By Ann Torrence

 Written by Staff Reporter , The Galway Independent 
Wednesday, 14 May 2008

Inis Meáin, Oileáin Árann, Contae Na Gaillimhe

These four detached bungalow properties set on one acre on communal land and can be purchased as one lot of four residences or as four individual properties. These properties are located in Inis Meain within walking distance of the new pier, which is currently under construction. These are four detached bungalow properties set on one acre of communal land. Construction began in 1991 and the final property was completed in 2000.

The four detached properties are of 1,100 square foot and are in excellent condition through out and have storage heating and teak single glazed windows. The accommodation includes: entrance hall, store, sitting room cum kitchen cum diner, bathroom, three bedrooms and one en suite.

The three Aran Islands are situated across the mouth of Galway Bay about 30 miles from Galway City, less than seven miles from the nearest point in either Co. Clare or Connemara.

Inis Meáin is in the middle of the three Aran Islands. It is separated from the other two islands by 1.5 kms of sea. It measures five kms in length by three kms in width.

Each of the three islands, Inis Mór, Inis Meáin and Inis Oírr, have their own distinct atmosphere and character, but the dramatic landscapes and endless sea, form a backdrop to a labyrinth of meandering stone walls and tiny, tightly- packed fields. In between, a network of narrow winding roads and grassy lanes sweep from pristine beaches and craggy shores to the dizzying cliffs that mark the edge of Europe.

There are three ports serving the Aran Islands, they are Rossaveel, Galway and Doolin in County Clare. The journey by boat takes on average an hour to an hour and a half Going to Aran by plane is by far the quickest, the journey takes just six minutes and the plane visits all three islands.

House one and two have coin meters for ESB and house four has solar panel heating and stira stairs.

All main services including water, drainage, electricity and telephone are available to the property

Further details are available from Avril Smith, Residential Manager, Rooney Auctioneers and Chartered Surveyors, Eyre Square on 091- 567391.

The New York Time's Dan Barry finds some answers in co Galway.

AN August night in the sea-scented village of Kinvara finds us at Connolly's, a pub so permanent that if some codger were to tell you it was here before Galway Bay, lapping now just outside the door, you'd nod and buy him a pint. My wife and I are hunched at a small table with friends when a smiling woman in a peasant skirt sits beside us, carrying a perfectly appropriate accessory in this corner of Ireland -- a button accordion.

She is Mary Staunton, a musician known throughout the Irish west. When the inevitable call goes out, she obliges, her fingers skipping across the buttons like children playing frantic but sure-footed hopscotch. Then a white-haired man mentions an old song from his childhood. Does she know it? Why yes, she does, and when her fingers finish their dance, leaving the man smiling, there suddenly rises from across the room the hesitant but clear voice of a young woman who has summoned the nerve to sing. ("And I said let grief be a fallen leaf/At the dawning of the day.") As she sings, all talking stops: an entire pub, transported. And I think to myself, now this would never happen where I'm from.

Was this the real Ireland? Or was it a rare dash of magic, sprinkled into Connolly's to validate an antiquated sense of Ireland -- a sense rooted in the days when economic inequity between two countries allowed American tourists to spend as though Ireland were one sprawling duty-free shop? Though the country is now experiencing some economic uneasiness, you still cannot help but think: How times have changed.

Over the years, I have spent a lot of time in the western counties of Galway and Clare, and if nothing else, this is what I have gleaned: Ireland can be that place you missed as you traveled around Ireland, looking for Ireland.

Yes, you can find a thatched cottage here and there, if you try. Yes, you may even encounter a white clot of sheep blocking your rented car's path, raising from musty memory some postcard caption about Irish Rush Hour. But to wander about, looking to bag with a digital camera some approximation of a time-faded Irish postcard, is to miss the complexities of a country that is thoroughly enjoying its wealth and adapting to its European Union membership while at the same time trying to preserve its dreamlike landscape and proud cultural heritage.

You may indeed hear a young Irish woman suddenly break into song in Kinvara. But you may also walk around the corner and be served dinner by a young man with an Eastern European accent instead of a brogue. Travel 10 miles up the road to Gort and you might wade into a celebration of Brazilian culture, staged by a transplanted community that is now an integral part of that old market town.

The Aran archipelago has become a tourist honeypot, writes The Irish Times' John G O'Dwyer

AT THIS MOMENT this seems like the most compelling endeavour in the world. I'm sitting on a sun-kissed ferry that is carving silver spraylets from an azure Atlantic swell. In the background a group of young people is discussing the English Premiership with effortless fluency in lyrical Gaeilge.

