With the ‘sea in his blood’, Michael Kirby has spent nearly a century in a deep bond with the people, animals and landscapes of the south Iveragh Peninsula in Kerry. And throughout his remarkable life, he has lovingly recorded all that he has seen, on land and on the ocean wave. Here are stories of spectral ships, enchanted seals and seabirds ‘speaking in perfect Irish’; shipwrecks, smugglers and sword-wielding coastguards; and characters like Seamus Fada (‘an expert on astronomy and cures for smelly feet’) and beachcomber Jamesie Stock (‘like a cormorant on a rock, not even a bottle floated ashore but Jamesie’s watchful eye floated beside it’). Spanning nine decades of local lore, Kirby tells the history of Ballinskelligs Cable Station; explains the deadly workings of second world war mines; recalls his hard times on the railroads of Depression-era America; and recounts his and his father’s dramatic struggle with a man-eating shark. Completing the cycle begun with Skelligside, this second volume of memoir fuses traditional storytelling with the keen observations of a first-class naturalist to create a lyrical vision of a world and a way of life now almost lost.
