The men and women of Inishmurray, Co. Sligo , left their island home in 1948. The Great Blasket was evacuated five years later. The Blaskets had Tomás O’Crohan and Maurice O’Sullivan to bear witness to a lost way of life. Here, Joe Mc Gowan sets down the life and times of another ancient people. Inishmurray’s presence looms large beyond his native fields and in the tales told him by the last of the island residents.

This is the perfect companion for an understanding of the island’s early Christian monuments, rivalled only by those on Sceilg Michael. But it is more than that. This book is a familiar ramble through a cherished place bringing life to an ancient monastery and a disappearing era. Here we learn of holy men and marauding Danes; vengeful statues and disappearing islands; Cursing Stones and Mystic Fires; of cures customs, poteen and peelers.