mullen, the “ contact man,” in his interesting book written round the making of the picture, graphically de : scribes the old islesman, the stupor of old age upon him, and the sudden brief flash of animation and clear recollection with which he responded the old Gaelic name of-the mighty fish he had long ago hunted, the “ Levawn Mor.” “His faded eyes shone brightly, and took on a far-away look.” He described the shark-harpooning in a few short, vivid sentences, and as the flam© of life again flickered low, and he turned away to sleep, he murmured “the Levawn Mor,” and smiled to himself. “ The old man died in the following week. God give his soul rest,” concludes the storyteller, and adds, “ that is, if rest is good for it!” .—reflectively recalling, I imagine, the

high adventures and daring deeds of the old islesman’s best days, and speculating on a life-to-come that, bringing rest and peace to some, may. yet provide a sphere of glorious energy and action for such as Martin Quinn. The Aran Islanders’ struggle for a livelihood is typical' of the lives of crofters and fisherfolk throughout all that chain of western British isles. Which in the middle of the last century poured out thousands of emigrants on to Australian shores. Watching this vivid presentation of island life last ypar in a Melbourne picture theatre, I wondered how many of the audience were of Irish, Orcadian, or Hebridean stock; for I saw several known by sight as pillars of Scottish societies and Presbyterian churches, and bqsiness men with Norse-sounding Orkney names, and many “ faithful Irish ” grandmothers; some smartly costumed and jewelled, and some threadbare and shabby, but all sighing commiseration for poor Maggie of Aran, bowed under her great basket burden of seaweed, or gazing through sympathetic tears as the island woman struggled shoulder to shoulder with her menfolk to beach the precious boat and defeat the sea, old enemy of the race, that threatened to overwhelm them all. In many unknown faces in that -audience I saw traces of Gaelic and Norse types, whose ancestors from time immemorial were islesmen and boatmen on that bleak Atlantic seaboard of West Britain; and as my companions dispersed toward their suburban homes I felt happy that-life should be ■ easier for the children’s children, and sad that the race traditions and histories that now, in a new land and a busier age, are so seldom recalled, must presently be. crowded out of memory and lost to the descendant of the present race of Australians whose “ fathers were islesmea born.”-