Sunday: Scattery Island (Inis Cathaigh), County Clare

i'm going back a few days here, to catch upon what I did on Sunday, after I dropped Daniel at Ennis train station. I went on a boat tour of Inis Cathaig, where St Senan is said to have fought and banished the legendary sea monster (called the Cathaig), so that he could found a monastery there. There is a particular hill on the island where this is said to have happened. 

The monster is described in the original story of St Senan: 

Hideous, uncouth, ruthless, awful was the beast that arose there. A horse’s mane had it; an eye gleaming, flaming in its head, and its keen savage, forward, angry, edged, crimson, bloody, cruel, bounding. Two very hideous, very thick feet under it; behind it a mane. Nails hard as iron on it, which used to strike showers of fire out of the rocks of stone wherever it went across them. A fiery breath it had which burned like embers. A belly it had like the bellows of a furnace. A whale’s tail upon it behind. Hard, rending claws upon it, which used to lay bare, on the path they came, the surface of the ground behind the monster.

I did not see the monster - probably because St Senan defeated and banished it, which is almost a shame, but according to legend it did kill anyone who went on the island, so I guess the boat tour would have been impossible had he not done that. 

Instead, I got hopelessly entangled and blackberry and boggy fields in an attempt to go off-path and explore the large section of the island the Board of Works have left as a nature reserve. As a reward, I got badly scratched, and very hot and angry, and, I did not see the Hen Harriers (a type of raptor) that roost on the island. I did see one new bird, a Northern Wheatear, which is nice because I have not got a lot of new spots of late. 

One thing I love (ironically) is illustrations from folklore books where the illustrator has totally ignored the actual description of the monster. That's what I have posted above. The shots in the gallery are all of the island, monastic buildings and round tower. It was a great trip out there, not quite as good for birding as I had hoped, but certainly worth exploring the early monastic complex. 

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