on a tour of Ireland, the tourguide mentioned an island with but one inhabitant. I think he called it Innisbercan but I can't be sure of the spelling in either english or Irish and can't seem to find much info online as there's not much going on there...anyone know what the island is properly called?

Innisaonduineamháin?

lol

actually, my brother and I have a kind of gentleman's bet as to who can find out the name of the sole inhabitant first. He's in russia for a week before going back to ireland on his way home, so if I can find out and email him the name before he gets out of Moscow I'm home free...

there's a movie called "driftwood" that kinda sounds like that

Off the Dingle Peninsula are the Blasket Islands (spelling?). Nearly uninhabited, they seem a likely place for some hermit to hole up.

yeah...as far as I know they are totally uninhabited...when I was talking to the guide we talked about the blasket is. and he didn't mean them...what he called it sounded like 'innishbercon' or 'inis bearcan' but without the proper spelling in either english or irish i can't look it up...

Could it be Inishbolin?

Correction

Inishbofin

I thought of that...there was a definite "berk" in there, but he also said the smallest aran island was inis beg instead of inis oírr so he might have been wrong...anyone been to inis bofin?

I Googled it, and it appears there's more than one. There's an Inis Bo Finne in Co Donegal, and it looks like there are ten inhabitants. There's another off of Galway. There are many links -- enough to keep you reading for hours. Meanwhile: "Island of the fair haired cow?"

Award-winning Irish harper Lynn Saoirse http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/saoirse indicates the origin of Inis Bo Finne as "the island of the White Cow", this being a reference to a powerful Celtic Goddess.

Dáithí

In fact, there's even a song called "Inis Bo Finne." Click on the link above or here http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/saoirse and then click on the song title on the left-hand side of the website. Very beautiful harp music!

Dáithí

The island to which you refer might be the Great Blasket Island where the sole PERMANENT inhabitant as of 2004 was Sue Redican, a Welsh transplant, who's known as the Blasket Weaver. I say "permanent" because there are thousands of tourists that visit weach year.

The Blasket islands are off the Dingle Peninsula in the southwest and the rest of the islands are uninhabited.

Many guesses but all wrong :-)

The island in question is Inis Bearacháin and it lies off the larger island of Garmna in the Conamara Gaeltacht, Co Galway. It used to have almost 200 inhabitants, but the during the last half of the 20th century the numbers fell drastically and now there is only one person left on the island. I lived on Garmna for a whole summer and looked out on Inis Bearacháin many times each day. The family with which I lived are good friends with the man from Inis Bearacháin so I've met him a number of times, and helped him with his boat once.

Sue doesn't live permanently on the Blasket, does she? I haven't talked to her for three or four years, but last time I visited the island she was only living there during the summer.

That's the one!!!!! You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar...

you wouldn't happen to know his name, now would you? lol

thank you so much, a chara...

"You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar... "

Or just a foreigner who spent a summer 300 meters from it by chance :-)

I've been trying to remember his name, but I'm afraid I don't. Of course I knew it then, just as any other person in the village in which I lived, but I only met him a few times and the name seems to have slipped. A large, strong fellow with a strong voice. Not the hermit type at all.

Too bad we cannot post pictures here, I have lots of pictures of that island. I used to go for a walk almost every evening and there was a small hill quite close to the village. When you climbed it you had a grand view over most islands in the Conamara Gaeltacht to your west with Carna on the mainland in the background; Leitir Móir, Ros Muc and the Connemara Mountains to your north; An Cheathrú Rua and Cois Fhairrge to your east and the three Aran Islands to your south out in the sea. In other words, one could see most of Irish speaking Co Galway from that hill. The sun always set behind Inis Bearachain and I took some pictures of the view. The island in itself is very bleak indeed, just as all of Conamara, but the whole view was very nice.

(Message edited by Jonas on June 12, 2005)

well, at least with a proper spelling of the name i have something to work with. Given it's location, I just may have seen the island and not known what I was looking at.

From the Department of Community Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs,

http://www.pobail.ie/en/Islands/InhabitedOffshoreIslands/

I found the following "Main Inhabited Offshore Islands Included in the 2002 Census."

Both Inse Ghoirt and An tOileán Mór also have 1 inhabitant. Interesting that there are some islands with 3 inhabitants, but none with 2.

The website also has some information on the Irish language and the Department's efforts at

http://www.pobail.ie/en/IrishLanguage/


Dáithí