Aran Islands - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

• John Millington Synge wrote a book-length journal, The Aran Islands, which was completed in 1901 and published in 1907.
• The Aran Islands were mentioned in James Joyce's short story The Dead (1914) as a destination where native Irish is spoken.
• The 1934 documentary film Man of Aran.
• Seamus Heaney's first book of poems, Death of a Naturalist (1966), contains a poem entitled "Lovers on Aran".
• The 1984 hit song The Riddle by Nik Kershaw includes the line, "Near a tree by a river there's a hole in the ground where an old man of Aran goes around and around."
• The Aran Islands found fame and experienced a boost in tourism since being featured in the television comedy Father Ted. The show, which was aired from April 1995 until May 1998, is set on the fictional Craggy Island, but real local sights such as the shipwreck of the steam trawler Plassey feature in the opening sequence to the show. The island of Inishmore hosted a Friends of Ted festival in 2007.
• The 1996 play, The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh, is set on the Aran Islands. This popular play, which is shown all over the world, is the first play in The Aran Islands Trilogy, in which it is followed by the 2001 play, The Lieutenant of Inishmore (see below), and the unpublished play The Banshees of Inisheer.
• The 1997 romantic comedy The MatchMaker with Janeane Garofalo is partially set on the Aran Islands.
• The 2000 song El Pozo de Aran by Spanish Celtic musician Carlos Núñez, with lead vocals by Portuguese singer Anabela, is about a mother's pilmgrimage to a holy well in the islands to heal her sickly child. There were two versions released, one with Spanish lyrics and one with Galician lyrics.
• The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001) is a popular play written by Martin McDonagh, which was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 11 April 2001. It also had a run on Broadway in New York City where it was nominated for five Tony awards, and now is played all over the world.
• The last chapter of How to Die: or The Good Gatsby (2006), a humorous novel by Wm. Douglas Warren, is entitled "The Aran Islands" and is set almost entirely in Dún Aengus, although it is just referred to as "a round fort."
• The 2009 CD Man Of Aran by the British band British Sea Power features a modern soundtrack to the 1934 documentary. Some editions of the CD include a bonus DVD of the documentary with the band's new soundtrack.
• Flaherty's contribution to the advent of the documentary is scrutinised in the 2010 documentary 'A Boatload of Wild Irishmen", written by Professor Brian Winston of University of Lincoln, UK, and directed by Mac Dara Ó Curraidhín. The film explores the nature of 'controlled actuality' and sheds new light on thinking about Flaherty. The argument is made that the impact of Flaherty's films on the indigenous peoples portrayed changes over time, as the films become valuable records for subsequent generations of now-lost ways of life.The film's title derives from Flaherty's own statement that he had been accused, in the staged climactic sequence of Man of Aran, of "trying to drown a boatload of wild Irishmen".