We are heading towards a once-impoverished archipelago, and I want to discover what now makes it a tourist honeypot rated by National Geographic as one of the world's top island destinations.

As Inis Mór's rather unspectacular north coast approaches I chance upon an islander, studying at London University, who is returning for vacation work in her family's restaurant on the island, in Kilronan. Won't she find things a tad isolated after the bright lights and crowds of the English capital?

On the contrary, she says, nowhere in the world is less lonely than Aran. "Island living creates a special sense of camaraderie, and these days the place is full of action."

Next morning I'm bound for Dún Aengus on a hired bike, and my student acquaintance is certainly right about one thing: there is no shortage of action. Aran's equivalent of the M50 teems with minibuses, bikes, jarveys, ancient tractors and walkers, all competing chaotically for limited space amid few road signs and apparently even fewer rules.

Initially I have horrific visions of being ditched by a bus or stonewalled by a jaunting car. Then I realise that, unlike the M50, island transport works, because everyone accepts the interdependence of communal living. People make eye contact, smile and signal others to move on. The rules of the road are mutually and instantly created as required.

Soon I have been inducted into community living and am waving and grinning with the best of them.

Dún Aengus is Aran's premier tourist attraction with good reason, but the downside is that around lunchtime each day it teems with visitors. The fort itself consists of a series of huge concentric defences of amazing drystone construction, but the real beauty of the place lies in its location.

From its 100m-high vantage point, Inis Mór's wind-blasted south coast is an exquisite meeting place of water, stone and sky. The mythical land of Hybrasil is reputed to be visible on occasions, but today we are treated only to the mutating colours of an approaching storm.

A hasty retreat is required to the tasteful visitor centre as it begins bucketing down. Sheltering in the craft shop, I am told by the accommodating sales assistant that in recent years the greatest happening for the area was the coming of Teilifís na Gaeilge, now TG4, as it "restored pride in the Irish language and made speaking it fashionable again". She then informs me of a fact I have already noted. "Young people are now coming to Aran just to rediscover the joy of speaking ár teanga féin."

Later, as I pedal damply towards Kilronan, a restful quietude descends on the island. Then I notice why. The day trippers have departed, and Inis Mór has reclaimed its timeless serenity.

For some reason I feel a strong impulse to cycle across the silken sands of Kilmurvey Strand. At the water's edge there's a chilling wind, and it's spitting rain, but I wouldn't swap this moment of solitary connection with Aran for the sunniest beach in Ibiza.

That evening abundant Gaeilge is again being spoken at Ostán Oileain Árainn, the island's first hotel, the brainchild of local businessman and renowned musician PJ O'Flaherty. Driven by a passion for Aran's culture and music, he opened for business in 2005, and tonight he is leading a traditional session.

Later he tells me that on busy weekends visitors to Inis Mór outnumber locals by more than three to one. He is proud of National Geographic's high rating - the Aran Islands were placed a commendable 11th in a study of 122 island destinations worldwide. This he ascribes to a strong awareness among islanders of the importance of maintaining an authentic island experience.

"Our economy would collapse without tourism, and so we discourage stag parties and suchlike, as they are not in our long-term interest. Instead we are seeking visitors genuinely attracted by heritage, culture, music and, indeed, the newly initiated Father Ted festival, which has been a great success."

But isn't the island becoming a victim of its own success? O'Flaherty believes not. "It can get a bit chaotic when the day trippers all arrive before noon, but there are still plenty of outstanding places to go where you won't meet a soul."

Kilronan has become Ireland's third-busiest passenger port; the recently approved harbour development will, O'Flaherty believes, put an end to the problems that now mar first impressions for incoming visitors.

Next morning it's sunshine all the way as, on the hotelier's advice, I pedal towards Dún Duchathair. This isolated promontory fort is surrounded on three sides by restless Atlantic swells. It is only slightly less dramatic than Dún Aengus, but it more than compensates with its sense of utter solitude. A timeless place of stone, it remains almost exactly as it was when it was built, three millennia ago.

Then it strikes me why these islands are rated so highly. Find a spot such as this, well away from the often crass commercialism of day-tripper tourism, and Inis Mór is still one of the best locations to escape the pressures of modern living.

