Mayo's Lost Islands

The Inishkeas

Brian Dornan

‘It is impossible to wander the grassed-over lazybeds and clifftops in winter and not wonder what the islands were like in their heyday, when 60 whitewashed cabins held more than 300 people in something close to self-sufficiency. Brian Dornan, archaeologist turned local historian, has researched the past 100 years of the Inishkea community and, in his study of its families, gives scholarly shape to an extraordinary human saga … The sea, as one might expect, dominates much of the folklore’, Michael Viney, Irish Times (January 2001).