The Islands of Ireland: Island of saints and eagles

There is something magical about embarking on a boat trip into the past where for part of your journey there is almost nothing modern in the scene before you apart from the bow of the boat, writes Dan MacCarthy.

Setting forth from Mountshannon pier in Co Clare to the historic monastic site of Holy Island on Lough Derg the view is no different to that encountered by St Colum in the sixth century.

Across the surface of the lake lie other islands — Bushy, Young, Red, hard to detect against the high escarpment of the Arra Mountains of west Co Tipperary with their brooding summits of Tountinna and Corbally Hill.

The same tall reeds grow in the shallows. The same water laps the shore.

Maybe you can glimpse a modern house through the trees on the mainland or hear the drone of a car engine, but the scene is largely the same as St Colum encountered when he arrived there to build his church and worship god.

Back to the present, and as the modern boatman approaches the island the round tower protrudes like a needle above the canopy of trees.

Where coastal islands by their very nature look outwards to the ocean and worlds beyond, islands on lakes and rivers look inwards and take their influence from their immediate environment.

There is something more secretive about such islands.

They almost never had sizeable communities, and hence attract anchorites or small families eking out an existence. And though they have an air of mystery to them, access to these islands is also usually much easier.

Excepting Abbey Island near Caherdaniel, Co Kerry or Omey Island in Co Galway where you can walk at low tide, most of our coastal islands require a boat to reach, often over wild seas.

By contrast, islands on lakes and rivers are sometimes just metres from shore.

The vocabulary too is different.

Otters rather than seals; swans, ducks and coots, rather than fulmars, kittiwakes and puffins; reeds not seaweed; pike, tench and carp not bass, mackerel and herring.

And the water of course — fresh, not salt. All of these factors make a dramatic difference to lacustrine islands.

Holy Island or Inishcaltra, island of the burials, is perhaps the best known of Ireland’s inland islands.

This Holy Island is often confused with Station Island (known as Lough Derg Island) on Donegal’s Lough Derg, which is a major pilgrimage site.

St Colum arrived at the island sometime in the sixth century and built a church.

Over the next several hundred years more churches were added. principally by St Caimin.

At one time Holy Island had no fewer than five churches — St Caimin’s Church, St Michael’s Oratory, St Bridgid’s Church, St Mary’s Church and ‘The Church of the Wounded Men’.

Apart from the main one, St Caimin’s Church, the others were much smaller structures. The dominant feature is the round tower. There are also found a holy well, bullaun and a pilgrim path.

Today, St Caimin’s is the only church with a roof and is in good condition. In its interior are several cross slabs and even a sundial.

Later, Brian Boru’s brother Marcan was bishop abbott in the 11th century. Of course, the brothers were born down the road at Killaloe and the island was within their bailiwick.

The Vikings of course took an interest in Holy Island and plundered it twice in 836 and 922.

The graveyard of St Mary’s Graveyard was in use from 1807 to 2003 with people from the nearby towns and villages of Ballina, Scariff and Mountshannon interred there including the names of Carolan, Kenneally, McCarthy, McNamara, Murphy and O’Rourke.

An added attraction to a trip to this island is the possibility of sighting a white-tailed sea eagles which were introduced to Lough Derg in 2011 from the Norwegian island of Froya.

The male, appropriately named Caimin and the female Saoirse went on to rear the first chick born in Ireland in over 100 years.

The eagles can be seen from a viewing platform at Mountshannon.

How to get there:

Boat tours or hire boats from Ger Madden, Mountshannon, Co Tipperary. holyisland.ie; Facebook:Holy Island Tours. April to October.

Other: discoverloughderg.ie;

mountshannoneagles.ie