Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage [Mass Market Paperback]

Tim Robinson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1998 | Series: Stones of Aran

Describes a journey around the coast of Aran along the southern cliff-line of the Atlantic, including the Western Brannock Islets, followed by a return around the low-lying northern coast. The author records the archaeology, botany and birdlife, history and folklore of this region.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An exquisitely detailed portrait of a special landscape, this is a gem-like addition to the travel genre. Robinson, an artist and cartographer, has made prize-winning maps of southwest Ireland and adjacent islands. Describing himself as "self-appointed resident scientific busybody," he walks the coastline of Arainn, largest of the three Aran Islands, clockwise from the western edge, in an exploration of geology, topography, history, language and folklore. Arainn is limestone, and its natural forms are rectilinear. We see storm beaches--mile after mile of huge boulders stripped from the rim of cliffs and moved inland by wind. Robinson recounts hazardous sports once practiced by the natives--birdcatching and fishing from clifftops; he calls our attention to prehistoric sites and to abandoned forts. He takes a side trip by curragh to the Brannock Islands and meditates on the origins of placenames. Arainn's north coast was a center for kelp factories producing iodine and fertilizer in the 19th century; Robinson offers a vivid picture of that period as well.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"This is a heart-felt and informative micro-history, and a eulogy and an elegy as well. Robinson is especially good on Aran's once great but now vanished kelp industry, and all that was involved....this is a fine addition to a fertile genre." --The Times (London)

"A loving anatomy of the largest of the Aran Islands off the West Coast of Ireland, in which the point where nature and culture meet in the island is observed with great beauty and precision." -Colm Toibin

"Tim Robinson's maps and books honor the landscapes they describe. As invitations, they irresistibly beckon the archeologist, botanist, geologist, bird-watcher, folklorist, student of the Irish language, or just plain tourist." -Chet Raymo.

"Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage and Labyrinth...is a necessity for all visitors and walkers."--Guardian

"An exquisitely detailed portrait of a special landscape, this is a gem-like addition to the travel genre."-Publishers Weekly

"Robinson takes the reader on a meditative walking tour of Aran...[he] seeks the essence of an increasingly distant Celtic past...like a visitor peering through the warped and colored glass of an ancient church window." -Los Angeles Times

"A kind of travel writing The New Yorker sometimes sponsors: a virtuosity of gratuitous fact-gathering, a penitential recording of minutiae, a recitation of information as if it were prayer." -New York Times

"Looked upon with a tactful, eager, strategic care that is as tender in its address as an admission of love...It is a wonderful achievement." -Seamus Deane, London Review of Books

"The best book ever written by an Englishman about Ireland." -Independent

"One of the most original, revelatory and exhilarating works of literature ever produced in Ireland." -Irish Times

"Rapt, encyclopedic volumes...Robinson has done for the west of Ireland what Ruskin did for Venice, Proust for the voids and vasts of time." -Telegraph

"Climate and location, flora and fauna, culture, myth and legend, people, and over it all, the veneer of language and place name...Tim Robinson achieves this ultimate map in Stones of Aran" -New Scientist

"Wholly irresistible." -Observer

"This is a marvelous book--quirky and endearing, universal in scope yet with an extraordinary sense of place and purpose." -Sydney Morning Herald

"One of the most interesting and important books produced in Ireland in the twentieth century. In prose as layered and rich as the area he explores, Robinson deals with space in the way Proust deals with time." --Sean Dunne --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); First Edition edition (April 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 014011565X
• ISBN-13: 978-0140115659
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,745,723 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An extradinarily intimate "outsider's" view of west Ireland, December 19, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Athens, Georgia, US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage (Paperback)

This collection of 14 shorter pieces by Tim Robinson, mathematician, teacher, artist and cartographer, gives a portrait of the west of Ireland which is unrivalled in recent writing from that country. Its' integrating device, and central metaphor, is the map. A map, stripped bare, is a distillation of topographical knowledege about an area. Onto this rudimentary two-dimensional scaffolding layer after layer of detail can be added. These are the details of culture, of history, personal memory. Robinson navigates the process of regarding a landscape with the notion of the fractal -- the notion of self-similar structures at multiple levels of observation (in "A Connemara Fractal"). He enjoyably talks us through the technical details of making maps, and has some wonderful stories of his mathematical training. I will not attempt to summarize the various chapters but would urge all those interested in landscape, biography, Irish history, coastal walks, fractal theory, natural history archaeology, literary fiction, and "home" (and that, I suppose, includes just about everyone) to read this. In a time when many find themselves living at some distance from their homeplace this book shows how a fresh intimacy with new landscapes can enrich and invigorate. As an Irish emigrant I am both compelled to return to Ireland after reading this and yet am encouraged to persevere in understanding of my new homeplace in the United States. I have loaned this book to friends in Costa Rica, in the American Northwest, and here in Georgia. All have felt its power. It should stimulate the reader to get his larger works on the Aran Islands. Be warned however these books, the present one included, eccentric masterpieces, will make you want to crumble soil between your fingers, circum-navigate your local terrain, and fumble into the interstices of your jaded soul. Liam Heneghan ([e-mail]; Athens, GA)

