Giant From Ferriters Cove
by Mark Callanan
Title
Giant From Ferriters Cove
Artist
Mark Callanan
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
"An Fear Marbh", the dead man, aka The Sleeping Giant is the self-explanatory unofficial name given to this Island off the Atlantic, coast of Co. Kerry. Its official name is name for the island is Inis Tuaisceart, which means North Island. This was one of the many isolated places on the western edge of Europe where the holy men retreated to during the "Dark Ages". There is a old monastic settlement know as St. Brendans Oratory on the flattest area of the island where there is some little fields. The Oratory was a dry-stone building with a smoke hole and a low doorway.
With no other shelter on the island other than the oratory, the islands only inhabitants, Tomás and Peig O'Catháin lived there in 1850 when a prolonged Atlantic storm cut off the island for six weeks. Poor Tomás died and Peig was too weak to move him outside. His body began to putrefy and, unable to stand the odour, Peig began to dismember her husband's body. When people from the Great Blasket Island finally made their way onto Inis Tuaisceart, they found the unfortunate Peig driven mad, with the half-dismembered body of her husband in the cold stone building beside her. The island remains uninhabited since then.
Uploaded
July 27th, 2021
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