Solitude, seclusion and a bit of craic

TO ENJOY Inis Mór fully you need to linger. You won't get a true impression as a day tripper. Instead, stay on the island for a couple of nights and get out beyond the tourist hub, which lies between Kilronan and Dún Aengus. Visit the largely unfrequented west of the island, where some of the most compelling scenes for the documentary film Man of Aran were made, or walk the secluded east coast for stunning views and solitude. At night you'll find the craic at a traditional-music session at OstáOileain Árainn or one of the pubs around Kilronan.

Where to stay

Aran Islands Hotel (Ostán Oileain Árainn). Tastefully decorated in a vernacular style, it overlooks the sea and enjoys a restful setting about a kilometre from Kilronan.

B&B EUR 55 to EUR 139. 099-61104, www.aranislandshotel.com

Kilmurvey House. Imposing country house beneath Dún Aengus. B&B EUR 45 to EUR 65. 099-61218, www.kilmurvey house.com

Man of Aran Cottage. Thatched B&B overlooking Kilmurvey Bay. Built as part of the set for the 1930s film Man of Aran. B&B from EUR 37. 099-61301, www.manofaran cottage.com.

There are abundant other accommodation choices, including several hostels and a wide range of places to eat on Inis Mór. Details are available from the helpful tourist office, 099-61263.

Getting around

The best way to get around Inis Mór is by hiring a bicycle in Kilronan and meandering around to visit the prehistoric sites and monuments.

You can also hire a pony and trap for four.

Guided tours in a modern minibus can be had from Hernons Aran Tours, 099-61131.

Go there

Most visitors come to Inis Mór on the 45-minute crossing from Rossaveal Port, an hour's drive from Galway. Return EUR 22.50. www.aranislandferries.com. There are also ferry connections from Doolin, Co Clare, that operate from March to October. www.doolinferries.com. Direct flights to Inis Mór are available from Connemara Regional Airport, Inverin,

Co Galway. www.aerarannislands.ie.

The Irish Times
April 26, 2008 Saturday


SECTION: TRAVEL; Other Stories; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1233 words

IF birders go birding then those who seek out wildflowers surely go flowering; the term botanizing doesn't begin to capture the sweet delight I experienced on discovering the profusion of wildflowers growing in the Aran Islands and the Burren in County Clare on Ireland's west coast. My romance with bird's-foot trefoil, mountain avens and herb Robert came about by accident. When I flew into Shannon it was with the intention of viewing shore birds and, with luck, a few seals.

Bleak and harsh are the adjectives often used to describe the Burren, a roughly 100-square-mile limestone landscape of cliffs, stony hills and broad stretches of rock resembling pavement. The geology is identical to the Aran islands, eight mile sout in the Atlantic. I have an affinity for such landscapes, as does my mother, and the boireann, the Irish word for rocky place, did not disappoint us.

Two and a half hours after leaving the airport we crested a hill just above a stretch of coastline called Pol Salach and saw a stunning panorama of fierce Ireland -- shattered terraces of stark limestone spilling into a sea that was gray as elephant skin.

We followed the coast road through the lonely village of Fanore where horses grazed in rock-strewn pastures next to the beach, past Black Head where the limestone cliffs plunged into the sea. Masses of oxeye daisies and fuchsias blooming on the side of the road softened the austere beauty of the rock. By the time we reached Ballyvaughan, a tiny village sitting on a tranquil corner of Galway Bay, we were enamored of the Burren. Smoked salmon and mussels at Monk's Bar on the quay and two elegant bedrooms in Rusheen Lodge, a four-star guest house, only added to our satisfaction.

The next morning we drove into the hills behind Ballyvaughan where flinty stone walls divided the land into pastures. I was itching to walk among the rocks, but in planning the trip I had promised my mother a ruin a day. My passion for the natural world is matched by her passion for mosques, temples, tombs and ruined churches. Such churches abound in the Burren, as do ring forts and Neolithic tombs.

Our first visit was to the village of Kilfenora where the tiniest medieval cathedral awaited us. The nave or front section is still used for church services while the roofless chancel radiates stillness and mystery. Two identical stone carvings -- apparently the head of a bishop -- have a vaguely Egyptian air about them. A delicate trefoil sedilia -- three seats crowned with a beautifully carved pinnacle -- is recessed into one wall, while on the adjacent wall are two naively incised 13th- and 14th-century stone carvings. One of them, supposedly of a cleric, had us perplexed. What did the oval head and elongated neck remind us of? Where had we seen that serene, otherworldly demeanor? My mother, who is half Irish and has a streak of sly Irish wit about her, solved that mystery when she exclaimed ''The Holy Alien!''

