Achill Day-o

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Galwegian Ger, Polish Magda and myself sit on the bench of the Annexe Inn. We have a Sunday morning breakfast pint -to honour Kris Kristofferson's song- facing the sun and the sea in Keel, in the Achill island. The place is close to Dooagh, the village where some Don Allum arrived after rowing accross the Atlantic Ocean in 1982. A mean invisible rain is falling down. It gets you wet without notice.

We talk about peoples crossing oceans in ancient times. Apparently some scientists have recently found cannabis, cocaine and other American drugs in the lungs and tissue of Egyptian mummies. They wonder whether some native American crossed the ocean long ago and ended up sharing their stuff with the Pharaoh. That, or else someone with a sense of humour had an original party inside the museum not so long ago.

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The day before we had hiked the island's mountains with the Galway University Mountaneering Club. We walked up hills covered by wet bog, passing by the eerie sight of the deserted village of Slievemore. Its ruins remind of the mid-19th Century potato famine that decimated the area.

Up in the hills, the fog may catch you in the edge of the cliff. 'You cannot see anything but this is the highest cliff in Western Europe, more than 600 metres', a young red haired Achillian lady mountaneer tells me.

Suddenly a gust of wind pushes us closer to the edge. 'There are a lot of fairies in this area. People hear voices in the mist and so on', says she. These are not nice creatures: they are much more scary than what you may think'.

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Another spooky story comes from the hostel where we spent the night. The Valley House Hostel was the scenery of the brutal attack on its lady owner in 1894. She survived both the beating and his lover's attempt to burn her alive together with the building. Her ghost still wanders the hostels corridors and scares the occassional tourist on his way to the toilet in the middle of the night. There is a black and white portrait of the culprit of the beating and burning. His face tells of a man not to joke with.

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Down in the pub, the crowd gulps Guinness and other brews by the fireplace. A couple of musicians play old folk tunes using a flute, a concertina (small accordion) and a bodhrán (the traditional drum made of goat skin). An older man with a sailor hat joins the scene. Everyone falls silent waiting for him to sing. I expect some old Irish tune about rebels, misty green hills and so on. Instead, he starts with a loud 'Daaaay-o'!, followed by 'day-ay-ay-o', and of course 'day light come and me wan'go home'. The bad spirits banish away.

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