Birds and Beast

You are all in total agreement that I need to cherish my swallows. More on that topic below, but first, I want to introduce you to The Museum of Birds and Beasts.

Yes, it’s a quirky title for a book, but it is also part of a wider project that involved exhibitions and workshops.

Tess Leak and Sharon Whooley are the two genii behind it all, and last week I participated in an event on Whiddy where the book was launched and some of the writers were there to read their stories. It’s one of several projects of Arts Council-funded Creative Places, West Cork Islands, which aims to build sustained arts investment and create opportunities for local arts programmes across the 7 [inhabited] islands of West Cork.

These are all stories collected from the inhabited Islands of West Cork. As you will remember from my series on the Skeams, life revolved around the sea, working the land, and keeping animals and birds. Danny O’Leary (below) talked about his life on the sea. He gave up a place in UCC to go picking winkles. He could make a good living: They’re totally gone. There used to be crowds of people at them, all over the island.

Rose O’Sullivan told us about raising turkeys.

The 8th of December was when the islanders would sell the live turkeys in Bantry and each family would have about two dozen to sell. There would be a bit of an auction in Bantry for them. Every family had their own boat to take out their turkeys for the fair. I remember our Aunt Ellie talking about the 1930s and how it was the grandest sight to see the turkeys, they’d be gathered and gobbled and headed down the road on the island and that was your money then for Christmas.

And then one or two of them would be plucked and prepped and sent to England in the post. We had two aunts in England and our mothers here would be sending the turkeys over and I once asked our cousin, “How were the turkeys when they arrived?” and he said “They were bloody green! My father would be down in the back garden digging a hole and there must have been about 20 of them buried there over the years.” Nobody had the heart to tell them this at home.

Take a look at this RTE story about the Aer Lingus’s annual Turkey Lift. I remember my own father getting the annual turkey from his cousins in Kerry every Christmas. My mother was a bit grim-faced at the prospect of all that plucking and gutting.