'It was always bad luck to go out there': Play dips into West Cork legends
Carina McNally, with Crow Head and Crow Island in the background, in West Cork.
Every island around the Irish coast has some yarn attached to it, and Crow Island is no exception. The five-acre outpost at the end of Crow Head, at the tip of the Beara peninsula in West Cork, was made famous in the 1950s when a local farmer named Tadhg Roger O’Sullivan constructed a small cable car to carry his sheep back and forth across the chasm from the mainland. The contraption was featured on RTÉ and BBC television, and inspired the construction of the present cable car to nearby Dursey Island, which opened in 1969.
Crow Island also has a long association with a mysterious blacksmith known as the Goidhleann Gabha, the subject of Carina McNally’s first work for the stage, The play premiered at Lehanmore Community Centre in May, and features as part of Bere Island Arts Festival on Thursday September 18.
