Little known about timid porpoise

Richard Collins says breeding habits of gentle cetacean remain a mystery.

IN the opening chapter of An tOileánach, Tomás Ó Criomhthainn recalls an incident from his childhood. He and his sister came upon “a great school” of “muca mhara” that the islanders encircled in boats, forcing one of them onto a beach.

“Some able fellow drew his blood, and when the rest of the porpoises smelt the blood they came ashore, helter-skelter, to join the other high-and-dry on the sand. It wasn’t long till the men there were as bloody as the porpoises, and the islanders drove them down the strand covered in cuts and wounds. The islanders had no lack of pork for a year, and it would have lasted two years if it hadn’t been for the relations they had everywhere on the mainland.”