Next Parish to Canada

What is in a place? What's in a name? What's in a word?

Whilst the Blasket Islands, Na Blascaodaí in Irish, a name possibly originating from the Norse word "brasker", meaning "a dangerous place" are now uninhabited, these places to the west and beyond the headland of Ceann Sleibhe (Slea Head), are still designated as still being part of the Gaeltacht!

Official Gaeltacht areas

Gaeltacht is an Irish-language word used to denote any primarily Irish-speaking region, and refers individually to any, or collectively to all, of the districts where the government recognises that the Irish language is the predominant vernacular, or language of the home. 

But the islands today are empty of the people who used to speak the Irish language. 

Evacuation of the islanders

The inhabitants of these islands were evacuated by the government to the mainland on 17 November 1953 due to the declining population and a way of life that was difficult to sustain in a changing world. Life could be harsh and other futures beckoned. 

Some of the descendants of the islanders migrated to the United States of America, and in particular, to Springfield in Massachusetts. Others made a new life closer to their deserted settlements nearby on the Dingle Peninsula, and within sight of their former home.

The Islandman

Sean O Criomhthain, his wife Eibhlís Ní Shúilleabháin, Tomás O Criomhthain and Muiris Ó Súilleabháin

The islanders were the subject of much anthropological and linguistic study around the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries particularly from writers and linguists such as Robin Flower, George Derwent Thomson and Kenneth H. Jackson. Thanks to their encouragement and that of others, a number of books were written by islanders that record much of the islands' traditions and way of life. These include An tOileánach (The Islandman) by Tomás Ó Criomhthain, Peig by Peig Sayers and Fiche Blian ag Fás (Twenty Years A-Growing) by Muiris Ó Súilleabháin.

Next Parish to Canada

The Blasket Islands are the next parish to Canada but have often been called Next Parish America, based on the assumption that the next parish west of the islands would be the United States.