Pelting rain and sudden squalls, rain that drizzles and mizzles -- Ireland is one of the few countries where such weather is shrugged off, hardly a deterrent to wildflower adventures.

After lunch I dropped my mother back at the B & B and, armed with ''Wild Plants of the Burren and the Aran Islands,'' bought at the Burren Interpretive Center at Kilfenora, and a large umbrella (which immediately marked me as a foreigner and a sissy), I drove 40 minutes along the coast road to rocky Pol Salach for my first afternoon of flowering.

The great mystique of the flora of the Burren lies in its diversity and its growing habits -- Mediterranean and arctic-alpine plants thrive side by side. None of the species are unique to the Burren, but many grow in the limestone landscape in greater abundance than anywhere else in Ireland or Britain.

I parked the car, climbed over a low stone wall and crouched on the ground. Crushing wild thyme between my fingers, I breathed deep. I'd identified my first wildflower. And what were the tiny white flowers intertwined with the thyme? I thumbed through my flower book.

Yes! It was squinancy wort. After half an hour of literally crawling through a cow pasture so ablaze with flowers it seemed as though a beneficent fairy artist had dipped her paintbrush in magenta, blue, yellow, cream and periwinkle blue and flicked it over the ground, I reached the limestone pavement.

Smooth, relatively flat, rectangular chunks of limestone called clints are separated from one another by fissures that range in depth from one foot to 20. It's in these fissures, or grikes, that the pluckiest of plants flourish. The magenta flowers of bloody cranesbill swayed brightly against the bone-colored rock, and I saw honeysuck le plants twisted into bonsais by the strong winds.

Closer to the sea cliffs I found those plants that thrive in the salty spray gusting off Galway Bay -- bobbing heads of pink thrift and sea campion and thick seaweedy-looking ferns that glistened in the grikes. Of course, there were plants that I couldn't identify.

There are over 600 species recorded in the Burren. The book I carried listed 120. I was momentarily frustrated. Then smiled. My naming them didn't bring the flowers into being. Why not simply enjoy them?

Our love affair with the Burren was now well under way, and the following day while driving to Corcomroe, a Cistercian abbey that lies five miles east of Ballyvaughan, my mother fantasized about buying property. We parked at the end of a country lane and immediately registered an eerie sound that seemed to be rising from the ruined abbey. A ham-fisted ghost stumbling over the bass keys of an organ?

After some investigation the Organist of Corcomroe, as he is now affectionately remembered by my mother and me, turned out to be a most handsome blond bull lowing to several docile black-and-white cows cloistered in a field on the opposite side of the road. While Kilfenora's chancel is exquisitely intimate, Corcomroe, with the wind gusting through it, feels lonely and desolate. It also has a stunning roof, as do most of the churches we visited, with a wide swath of changeable Irish sky through which the rooks wheeled and cawed. On some of the pillars the traces of carvings of flowers can be found, a stony reminder of the abbey's other name, Our Lady of the Fertile Rocks. In one corner there is a recumbent effigy said to be that of an O'Brien king killed nearby in 1267. Above it is an unfinished 14th-century carving, presumably of the abbot of Corcomroe. With a hint of a smile on his face and rather puffy attire, he looks as though he's levitating up the ruined chancel.

''Three days is not enough time to explore the Burren,'' I lamented over dinner that night in the superb Whitethorn restaurant.

Reservations in Connemara awaited us, so the following day we left for County Galway. On our way we stopped at Thoor Ballylee near the town of Gort -- less than an hour's drive from Ballyvaughan -- where Yeats summered from 1917 to 1929. The recorded commentary issuing from speakers in his dining room, study and bedroom didn't interest me so I climbed higher. Close to the top of the stone tower I found what was surely the true spirit of Yeats -- a soft-feathered, fierce-eyed kestrel guarding her chick on a nest of sticks.

After two days in Connemara, during which time the sun blazed 16 hours a day and I swam in the stillest, bluest bay I'd ever seen, gray clouds rolled in from the ocean. Rain spattered on the window of our hotel. ''Only one place to be in such moody weather,'' I said to my mother. Back to the Burren we raced.

