Christopher Moriarty
Europe’s Atlantic Fringe: Exploring the west coasts of Portugal, Spain and Ireland
by Michael Fewer (Ashfield Press, €25)
Michael Fewer combines scholarship with readability in an impressive number of books about Ireland, Irish people and Irish architecture. In his latest work he widens the range by the addition of two countries, Portugal and Spain. Between the covers is a delightful book describing a journey by the author, with his wife, from Cape St Vincent to Horn Head.
By choosing the longitude of 8 degrees west as a boundary, he neatly omits such very substantial parts of the Atlantic fringe as the coasts of France, England and Scotland.
His selection of places and people to describe, being very personal, is faintly exasperating to readers who would regard some of the other omissions hard to accept. It seems a bit unreasonable to describe Ireland’s west coast with no more reference to the Burren of Clare than an allusion to its appearance when viewed across Galway Bay.
That said, the reader can sit, enjoy some excellent writing, learn all sorts of facts, geographical and historical and re-visit, with the author, familiar and loved places.
The journey begins at the south-western extremity of Europe where, we are told, the gods engaged in nocturnal pursuits and resented the intrusion of mortals. The author survived their displeasure, beginning his book with an evocative description of the sunset and the fact that, unlike the second century observer Artemidorus Ephesius, he failed to hear the sizzling sound made by the sun as it meets the waves.
He goes on to enlarge on the exploits of Henry the Navigator who shared with generations of later explorers the distinction of making the world known to Europeans and initiating the exploitation of the inhabitants of the countries they visited.
Portugal and the Portuguese had little enough impact on Ireland – in contrast with our relationship with Spain. The wine trade in particular in the centuries of the Gaelic Resurgence led to the wealth of merchants in the city of Galway and to some degree of peaceful settlement and inter-marriage with Irish people. Power struggles between the monarchs of England and Spain subsequently led to less peaceful encounters.
In the course of his journey the author made a diversion to Compostella – some distance from the Atlantic Fringe, but connected with it by the fact that great numbers of pilgrims from Ireland made most of their way there by sea.
Compostella claims the body of the Apostle James and compares in a curious manner with the burial place of W. B. Yeats in Drumcliffe Churchyard. The author, in separate parts of the book, gives the remarkably parallel tales of two interments.
St James, according to tradition, was martyred in Rome but ultimately buried at Compostella. History, rather than tradition, tells that the poet died and was buried in France. However, it now seems that his mortal remains may not have been transferred to lie ‘under bare Ben Bulben’s head’ – although a coffin bearing his name certainly made the journey.
Whatever the facts, devotees still visit both shrines. Michael Fewer’s definition of Europe’s Atlantic fringe may be mythical – but his account of the reality of his journey remains a great pleasure to read.