Link with island life on Lough Derg severed

A LINK with growing up and living an island life on Lough Derg has been severed following the death of a former inhabitant, Thomas (Tom) Tiernan, of Portroe.

Tom was raised and spent the early part of his life on Islandmore, the largest island on the lake.

The Tiernan family were residents of the islands of the Shannon for generations.

Tom's grandfather James Tiernan, who is buried on Holy Island on Lough Derg, was an eel fisherman who made his living from the river.

He originally lived on Inchmore, the largest island on Lough Ree, and came to Islandmore, or Illaunmore as it is also known, in the late 19th century.

James and a brother were familiar with all areas of the Shannon and experts on catching eels, which they exported, mainly to London.

They would take the eels on an ass and cart to Nenagh Railway station and put them on the Dublin bound train for subsequent transit by ferry to the UK.

The eels were put in boxes and in those pre-refrigeration days they had to throw water on them to keep them alive and fresh.

It was a precarious business in hot weather as the eels could die on the journey and be destroyed.

While fishing on Lough Derg James met his future wife, Chicago born Minnie Ryan, who was a member of the family who back then were proprietors of Ryan's Pub in Garrykennedy.

After Minnie and James married they got a house on Islandmore where they earned their living from farming and fishing.

The couple went on to have a total of ten children, among them Tom's father, Michael, who was born in 1905.

Also living on the island at the time was an O' Meara family, who also had ten children.

ISLAND SCHOOL

With a total of 20 little ones to be educated, James Tiernan built an extension on to his house to accommodate a little school.

The school closed around 1910 and Tom's father, his siblings and the other children on the island had to go to the mainland, in Kilbarron, to be schooled.

Tom's parents ultimately emigrated to England where they had three girls, Mary, Julia and Bridie, and two boys Jim and his younger brother Tom.

Incidentally, decades later the Tiernan children learned they had an older brother, Pat, whom their parents, being unmarried at the time, had been forced to give up for adoption before going to England. Pat, who through all the years of separation had kept the surname Tiernan, actually managed to track the family down, much to delight of everyone.

Tom and his siblings were raised in England, but when World War II broke out their mother brought them home to the safety of her family's home in Jenkinstown in County Kilkenny.

Tom's father, a crew member of an aircraft carrier operating out of Southampton, remained on in the UK to help in the war effort, but eventually came home to join the rest of the family when the conflict ended.

The family later returned to the Tiernan's native place on Islandmore after Michael and his brother Willie purchased a farm of 40 acres - the island itself is a total of 140 acres.

In an interview with the Nenagh Guardian in 2013 Tom's brother, Jim, recalled landing on the island with his parents and siblings.

“When we first arrived on the island as children in the 1940s we had no house. However, an English angler, Bruce Pike, gave us his little timber fishing lodge to live in.

“One of the conditions on this arrangement was that we had to vacate the property for the month of May, because Bruce and his friends would arrive to fish the Mayfly season on the lake.

“We children thought life on the island was great. Coming from England and Kilkenny, we weren't used to going out in a boat. We used to fish every day and live off the land and the lake.

“We ate wild duck, rabbit and pigeon. We had eggs from our own hens, milk from a cow and we killed a pig once a year.

“My mother made our bread from our own oats, which we brought to a mill in Whitegate to be ground every year. We were almost self-sufficient.

“You could go out on the lake in those days and nearly always have fish in the boat in less than half an hour. The fishing was great back then and we were never stuck for something to put on the table.”

The school on the island had long closed by then and so Tom's older siblings were brought to the mainland by boat before walking three miles to the nearest school in Kilbarron. When school ended they took the same walk back to meet their father waiting for them in his boat to transport them home to the island. In high winds, it was often a precarious journey and the children missed many days in school due to inclement weather.

As a younger sibling Tom ended up going to school in Whitegate on the Clare side of the lake, staying with an uncle in Mountshannon from Monday to Friday, before being brought home to the island to join the rest of his family at weekends.

Tom and his family lived through some very cold winters on the island, including really challenging seasons when the lake froze in 1947 and 1963, cutting them off from the mainland.

Tom's family eventually left Islandmore in 1965 after his parents purchased a house in Kilbarron.

Tom, who died on Tuesday, December 27, was predeceased by his beloved wife, Lizzy. He and Lizzy up to their deaths lived at Cloneygowney in Portroe where they were both highly popular members of the community.

Among those surviving him are his son Danny and daughter, Bernadette, by Michael Kennedy, daughter-in-law Teresa, son-in-law Eamonn and, five grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, brother Jim and sister Bridie. After Funeral Mass in Saint Mary's Church, Portroe, on Friday last, burial was in Castletown Cemetery.