Rare shots of de Valera put Blaskets in a different light

A RARE picture of Eamon de Valera in unfamiliar garb while visiting the Great Blasket in 1947 is one of the fascinating photographs in a new book that gives insights into life in other days in the Dingle Peninsula.

The then Taoiseach was more typically photographed in austere dark suits and stiff-collared white shirts, but he is captured here in a báinín jacket, black beret and coarse, working man’s tweed trousers while chatting with the islanders.

As he was on a tour of islands around the coast, his attire was more suited to sea journeys than formal occasions, the captions tell us.

West Kerry Camera, compiled by Pádraig Tyers of Cork, is the result of an enduring love affair with a magnetic part of Ireland and is an extended version of a similar work published in 1991. All the photographs, some dating to the 19th century, are in black and white and are collected from people around the peninsula and beyond.

Many of the scenes are familiar to this day, such as the pier in Baile na nGall. There is a picture from 1940s showing upwards of 20 fishermen getting their currachs ready for a night’s work.

A shot of the formidable Castlegregory blacksmith, Michael Farrell, with his hammer resting on the anvil, evokes Goldsmith’s line about “the smith, a mighty man was he”. There are also several photographs of the Bothan, near Ballyferriter, and of students who went there to learn Irish in the 1930s and 1940s.

Featured prominently is the legendary Fr Tadhg O Murchú, as well as other priests from St Finbarr’s College, Farranferris, Cork, who brought students there, many of whom returned regularly in later life to west Kerry.

The photographs also show how much the town of Dingle has changed: it was certainly a much quieter, less commercialised place then.

There’s a magnificent picture of Máire Ui Chorrain standing behind the counter in her shop in the Main Street, where she stocked everything from the proverbial needle to an anchor.

On display in the tightly-packed shelves are whiskey, boots, caps, socks shirts, jam and cigarettes, with a string, used to tie parcels, dangling from the ceiling.

The compelling photographs that adorn the book’s 208 pages tell us more about a vanished way of life than words ever could. All are from a world when times were hard, mirrored in the craggy and furrowed, yet contented, faces of the people — a simpler life that’s gone forever.

* West Kerry Camera is published by Collins Press, priced €24.99 hardback.