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "... the unsummable totality of human perspectives upon them which is my real subject.", January 12, 2009

By 

John P. Jones III (Albuquerque, NM, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

Tim Robinson published this account of the largest of the three islands that sit at the entrance to Galway Bay, "Arainn" in the island's own speech, in 1986. He had gone to live there in 1972, and this book is the remarkable distillation of his experience, as well as his exploration of its past. The islands are the last stronghold of the Gaelic language. The particular island that is the topic of this book is roughly 8 miles long by 2 miles wide. The humans that have chosen to live here have made significant adaptations to their environment. I know of only one other book that I could compare it too, one that also examines a Celtic heritage, a bit further south, in France's Brittany. It is Eleanor Clark's "The Oysters of Locmariequer." Like Robinson, Clark examines a very small place, and reports on the "unsummable totality of human perspectives" to use Robinson's phrase in his first chapter.

This book does not exhaust by any means what Robinson has to report about the island. There is a companion volume, "Stones of Aran: Labyrinth." "Pilgrimage" takes the format of a walk around the island's circumference; "Labyrinth" is an exploration of the interior. For sure, there are plenty of diversions along the way. The author immediately draws you in, particularly for Americans suffering from "intelligent design" and "creationism" with a discourse on a timescape without signpost, the cosmology of the universe, with a nod to that famous date some folks think the story all began, 4004 BC.

Robinson's approach to that "unsummable totality" as well as his own erudition are dazzling. He is not one to have gotten trapped into the "how many angels on a pinhead" arguments of a cramped and narrow intellectual discipline. He ranges over disciplines as varied as cosmology, geology, botany, sociology, history, linguists, economics, anthropology and literature. For example he describes with remarkable prose the types of gulls that inhabit the cliffs around Aran, and then goes on to describe the death-defying techniques that the "Cliff men" evolved to hunt them. Then he launched into true pyrotechnics of prose with: "...let the ocean dance in it, and the cliffs above step back in wide balconies to accommodate the thousands who will come to marvel at this kinetic-conceptualist, megalominimalist, unrepeatable and ever-repeated, sublime and absurd show of the Atlantic's extraction of Aran's square root!"

In other chapters he examines the mythology, and actuality of the settlement of these islands. Robert Flaherty's 1932 movie, "Man of Aran," is a valuable referral source for Robinson, and he repeatedly references it in his book. In terms of the economics of the island, it was always a struggle, particularly agriculture, which was supplemented with fishing, particularly of sharks, for their oil. Kelp played a major role in the islands history, from it use as a source of iodine, as well as it being the principal source of fertilizer, which made possible the growth of crops in this stony soil.

Religion is also an integral part of the island's history and present, with a pithy observation by Robinson: "Priests of course have always protected their retail monopoly of supernatural benefits by maligning even the pettiest rival outlets; the coins probably found their way into the Church's pocket and the poor peasant was told to have no further dealings with the Devil...". Meanwhile, the author seems to have a Faulknerian view of history: "I am no disinterested historian; I study the past only to amplify my greedy awareness of the present." As for reality: "The correct way of contacting the depths of reality are just two: either to throw yourself over the cliff into your choice of mysticisms, or to do your time in one of the cultural armies, scientific or artistic."

A couple reviewers said the book could not be categorized. In some ways the observation is correct, but I would demure. There is at least one fit: it is a masterpiece.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Aran go bragh!, January 5, 2010

By 

F. Mullen (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

This review is also a personal note: my branch of Clan Mullen came to America from Aran in the late 19th century, which is what led me to Robinson's books, "Stones of Aran." "Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage" is Robinson's description of the island as he makes a circuit of its shoreline.

Although the title "Stones of Aran" might suggest that the topic is geology or, perhaps, geography, "Pilgrimage" is actually an eclectic mix of these plus paleo-biology, ornithology, botany, anthropology, archaeology, etymology, mythology, cartography, and maybe some others. Robinson claims professional authority only in the last of these, having one time mapped Aran and parts of neighboring Connemara. To the rest of these fields he brings the energy of a keenly interested amateur, and he attempts to fuse from them the shoreline's gestalt. He deliberately and explicitly eschews photography, preferring to assemble pictures from nouns and adjectives, which he deploys in profusion and with technical specificity.

