page_title: Tomas O'Crohan
section_title: Life and experiences
hierarchical_section_title: Tomas O'Crohan / Life and experiences
caption_attribution_description: English: Ireland 1957 Birth Centenary of Tomas O'Crohan postage stamp.
context_page_description: Tomás Ó Criomhthain, anglicised as Tomas O'Crohan or Thomas O'Crohan, was a native of the Irish-speaking Great Blasket Island 3 kilometres off the coast of the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. He wrote two books, Allagar na h‑Inise written over the period 1918–23 and published in 1928, and An t‑Oileánach, completed in 1923 and published in 1929. Both have been translated into English. The 2012 translation by Garry Bannister and David Sowby is to date the only unabridged version available in English.
context_section_description: As a fisherman, Ó Criomhthain caught a wide variety of seafood, including scad, pilchard, mackerel, cod, herring, halibut, pollock, 
  bream, dogfish, ling, rockfish, wrasse, conger eel, porpoises ("sea pig" and "sea bonham" – the meat being described as "pork"), seals, crab, lobster, crayfish, limpets, winkles and mussels, as well as seaweeds such as dulse, sea lettuce, sea belt, and murlins. Many on the island relished seal meat much more than pork. One night Ó Criomhthain and colleagues caught a "huge creature" in their nets with great danger and difficulty. Perhaps it was a whale or basking shark. Oil from the liver of this unidentified "great beast" fuelled all the lamps on the island for five years (there were about 150 people in fewer than 30 households).
  Ó Criomhthain harvested turf for home fuel from the top of the island, and the sods were carried home by an ass. When he set to work cutting turf, he was often interrupted by the island poet who distracted him by teaching him his lengthy songs. There is much comedy in Ó Criomhthain's silent exasperation at the hours wasted, yet he never snubbed the poet for fear a damaging satire would be composed against him.
  In addition to fish and other "sea fruit" Ó Criomhthain's diet included potatoes, milk, lumps of butter, porridge, bread, rabbits, sea birds, eggs, and mutton. The few acres of arable land on the island were fertilised with dung and seaweed, supplemented by chimney-soot and mussel shells. The limited crops sown included potatoes and a few other vegetables, along with oats and rye. The island was alive with rabbits which were easily caught in great numbers and the hunting was sometimes assisted by dogs or a ferret. Birds hunted for their meat and eggs included gulls, puffins, gannets, petrels, shearwaters, razorbills and guillemots. 
  The roof of his home was made of a thatch of rushes or reeds and his sisters would climb up to collect eggs from under the hens nesting on top. One amusing episode in An t-Oileánach describes a neighbour's family at supper when, to their bewilderment and consternation, young chickens began raining, one by one, onto the table and splashing into a mug of milk. "For God's sake," cried the woman of the house, "where are they coming from?"  One of the children spied a hole scratched in the roof by a mother hen.
  Ó Criomhthain lived in a cottage or stone cabin with a hearth at the kitchen end and sleeping quarters at the other. A feature of island life much remarked upon by mainland readers of his books was the keeping of animals in kitchens at night, including cows, asses, sheep, dogs, cats and hens.
  He was a keen collector of old tales and described a conversation between his father and a neighbour at the hearth one night. Once when at sea his father, the neighbour and other fishermen saw a steamship sail by. They had never seen one before, and naturally assumed it was on fire. They rowed after it to render assistance, but failed to catch it. 
  The islanders' sometimes meagre existence was often supplemented by gifts from the sea when shipwrecks occurred. One such incident materialized when Ó Criomhthain was out fishing for lobsters with his brother, Pats. He describes the encounter, writing:
  In that one shipwreck, Ó Criomhthain and his brother made about a dozen pounds, which was a substantial sum of money in their world. In addition to timber, copper and brass were salvaged, as well as cargoes of food such as meal and wheat, which helped them to survive lean years. At one time tea was unknown on the island, and when a cargo of the stuff floated ashore from a wreck it was used by one woman to dye her flannel petticoats (normally dyed with woad). She also used it to feed pigs. A neighbour was incensed that her husband didn't bother to salvage a chest of this useful stuff for her; she too had petticoats waiting to be dyed and hungry pigs to feed. She scolded her husband so severely that he quit the island without a word, never to be seen again. Later, another application for tea leaves was discovered and it became a popular drink for the
caption: Ó Criomhthain on an Irish postage stamp.
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