Rusheen Lodge had been lovely, but I always feel as though I'm staying in my grandparents' house when I visit a B & B. That evening we checked into the Ballinalacken Castle Hotel, a sprawling country house sitting on a hill just below a 15th-century O'Brien tower house. The ruin is now roped off because too many visitors were leaving with chunks of genuine Irish castle in their pockets.

We felt like Burren old-timers, and our remaining days took on an easy routine. In the mornings we visited churches, castles and towers. There was Dysert O'Dea, where a bizarre array of Romanesque-style animal and human heads arches over the south doorway of the church. Lemaneagh Castle, worthy of at least a few ghosts, stands proud in a stretch of windswept farmland (equally creepy was the electric fence surrounding the field and the old Irish codger who scowled at the few cars parked just beyond his land). In Killinaboy we came across a humble ruined church with a simple carving of the Crucifixion and the weathered Sheila na gig, an ancient fertility symbol, above the entrance.

Each afternoon I went flowering. A walk up the Kyber Pass, a road in Fanore that follows the Caher River -- the only surface river in the Burren, as most of the rainwater seeps into the underground waterways -- will be remembered as the afternoon I discovered orchids. Except for the exquisite bee orchid, the terrestrial species of the Burren are not as showy as tropical orchids that cling to trees. Still, I was captivated by their demure beauty.

On another day I went mad for ferns. I kept meaning to hike one of the ancient green roads that lace the Burren; they're noted for the wildflowers but I was smitten with rock, with the way a saucer-sized depression on a boulder could hold an array of small flowers brilliant as jewels, the way the wind gusting off Galway Bay tossed the tousled pink flowers of hemp agrimony, a species that grew en masse in the limestone fissures.

And then there was the food -- lobsters, crabs, black sole, salmon, mussels. We feasted every evening at local restaurants and returned to our hotel -- my mother had renamed it Fawlty Castle in honor of the quirky yet utterly charming staff -- in time for sunset tea, which, in early July, was at about 9 p.m.

On our last morning in the Burren I wandered the pavement at Pol Salach, saying goodbye to yet another part of the world I'd fallen in love with. My evening reading had been from a chapter in ''The Burren: A Companion to the Wildflowers of an Irish Limestone Wilderness'' that touched on the historical use of many of the plants Id been rhapsodizing over, and as I whispered the names of the flowers surrounding me, I felt as though I were floating back in time. Lady's bedstraw -- makes good bedding and can be used as a rennet plant for curdling milk; squinancy wort -- useful if I ever get an attack of quinsy; carline thistle -- preserve the buds with honey and sugar for a tasty sweetmeat; Burnet rose -- I'll drink a syrup made from the rosehips if I'm coughing, spitting blood or stricken with scurvy.

The monks of Corcomroe must have put many of these plants to medicinal use. Perhaps the levitating abbot secretly snacked on carline thistles. As for the Holy Alien? That otherworldly, rather blissful demeanor might have come about from one too many afternoons spent flowering.

Reveling in bird's-foot trefoil, squinancy wort and thrift

Lodging

Rusheen Lodge. Just outside the village of Ballyvaughan, this four-star guest house has six lovely, spacious rooms with private bathrooms, and two suites. Doubles are $72; the suites $108, full breakfast included, calculated at $1.21 to the Irish pound.

Telephone (353-65) 70 77092, fax (353-65) 70 77152.

Ballinalacken Castle Hotel. We loved this creaky yet elegant hotel on the outskirts of Lisdoonvarna. Drinking tea in the sitting room and sprawling about our spacious, rather oddly but grandly decorated room made us feel like fading aristocrats. Some rooms have splendid views of the Aran Islands, while others (nos. 5, 6, 10 and 11) do not. Doubles are $48 to $54, with full Irish breakfast.

For reservations, telephone or fax (353-65) 70 74025.

There's a moment during The Cripple of Inishmaan, staged recently by OpenStage Theatre & Company, when I knew I didn't want to leave. At some point, I realized that I had a goofy smile stuck on my face, and I knew that I could spend hours watching the people on this tiny Irish island, smitten with their quirks and their spunk, the lyrical brogue, the penchant for curse words and uncouth commentary.

But as all things do, The Cripple of Inishmaan ended and I was asked to leave.

The charm of this production--the solid character-driven script by Martin McDonagh lovingly cared for with thoughtful direction by Ken Fenwick and set on an immaculately designed and dressed stage--is largely because of the people who call Inishmaan home.

