Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage

This review is also a personal note: my branch of Clan Mullen came to America from Aran in the late 19th century, which is what led me to Robinson's books, "Stones of Aran." "Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage" is Robinson's description of the island as he makes a circuit of its shoreline. Although the title "Stones of Aran" might suggest that the topic is geology or, perhaps, geography, "Pilgrimage" is actually an eclectic mix of these plus paleo-biology, ornithology, botany, anthropology, archaeology, etymology, mythology, cartography, and maybe some others. Robinson claims professional authority only in the last of these, having one time mapped Aran and parts of neighboring Connemara. To the rest of these fields he brings the energy of a keenly interested amateur, and he attempts to fuse from them the shoreline's gestalt. He deliberately and explicitly eschews photography, preferring to assemble pictures from nouns and adjectives, which he deploys in profusion and with technical specificity. Occasionally this approach is irksome. Robinson admits to needing a bird identification book, for example, but he then rattles off species as if the reader were an ornithologist. In such passages I substitute "bird" for the various and mysterious names and practice my speed reading for a few paragraphs. A reader more at leisure might enjoy the delay of looking up all these curiosities in his own bird book. There is no plot in this volume, no story line whatever, except when occasionally Robinson relates local legends, lore, or hagiographies of the saints. Rather the order of the narrative is an exploration of space, arranged sequentially as one walks (Robinson admits to occasionally pedaling to points on the shore, but in the descriptions he is always on foot) from the eastern-most point of the island, westward along the south shore, round the western end, then back along the north shore. Robinson is never an actor in this walk, only the narrator. The reader observes the circuit through Robinson's eyes and mind. One never reads or in any way derives a sense of his aching feet, watery eyes, or chilled limbs. It is a God's-eye view. There is, in fact, something extremely impersonal in the narrative. Robinson rarely writes of contemporary people in Aran, and when he does--as, for example, when he hitches a ride from a couple of lobstermen to an offshore island--the description of the event is written in "first-person-remote," i.e., with an aloofness of attitude that leaves the reader feeling like he is watching events from a long ways off through a telephoto lens. Similar to listening to news on National Public Radio, it's as if some omnipresent authority is floating serenely, invisibly, and untouched above earthly things, ultimately objective, neither affecting nor affected by events below. Robinson similarly seems to want Aran and her people unaffected by his passing there. Though any one section of the book can be accused of being too i

Tim Robinson published this account of the largest of the three islands that sit at the entrance to Galway Bay, "Arainn" in the island's own speech, in 1986. He had gone to live there in 1972, and this book is the remarkable distillation of his experience, as well as his exploration of its past. The islands are the last stronghold of the Gaelic language. The particular island that is the topic of this book is roughly 8 miles long by 2 miles wide. The humans that have chosen to live here have made significant adaptations to their environment. I know of only one other book that I could compare it too, one that also examines a Celtic heritage, a bit further south, in France's Brittany. It is Eleanor Clark's "The Oysters of Locmariequer." Like Robinson, Clark examines a very small place, and reports on the "unsummable totality of human perspectives" to use Robinson's phrase in his first chapter. This book does not exhaust by any means what Robinson has to report about the island. There is a companion volume, "Stones of Aran: Labyrinth." "Pilgrimage" takes the format of a walk around the island's circumference; "Labyrinth" is an exploration of the interior. For sure, there are plenty of diversions along the way. The author immediately draws you in, particularly for Americans suffering from "intelligent design" and "creationism" with a discourse on a timescape without signpost, the cosmology of the universe, with a nod to that famous date some folks think the story all began, 4004 BC. Robinson's approach to that "unsummable totality" as well as his own erudition are dazzling. He is not one to have gotten trapped into the "how many angels on a pinhead" arguments of a cramped and narrow intellectual discipline. He ranges over disciplines as varied as cosmology, geology, botany, sociology, history, linguists, economics, anthropology and literature. For example he describes with remarkable prose the types of gulls that inhabit the cliffs around Aran, and then goes on to describe the death-defying techniques that the "Cliff men" evolved to hunt them. Then he launched into true pyrotechnics of prose with: "...let the ocean dance in it, and the cliffs above step back in wide balconies to accommodate the thousands who will come to marvel at this kinetic-conceptualist, megalominimalist, unrepeatable and ever-repeated, sublime and absurd show of the Atlantic's extraction of Aran's square root!" In other chapters he examines the mythology, and actuality of the settlement of these islands. Robert Flaherty's 1932 movie, "Man of Aran," is a valuable referral source for Robinson, and he repeatedly references it in his book. In terms of the economics of the island, it was always a struggle, particularly agriculture, which was supplemented with fishing, particularly of sharks, for their oil. Kelp played a major role in the islands history, from it use as a source of iodine, as well as it being the principal source of fertilizer, which made possible the growth

This collection of 14 shorter pieces by Tim Robinson, mathematician, teacher, artist and cartographer, gives a portrait of the west of Ireland which is unrivalled in recent writing from that country. Its' integrating device, and central metaphor, is the map. A map, stripped bare, is a distillation of topographical knowledege about an area. Onto this rudimentary two-dimensional scaffolding layer after layer of detail can be added. These are the details of culture, of history, personal memory. Robinson navigates the process of regarding a landscape with the notion of the fractal -- the notion of self-similar structures at multiple levels of observation (in "A Connemara Fractal"). He enjoyably talks us through the technical details of making maps, and has some wonderful stories of his mathematical training. I will not attempt to summarize the various chapters but would urge all those interested in landscape, biography, Irish history, coastal walks, fractal theory, natural history archaeology, literary fiction, and "home" (and that, I suppose, includes just about everyone) to read this. In a time when many find themselves living at some distance from their homeplace this book shows how a fresh intimacy with new landscapes can enrich and invigorate. As an Irish emigrant I am both compelled to return to Ireland after reading this and yet am encouraged to persevere in understanding of my new homeplace in the United States. I have loaned this book to friends in Costa Rica, in the American Northwest, and here in Georgia. All have felt its power. It should stimulate the reader to get his larger works on the Aran Islands. Be warned however these books, the present one included, eccentric masterpieces, will make you want to crumble soil between your fingers, circum-navigate your local terrain, and fumble into the interstices of your jaded soul. Liam Heneghan ([email protected]; Athens, GA)