The Bull Rock

We went to bed... and lay awake listening to the place creak. The windows continued to rattle (until a neatly- placed Observer business card was folded into four and inserted in the frame on the windward side). Unable to put off a trip to the lavatory any longer, generously took a detour to stick another card in Eddie’s window, then raced back up to bed. I

...next thing I knew I was lying there, my eyes staring feverishly at a veiled figure looming by the foot of my bed.

I padded down, peering round corners sheepishly, tucked him in and sprang back up sharpish. I returned in time to be informed that, according to one past visitor’s granny and a Wicklow legend, the ghost was 150 years old and lost her head to a suitor armed with a scythe who

ISTD 2021-22

“Lighthouses of the World”

21 also been at sea — he was a light keeper at the time. My father remained in the lighthouses [in the lighthouse service], and he married my mother. My mother is a daughter of a lighthouse keeper as well, her brother Dick, Lord have mercy on him, he’s dead now, was also a light keeper for a short enough period. But that was how the Irish Lights worked. It was a traditional kind of a job — it’s not right to call it a job, it was more a way of life than a job, it was handed down, because light keepers’ sons were listening to, and used to this, all of their lives; it’s what we knew, and we sort of stayed with what we knew. It was a decision [to join the Irish Lights], suppose, in one sense, but I had never considered anything else. e oldest boy, Laurence, he did consider other things, he went into the Customs. at time, you got an education, you got a job, and that was that. It’s so di erent now. What I did [was], had my sights fixed on the Irish Lights from when was a young teenager, nothting else came into my mind other than that, and that’s duly what I did. And will say, that if could do it all again, every single bit of it I would do; I loved every second that spent in it; I loved it when I got into it because of the remoteness of everything -- your closeness to nature, and also the time that it a orded. I found, a er was made redundant in the finish, it’s the one thing I miss hugely, was all the free time. It was then I understood that in a job you actually trade your time for what money you can get.

When you joined the Irish Lights, you first did an examination. It wasn’t a dicult exam now, it was handy enough. And then you had to do a medical, and swimming test. Swimming was also a part of it, because the likelihood of falling into the sea was very real, and without any safe equipment you needed to be able to swim!

So that was all part of it. e reason for all of this was mostly to make sure that you were suitable for the job, because it would cost a good bit in training, and if fellows were not going to stay in it, it was costly replacing them with other lads all of thte time. My own twin brother, he stuck with it for five years, he did not like the isolation. Some poeple were just not cut out for that life, it required a special kind of a person, somebody who was good with their own company, and you know, they would have a creative enough mind, and were into reading, and could slow the pace down a bit.