The story is fine enough (underdog hopes to make it big and escape the shackles of his homeland) and even develops several idiosyncratic plot twists along the way. The moral is a sufficient one: being crippled is not just a physical ailment; some of the most physically-intact people can be mentally or emotionally crippled.

But the characters are the meat in this hearty stew.

The cripple on Inishmaan, a little community on the Aran Islands off the western coast of Ireland during the 1930s, is Billy Claven (Jason Short), an orphan boy who stares at grazing cows to escape the fretting of his "aunts" and the gossip and harassment from the Inishmaan residents. His aunts, Eileen (Deb Note-Farwell) and Kate (Kathy Leonard), are eccentric shopkeepers who fuss over Billy like he was an ugly, three-legged puppy.

Making his usual rounds, Johnnypateenmike (Marlin May), the town's newsman who enjoys spreading gossip on livestock deformities and neighborly feuds, tells Billy and the aunts that an American film crew has come to a neighboring island to shoot a movie. A threesome of locals has already planned to take a boat to the film set: a feisty, cursing, egg-throwing blonde named Helen (Lorraine Larocque), her ditsy, sweet-loving brother Bartley (Will Ferrie) and Babbybobby (Eric W. Corneliuson), a roughnecked widower.

Upon hearing about the trio's trip, Billy tells Babbybobby that he only has three months to live and he wants to come along and to eventually make it to Hollywood. From there, the plot thickens and McDonagh crafts a dark, ironic second-half. It's a heartbreaking story, but it never ceases to be funny.

Bringing the characters to life is a stellar cast--from the principles down to Mammy, who is played by a wonderfully spunky Shela Jennings--that makes this production a powerhouse.

But the highlights are Short and Larocque. Short is effortlessly comfortable in Cripple Billy's shoes, giving him a subtle mix of heart, hope, humor and dejected spirit.

Where he is soft and wincing, Larocque's Helen is an unabashed tornado on stage, blasting into the scene throwing "fecking fecks" around like it was her business (actually, her business is eggs and she throws those around too).

In certain plays you can tell that the creators--the writer and the director--truly feel in love with the characters, despite or in spite of their flaws. It's that balance of creating and nurturing farce-like quirkiness without letting them become caricatures. It's about creating people who could be real, who might have been real at one time on some island far away.


Andra Coberly, acoberly@fortcollinsnow.com
April 24, 2008Fort Collins Now | Serving Fort Collins, Colorado

• Lincoln Center : Mini Theater
• 417 W Magnolia, Fort Collins
• Box Office : 221-6730

The Druid Theatre, based in Galway City, will expand its reputation as a major force in theatre nationally and internationally.  Highlights include an Irish and UK tour of The Cripple of Inishmaan, and a US tour of The Playboy of the Western World and The Shadow of the Glen. Other events on the 2008 programme include the US premiere of The Walworth Farce; the English language premiere of The New Electric Ballroom for Galway Arts Festival which will tour to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Fiona Shaw finds hard human truths in a pithy new translation of the bold and bloody Greek tragedy Medea.                                        

On the Aran Islands, off the west coast of Galway, there is an abandoned cottage just up from the port. The stone hut, with its soft, loose thatch, has none of the confidence of British scalloping and sharp cutting and the beauty and the bleakness is an obvious provocation to the imagination. I found myself trying to envisage J.M. Synge's play Riders to the Sea, which takes place in one such interior. This effort of imagination seems to be what Eliot calls "mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain". One is trying to match what one knows with what is as yet unknown.

In Synge's play all the action happens off stage: we hear about deaths, badly lived lives, a mourning mother and a final drowning the straw that breaks the camel's back. Although it was written at the turn of the 20th century it is built on this fundamental aspect of Greek tragedy: that most of the action remains unseen.

The gift of the Greek structure is that we meet the story as it finishes. We are brought up to speed at the moment of crisis and while witnessing the next bit, fill in the blanks of what went before. This informs our judgment, second by second. In Sophocles' Electra the emphasis is on stasis. From Electra's point of view, we have no reason to hope things are going to change.

She enters with her daily wailing for the wrongs of her father Agamemnon's death, but the audience has already seen young Orestes the avenger. We are promised movement and so begins the next foundation stone of our theatrical inheritance: "dramatic irony". So too in Euripides' Iphegenia at Aulis, the stasis of Clytemnestra's hope that her daughter will marry Achilles is undermined because we, the audience, know that she does not.