Occasionally this approach is irksome. Robinson admits to needing a bird identification book, for example, but he then rattles off species as if the reader were an ornithologist. In such passages I substitute "bird" for the various and mysterious names and practice my speed reading for a few paragraphs. A reader more at leisure might enjoy the delay of looking up all these curiosities in his own bird book.

There is no plot in this volume, no story line whatever, except when occasionally Robinson relates local legends, lore, or hagiographies of the saints. Rather the order of the narrative is an exploration of space, arranged sequentially as one walks (Robinson admits to occasionally pedaling to points on the shore, but in the descriptions he is always on foot) from the eastern-most point of the island, westward along the south shore, round the western end, then back along the north shore. Robinson is never an actor in this walk, only the narrator. The reader observes the circuit through Robinson's eyes and mind. One never reads or in any way derives a sense of his aching feet, watery eyes, or chilled limbs. It is a God's-eye view.

There is, in fact, something extremely impersonal in the narrative. Robinson rarely writes of contemporary people in Aran, and when he does--as, for example, when he hitches a ride from a couple of lobstermen to an offshore island--the description of the event is written in "first-person-remote," i.e., with an aloofness of attitude that leaves the reader feeling like he is watching events from a long ways off through a telephoto lens. Similar to listening to news on National Public Radio, it's as if some omnipresent authority is floating serenely, invisibly, and untouched above earthly things, ultimately objective, neither affecting nor affected by events below. Robinson similarly seems to want Aran and her people unaffected by his passing there.

Though any one section of the book can be accused of being too introspective, of containing too much arcana, or of being an egotistical exercise of linguistic nicety, what emerges with time and patience is an image of Aran that is at once general and intimate. It is similar to the sense you might get from looking out upon any landscape: you see a variety of trees, a roadway with a culvert diverting a stream underneath, the ruins of a barn encrusted with creeping vegetation, old pasture going to weed alongside a river, a hillside rising away to over-looming cliffs. You can take the parts separately--identify the various trees, look up who once owned the farm, climb the cliff, paddle the river--but your eye takes them together at a glance, and together they make one image. So it is with "Pilgrimage." From the disparate parts Robinson creates a whole, and you come to feel as if you "know" Aran in some way, and probably in a better way than you would from reading a travel brochure and looking at photographs.

~~~
Family trivia:

Members of Clan Mullen enter the narrative at a few points, all of them related to Cousin Pat of "Man of Aran" fame. Whereas the Wikipedia entry for his actress daughter, Barbara, tells of Pat leaving his wife and ten children in Boston, Robinson says it was only three children, two daughters and a son, and the son, "PJ," returned to Aran with him. (This accords with Cousin Pat's account in "Man of Aran.") Robinson also accounts for Pat Mullen's employment while he was in America--"rambling, labouring, and moonshining"--and he reports that he left his wife in Boston "running an illicit drinking-house." And religious skeptics among us may be interested to learn that Pat's branch of the clan were notorious for impiety. "Johnny Mullen, father of Pat, was considered such a social and religious heretic that it seemed doubtful if Father Killeen, the parish priest of the day, would permit his burial in God's ground....'If we can't bury him we'll pickle him!' Pat is said to have said, but instead they forestalled the priest by bringing the corpse here ["here" being Poll na Marbh, a place where unbaptized infants and strangers-not-known-to-be-Catholic were interred] and burying it secretly, replacing the sods, erecting no cross, but taking `marks' for the spot...so that none but they would be able to find it."

Robinson, who helpfully translates Irish place names throughout, inadvertently gives some clue to the etymology of the name "Mullen." There is a knoll near the east end of Aran called An Maoilin: "The word `maoil' in Irish means among other things a hillock with a flattish top; it cognates with dozens of others denoting things blunt, bald, roofless, or low-topped in some way." I have always heard that the name "Mullen" derived from Irish for "The Bald One" or something like that. Indeed, I have here a postcard from a friend, who brought it from Ireland, showing the Mullen coat of arms and explaining that the name derives from the Irish word for "bald." With my usual distrust of such authoritative pronouncements (which in my experience are often no more than reiterations of some long-ago error), I wonder if "Mullen" might just as likely derive from Aran's "maoil," or "flattish top." Perhaps our family of modern warriors spring from an ancient ancestor who went into battle sporting not a bald pate, but rather that frightening 80's hairstyle, the "mullet."