A number of people have written me about my sarcasm of cowboys as evidenced by my lack of respect for the cowboy painting genre.  I am not disdainful of the genre,  just fed up with people stuffing their romanticized notions about what “The West is all about” down my throat.  I detest cliched sentimentalism, particularly when it is based on phenomena best described as myth. This gets really bad around the modern/cowboy/western art/westerner crowd.  I swear some of these people have so many rules and regulations about being a Westerner that it makes your head swim: types of chaps, taps, chinks, bits, boots, boot tops, hats, hat brims, hat crowns, belts, belt buckles, saddles, spurs, spur rowels, buckles, straps, leather, cinches, ropes, trucks, trailers, bloodlines, draw numbers, winnings, rankings, blue jean make and model, boot maker, location of boot maker, the list just drifts off into an incredibly hazy eternity, everyone and their spur toting brother an expert on what makes a Westerner, how they should look, ride, walk, and TALK!  So much for the free spirited cowboy, it seems to me we have too much of the Institution of Cowboy, with all the trappings of Rules and Regulations.  I am not convinced a true Westerner can ever take a proper shine to all this accoutrement!  It is against their bull headed nature!  I maintain the most comfortable way to work calves is dressed in bib overalls!  A real cowboy cared squat about bloodline, he just wanted a horse gaited so he could cover a bunch of country in a day without getting blisters jiggled onto his behind!

 

Which reminds me of a story I fleshed out with my good friend Father Sarsfield O’Sullivan, retired priest living in Butte, Montana.  Father O’Sullivan is a true Westerner, having been born in Dublin Gulch on Granite Mountain in Butte, Montana.  He has spent his long life serving the souls of the mining country.  His father Sean was born off the western shores of Ireland, on now uninhabited Inish Fanard.  Sean came to Butte in 1905 to wrest a living from the hard deep rock of Copper.  The story I am about to relate came from Inish Fanard, and I think reflects the character of every Westerner I have ever had the privilege of knowing and growing up with.  To be Western is a state of mind, not a state of apparel or proper colloquialisms.  It is about an attitude and courage facing the many facets of life, not the chute your bull is going to pop out of.  To be Western has nothing to do with what your hat looks like, rather how you wear it, and most importantly, what you put under it.

 

So settle back ‘podner’, undo your cinches, pull off yer boots and sit a spell and enjoy the following yarn.  Let the words “ranson poot a calavas” echo down yer canyon!

 

 

 

The Beara Peninsula, west County Cork, stretches forty miles into the Atlantic Ocean on the southwestern coast of Ireland.  To the north of Beara, a large deep-water bay, formed by the Kenmare River, separates the Ring of Kerry from Beara.  Where Kenmare Bay meets the Atlantic, another deep bay to the south,  Colough, forms the remainder of the northern boundary of the Peninsula.  The point of land where these two cold blue-water bays meet is known as Kilcatherine Point.  Directly west of Kilcatherine Point, three hundred treacherous yards from the mainland, are the stony shores of Inish Fanard.

 

No one lives on Inish Fanard today.  Piles of stone and hungry grass are the only sign that people once lived here.   Donal and Nora O’Sullivan were the last to leave the island, in 1923.  They are buried in the cemetery at Kilcatherine Church.

 

Exactly one hundred years earlier, 1823, Michael O’Sullivan and his younger brothers and sisters were orphaned by the death of their parents.  Rather than have the family divided and sent to different homes Michael went to Lord Landsdown, asking permission to make a home for he and his brethren on Inish Fanard, which until this time was never populated. At first Lord Landsdown was skeptical, as the rocky cliffs and shores afford no location for safely mooring a boat.   Michael convinced Lord Landsdown that he could construct a sling to pluck his curragh safely from the water.  Lord Landsdown consented and with help from the Sheehan family Michael constructed a gin-pole sling that reached out over the water from a cliff top location and lifted and placed his small fishing boat on a safe perch.  He then built a cottage with stones from the island, and roofed it with thatch, kept down with netting and stones in winter’s harsh gales.  Soon a Sheehan, who helped build the gin-pole, moved to the island, and more cottages were added until five homes were lined in a small village along Inish Fanard.  The furthest west cottage was Michael’s home, and then another O’Sullivan, and then a Sheehan, an O’Neill, and at last a Malvey.  When supplies were needed one lowered a curragh into cold water, and rowed across Colough to Eyeries Pier or Ballycrovan. One never strayed too far north to Kerry for Beara people are suspicious of devil worshipping Kerrymen.  Every Sunday, Mass was a long boat ride to Eyeries.   The life on Inish Fanard was a hard, cold one, isolated from the world, but bound by families who stayed together.  Many legends arose about Inish Fanard and its inhabitants: some believed them “touched”,  descended of silkies come from the sea.  Bridget of the Island is remembered to this day for her beauty and wisdom.  Shenachie Michael Lynch learned his stories from his mother, this fabled woman.  People say that during the Famine it was the boats and nets of Michael O’Sullivan and the inhabitants of Inish Fanard that put fish on the tables of the poor, so that death by starvation was kept from the doorstep of Colough.  The Island bred a pot of remarkable people, and their descendents still populate Kilcatherine, Faunkill, and Ballycrovane.

 

The days before the First World War were times of trouble in Ireland.  County Cork was a hotbed of opposition to English domination and support of Irish Independence.  These were the days and locations of Michael Collins, DeValera, and the IRA.

 

One calm fall morning, with Kenmare Bay smooth as glass, a group of Island men were pulling up nets from their curraghs as they had been successful following the bareesh, the phosphorous glow of fish. A French warship headed for Kenmare approached them.  The sailors aboard waved salutations and yelled hellos in a language the Islanders, being English/Gaelic speakers, did not understand.  Then one of the sailors, a good Catholic, made the sign of the cross, which of course the fishermen knew well.  The sign was returned in good heart and friendly goodbyes as the ship disappeared into the distance.

 

 

You see, Seamus Sheehan was known as a man who tended to not think things through.  Today we might call him rash, or simple, or down right dumb.  “Ranson poot a calavas” has no meaning in any language; it is a string of nonsense syllables.  Evidently to the English sailors it sounded like defiant Irish.  Back on the Island the men laughing and joking surrounded Seamus and in a group exclaimed “Seamus, you fool, what was that nonsense you yelled at the Englishmen?”

 

 

 

 

 

To this day on Beara if this term is spoken to you, you must look deep and hard into the eyes and heart of the speaker, before a translation and response can be attempted or made.

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright 2009

Michael Ome Untiedt