Euripides flourished in the 5th century BC. He was probably born in the 480s; the first reliable record of his life appears when his plays were first produced in 455 BC; ancient scholars catalogued nearly 100 plays in his name, though few survive; Medea, written in 431 BC, is probably the most widely known. Medea's slaying of her children in revenge for her abandonement by Jason has become a trope of sexual jealousy.

In Euripides' Medea a nurse opens the play and tells us of the love triangle that has disrupted the marriage of Jason and Medea. We hear about the Golden Fleece and Jason's attempt to win it and the enviable romance of the golden couple whose great love disintegrates before our eyes. The king, Creon, father of Jason's new love, banishes Medea as he describes to us the palace where Jason now lives with Creon's daughter.

The audience is fed information as the past is revealed. We watch the action, the banishment and argument, but the horror that will occur - the murder of Medea's children - will be offstage, with the Chorus filtering the unbearable fact.

However, actors work on a three- dimensional grid of the whole play seen and unseen, seeking in the detail the toe-holds that allow one to climb into the interior.

For me, playing Medea, the greater the love for Jason, the bigger the betrayal; the bigger the welcome by Creon in the invented hinterland of the play; the crueller the banishment and death of the children, seen by many as the darkest conclusion even in Greek tragedy. Everyone's hell affects everyone else's story.

Reading Robin Robertson's new translation, I am amazed to be reminded at what is seen and unseen, what is written and what is surmised - and how we, in the performance, started relating to Greek tragedy not as text but as a totality in which the end is in the beginning, and vice versa.

Energy and imagination have to fuel the fragments that are left to us in translation. And is that, I wonder, because so much of the translations are in monosyllables?

Why does the writing seem hard and unlyrical? Is it because the translators want to stay so true to the energy of meaning that they dare not say more?

In Robertson's translations, the fashion for composite nouns has ended. The Pythonesque language of "blood-lust", "father-killer", "mother- lover" has thankfully been replaced by something sparer and more careful.

It is important to see the crime, the hurt in the story, so one may access the high-octane fuel that allows revenge to be the motor that has no driver. For the protagonist the "obscenity" is energy. The characters have all the complications of modern love - the entrapment of intimacy. Of all the parts I have played the need for communication with a fellow actor on a shared interior was so strong that one never sheds it.

You have to use yourself to invent earlier and particular joint narratives, because when one comes to the flinty, monosyllabic moments of furious exchange, it's those shared moments that turn the words to daggers.

I still think of Jonathan Cake as Jason: I shared secrets with him. There was an intimacy enforced by the violence of the end of the play in which I was totally in his power and my personal safety belonged to him.

In Robertson's translation poetry abandons its usual mellifluousness for pithy simplicity; the personality of the line is up to the actors Jason: So dear, you killed them?

Medea: That you might die of grief.

It could not be farther from Shakespeare, where one serves the line as he serves the ear and the residue of personal input is tiny. The combustion of language and sound is enough to release the beauty in the text.

The Times (London)

March 8, 2008, Saturday

Words transformed into daggers
 Fiona Shaw

MEDEA by Euripides, translated by Robin Robertson. Vantage, £ 12; 96pp. Times Bookshop £ 10.80 (free p&p) 0870 160808

A campaign is underway for Scotland's islands to have a major say in their own future,

THEY could hardly have chosen a more appropriate setting. In a Mull hotel yesterday, representatives of Scotland's islands took the first steps to establish a campaigning organisation to represent the views of the 95 inhabited isles.

If it succeeds, their voice will be heard more loudly in the corridors of power in Inverness, Edinburgh, London, and Brussels.

Few present would have known that, just below the Isle of Mull Hotel, two island men lost their lives more than 40 years ago, as they went out in a storm to bail the ferry boat that acted as a tender to the steamers that plied the route to Oban.

They were simply trying to safeguard the sort of transport links taken for granted on the mainland, a cruel metaphor for the true cost of island life.

Yesterday, as conference delegates looked out towards the old Maclean seat of Duart Castle, they could see Craignure's multimillion pound linkspan for CalMac's roll-on, roll-off ferry, which has long provided a safe modern service to Oban. Next door, the finishing touches were being put to Mull and Iona's GBP2m swimming pool.

The islands have come a long way but those present were determined that people who live on them should now be allowed to help shape their future as a defence against depopulation.

