By Christopher Kenneally
Photographs By Derek Szabo

Rathlin Island sits in Rathlin Sound like a peg joining Ireland and Scotland; from County Antrim, the Mull of Kintyre looms just 14 miles away. In 1306, Robert the Bruce retreated to a Rathlin cave after a rout of his forces by English troops. The forlorn Scots leader drew an inspirational lesson as he watched a spider repeatedly climbing its thread in a determined effort to reach the cave's roof. "If at first you don't succeed," he reasoned, "try, try again."

The Bruce was right, although I came close to missing the Rathlin boat a second time. Standing again at the Ballycastle dock five minutes ahead of sailing time, I watched as the crew of Iona Isle prepared to cast off. There was a reasonable excuse, however: the ferry carried a full passenger load of a Boy Scout troop. We learned that a second boat, Rathlin Venture, would arrive soon to take on any stranded passengers. Cheered by this news, I waved heartily to the departing scouts.

Ancient Settlement

Human beings have been sailing to Rathlin for millenia. If a recent archaeological discovery bears up to scrutiny, the island may have been settled as early as 7000 B.C.E., placing it among the oldest such sites in all of Ireland. A Neolithic stone axe factory uncovered on the pistol-shaped island's western tip dates from at least 4000 B.C.E.

Rathlin Island features in several Celtic epics, most notably for a contest between the King of Norway and an Ulster warrior to win the hand of Taise, daughter of King Donn of Rathlin. Local place names quoted in those ancient rhymes are still used; as late as the 1950s, the islanders' first language was Gaelic or Irish.

Northern Ireland's only inhabited island presented a chance to be apart from Northern Ireland while remaining a part of it. After a half dozen trips to Northern Ireland, the experience promised me some new level of understanding. Photographer Derek Szabo and I found Rathlin Island a dramatic setting equally suitable for a Celtic pageant or the post-apocalyptical adventures of Mad Max. After 8,000 years of human trespass, Rathlin Island has yet to be entirely civilized.

A single-lane, eleven-mile road around the island was a chain of knee-deep potholes and chassis-thumping buttes. Automobiles at the end of their useful lives on the mainland are ferried by barge from Ballycastle to Rathlin, where they are abused like souls in purgatory.

In a reverse of the usual paradigm, the world must adapt to primitive Rathlin Island, not Rathlin to the world. In October 1992, electricity finally came to the island (residents had earlier relied on individual generators). Wires criss-crossed haphazardly through fields, and a trio of slim windmills with airplane propeller blades stood atop an eastern hill. Elsewhere, the landscape retained a rough, primal appearance. Life, too, seemed nearly as disorderly, perhaps the legacy of a medieval past when islanders went for long stretches without benefit of clergy, police or landlord.

Yacht Race In Miniature

With permission from a warden, I camped one night on the edge of Kebble, a nature reserve owned by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. I chose for a perch the far side of a cow pasture where cliffs dropped sharply to the sea. The panoramic view outside my tent swept from the Northern Ireland coast, where Ballycastle's yellow lights flickered at dusk, across the bulk of Rathlin then beyond the far end of the island, over the chilly blue Straits of Moyle, to the dark spine of the Mull of Kintyre.

For dinner provisions, I bought cans of beef in curry sauce at Mrs. Hannaway's grocery store, one of the meager few businesses on Rathlin (others include a diving shop; bed-and-breakfast accommodations, and, of course, a pub). A hand-written sign in the store window declared, "Yacht Race Sunday," and that was more or less what we did see a few days later at Ushet Lough on Rathlin's southern tip. "Less" because the yachts were 22 inches long and five feet from tip of mast to end of keel; "more" because racing such "small yachts" is a curious, century-old Rathlin tradition that is practiced nowhere else.

"These are sea-going vessels, they take a lot of wind," insisted one yachtsman. At the lake's edge, he held anxiously a long pole he would use to jib his boat's mainsail and send it on a tack across the 30-acre pond to the finish line. Blue, white and red sails on his competitors' boats decorated the water's surface.

Seven yacht owners and about a dozen, mostly adult on-lookers -- at that, roughly one-fifth of Rathlin's permanent population -- resembled a lost tribe engaged in a ritual of obscure meaning. When brass-plated trophies were presented, the island's Catholic priest watched approvingly.

If You Go To Rathlin Island

For more information, contact the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, 551 Fifth Avenue, Suite 701, New York, NY 10176, tel. 1-800-326-0036 or 1-212-922-0101. The web address is www.discovernorthernireland.com.

All boats to Rathlin Island depart daily from Ballycastle at 10:30 a.m., and return to the mainland at 4 p.m. From June 1 through August 31, additional crossing is now available at 11:45, returning at 5:30 p.m. For further information, contact the Ballycastle Tourist Information Center, tel. 011-44-12657-62024.

On Rathlin, Mary and Thomas Cecil operate a bed-and-breakfast house that doubles as a diving center from Easter to the end of September. For information, call 011-44-12657-63915.