Looking around as you walk, you to yourself, ‘But there’s nothing here!’ It’s literally a rock in the middle of a lot of water. There’s mostly grass and sheep. The social activity of the island is confined to two pubs, the community centre and the church. There’s a café that opens for tourists in the summer. But, it’s disarmingly beautiful. The island itself is pretty enough, grass verdantly green in the summer sunshine or darkling cliffs stark in the winter. But it’s the excess of space between vaulted sky and expanse of sparkling blue sea that underlies the ineffable feeling of being there. Tommy is deeply embedded in the history of the place and speaks comfortably and at length of the island’s role in past national events.
‘Bofin was strategically important in the 1600s because it’s about halfway along the coast and it’s got a good harbour, so it was a very good staging post for raids on the mainland. During the Cromwellian wars, the government considered blocking the harbour with huge rocks. The place had been a scourge to the establishment for years, used by loyalists and pirates and Gaelic lords, anyone who was anti-establishment really.’
He’s softly spoken and self-possessed. This is his turf, the place he knows every inch of. When asked about his personal feeling for the island, why he stays there, the words come more slowly. It’s a tricky topic to broach when standing on the land generations of his family have farmed and fished from with the unspoken word ‘depopulation’ hanging over everything. In December, the government funding stream to nine of the non-Irish speaking islands along the west coast was threatened. Among other things, the money is crucial for keeping connections with the mainland open, the daily ferries to and from Cleggan during the winter months only being possible through subsidies.
‘In 1971 the population here was around 200, 250 [it’s now down to around 150]. It started to go down in the 1840s and has been steadily declining to this day, like the rest of rural Ireland. It’s the younger people leaving. I went to primary school here and boarding school on the mainland, and that was the story of my whole generation. When you get used to leaving the island at the age of 12, coming and going, your home is still here but the prospect of leaving becomes less dramatic.’
Bofin is 3,151 acres, but the area of its resources extends far wider than that into the bubbling cauldron of ocean surrounding it. Historically, islanders made their living by fishing (lobster, herring, mackerel, ling, cod) combined with farming. They grew their own veg (a lot of potatoes), had milk and butter from their own cows and butchered their own meat. Up until recently there were five butchers living on Bofin. As little as one generation ago, this level of self-sufficiency was still relatively common. Now, butchering is done on the mainland while slabs of two-litre milk cartons come in on the ferry to be slung onto the pier and delivered to people’s homes or the shop. This trend isn’t any different to what has happened on the mainland, except that the connection to the old ways has more recently been cut. But the significance of this shift is far greater for the islands.
Despite improved connections (multiple daily ferry services all year round are a development as recent as the last 10 years), the island can still be cut off from the rest of civilization for weeks at a time in the winter. Even without extreme weather, an unfavourable swell can make it impossible to put in at the ports on some of the smaller islands. Former residents of Inishark recall lighting a bonfire on one of the hills to alert their Bofin neighbours that someone was seriously ill on the island when cut off by rough seas. This was the early 1960s, but they hadn’t a phone. In the week after we leave, Bofin is in lockdown as storms rage. Instead of lighting a fire, the islanders post pictures of the sea running down the roads on Facebook.
When asked about the future of the island, Tommy is unsure. In his lifetime, the game has changed. The traditional livelihoods are no longer a viable option. Just as self-sufficiency has become a thing of the past, so fishing and farming have fallen off. When the decline of the fishing industry on the islands crops up, it’s EU regulations that are fingered as (at least partly) to blame, prohibitive licence fees closing out the smaller, currach-based fishermen.
‘I remember, in the 1980s if you had any sort of a boat you’d be out fishing lobster. Then the regulations came in… There were a couple of fishermen here who were masters of their craft and who decided they didn’t want to do it anymore. You see, most of the fishing would have been close to the shore, in currachs. And fishing in close to the rocks like that, that’s a skill you have to learn that’s passed from generation to generation, fellas sitting in the pub over a pint discussing where the fishing is good and isn’t. And then all of a sudden you have these guys in Europe saying “No, you have to do it our way”… You will resist it, because it’s a culture.’
‘The traditional way of life is dying away… I think there’s a younger generation here and they’re not one hundred per cent sure what they’re supposed to be doing. I think they’re almost the forgotten generation, in some ways. There’s no clear path for them. They’re not interested in fishing, they’re not interested in farming.’
Tommy’s point about boarding school is a crucial one – his was the first generation to go to secondary school and the impact of this on population levels is only being felt in the last 20 years or so as educated islanders look outside the islands for employment. Luke Murray is 23 and has been hopping the boat to Bofin at every opportunity his whole life. His father is an islander, his mother from the east coast and Luke’s childhood and teenage years were split between school in County Wicklow and holidays on the island.
‘My nickname in school was Bofin. Same with a lot of the other guys, because it tended to be all we talked about. In the last few years, I’ve really tried to make it my home because it’s the place I most want to be from. This is where I would love to live permanently, but most of the work is seasonal.’
Luke’s feeling of affinity for the place is typical of his generation. There’s a very clearly expressed desire amongst his age-group to make a life on the islands, but a sense of confusion about how to go about it.