One delegate, Alastair Fleming from Luing, told The Herald: "We only have 200 people and our voice has simply not been loud enough. For 10 years, we have been campaigning to get a bridge or tunnel between our island and Seil to allow us 24-hour access to the mainland. We were very aware that it was other islanders on the council and elsewhere who have helped us. So this is a move that is long overdue."

He was not alone. The conference heard the results of a unique survey of Scottish island opinion which found that almost 90per cent of islanders believe all 95 islands should be brought together to speak with a common voice on issues that affect them, a voice that could not be ignored by politicians.

The same percentage want a new islands committee to be established by the Scottish Parliament, while almost 77per cent believe there should be at least one minister with clear responsibility for our islands.

The 52 responses to the survey represented the most significant samples yet of island opinion, embracing voluntary organisations, community councils, local authority representatives, businesses, environmental and research organisations and development agencies, as well as individual islanders. Submissions were also received from islanders living on the mainland.

There was overwhelming support for the Scottish Government's forthcoming pilot scheme on road equivalent tariff, which should help reduce ferry fares. Some 88per cent of respondents agreed there should be a commitment at national and regional level for island ferry and air transport to be considered an extension of the national roads network.

There was a similarly enthusiastic embrace for the idea from Highlands and Islands Enterprise, unveiled last year, that there should be a "New Deal" or "Compact" for Scotland's islands, with equality between them and the mainland in terms of living costs and access to services.

There was an even clearer demand for islanders to be given their place by the authorities. A remarkable 96per cent wanted official recognition that islanders are central to the sustainability of their environment, and that this should be recognised in environmental and planning policies. There should also be a statutory requirement for local authorities to produce a strategic development plan for individual islands in their control, with full local involvement, it was said.

The issue of ministerial or parliamentary representation for islands has been raised before, not least because of the experience of our near neighbours.

Although Ireland has only 33 main inhabited islands and just over 3000 islanders, compared with Scotland's 95, which boast a population of nearly 100,000, it was Ireland not Scotland (nor the UK) which made special government provision for its islands.

An inter-departmental committee was established in 1993. Then, when the Irish Rural Affairs Department was established in 1997, it had a special "island section", with senior civil servants having responsibility for island development.

The conference yesterday heard from Mairead O'Reilly, manager of the Irish Islands Federation, which represents 33 islands.

She said islands working together could achieve much. "One of our success stories was to persuade the national tourist board to run a marketing campaign for Ireland's islands, set up a website and produce brochures, " she went on.

"Agencies do that because they are comfortable working with an umbrella group (for islands). Nobody is going to come and say they did it wrongly, because we are speaking as one body."

The Herald (Glasgow) by David Ross;

How the land lies today

LEWIS AND HARRIS The Hebridean islands combined are by far the most populated in Scotland, with more than 20,000 inhabitants, almost one-fifth of the collective islands' population.

MAINLAND ORKNEY Orkney comprises around 70 islands but Mainland is the largest. Its population has been steadily rising since 1981. Most of Mainland Orkney's residents live in Kirkwall.

SKYE Has one of the largest island populations with 9232 living there in 2001, which is 4232 over the critical poulation mass recommended by the European Commission's statistical agency.

MAINLAND SHETLAND It has maintained a steady population since 1991, with 17,550 recorded living there in 2001. Shetland saw an increase in population of 27per cent between 1971 and 1981 as the oil industry expanded but this has not been repeated in recent years.

BUTE In 2001, Bute had a population of 7149. The island's population dropped steadily by 14per cent in the 1960s and 70s, slowing down to around 3per cent in recent years. Most of Bute's residents live in Rothesay.

ARRAN The largest island in the Firth of Clyde covers 167 square miles and has experienced an increase in population of more than 600 in the last decade.

BENBECULA The island witnessed one of the biggest drops in population with a loss of 552 from 1771 inhabitants (31.2per cent). The only other island to have had a higher percentage loss was Ulva, off the west coast of Mull, which lost 14 residents (46.6per cent).

VATERSAY Has enjoyed a 23.4per cent increase in residents in the last decade and young residents make up almost one-third of the island's population, with 32per cent under 16.

FAIR ISLE Has retained a steady population over the last 40 years, with only a 3per cent loss recorded in 2001. Nearly 29per cent of residents are under 16.

EASDALE The island 16 miles south of Oban has undergone one of the fastest percentage population increases, with a rise of 41per cent in inhabitants - from 41 to 58 - in the last decade.

Full details: www.scottish-islandsfederation.co.uk

 

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