40 Fun Facts About Aran Islands

The rusting wreck of the MV Plassy on Inisheer appears in the opening credits of which 1990s sitcom?

Father Ted used the stranded ship to set the scene for its fictional Craggy Island. Since 2007 fans have gathered on Inishmore for Ted Fest, dressed as their favourite characters.

Which 2022 Martin McDonagh film, starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, was partly shot on the largest Aran island?

The Banshees of Inisherin is set in 1923 on an invented island. Its costume designer used only homespun cloth and Irish wools and linens, so that nothing looked like a pastiche.

A popular myth claims each Aran Islands family knitted its own jumper pattern for which grim purpose?

Identifying the drowned by their knitwear is a legend that may have grown from a 1904 play, in which a lost fisherman is recognised by the stitches of his socks.

Which American pop star gave the Aran jumper a fashion moment in 2020 by wearing one in her album photos?

Taylor Swift wore the cream cable-knit in the photo shoot for her album Folklore. Vogue had already carried articles on the garment in the 1950s, as exports to America began.

With no natural topsoil on the Aran Islands, farmers made fields by layering sand with what from the shore?

Seaweed and sand, spread in layers over bare rock, made soil rich enough to grow potatoes. Drystone walls were then built around the plots to protect the new ground.

Giant boulders sit up to 50 metres above the sea on the Aran Islands' western coast; what put them there?

Storm waves threw them up there, as Rónadh Cox and collaborators showed. The boulder ridges had earlier been put down to a possible tsunami.

The 1934 film Man of Aran shows fishermen in small boats harpooning which giant fish for its liver oil?

Basking shark hunts like this had not been seen on the Aran Islands for over fifty years, so the film's most famous scenes were a re-creation staged for the camera.

Which Harry Potter actor played Billy in the 2013 West End revival of Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan?

Daniel Radcliffe played the orphan who dreams of a part in a documentary being shot on the next island. The plot borrows a real event: the early-1930s filming of Man of Aran on Inishmore.

Which rock, laid down in a tropical sea about 350 million years ago, makes up all three Aran Islands?

Limestone here is packed with fossil corals and sea urchins from that ancient seabed. Connemara, just to the north, is built of granite instead.

Which light rowing boat, made by stretching tarred canvas over thin wooden laths, did Aran Islands fishermen use?

Currach hulls ride out rough Atlantic seas yet are easily punctured. Before canvas, the wooden frames were covered with animal hides.

Which prehistoric fort on Inishmore stands at the edge of a sheer 100-metre drop, guarded by a field of stone spikes?

Dún Aonghasa was begun around 1100 BC, and part of it has since fallen into the Atlantic. George Petrie called it the most magnificent barbaric monument in Europe.

Which playwright, urged by W. B. Yeats to go, spent five summers on the Aran Islands and wrote a book about them?

J. M. Synge lodged in a cottage on Inishmaan that is now open to visitors. Stories he heard there fed The Playboy of the Western World, the comedy that set off riots in Dublin.

Which American crooner popularised the 1947 ballad Galway Bay, taking it to number three on the US charts?

Bing Crosby softened some of the song's more political words when he recorded it. In Britain its sheet music then spent 22 weeks in a row at number one.

Poll na bPéist, a strikingly rectangular natural pool on Inishmore, has hosted world series events in which sport?

Cliff diving stars have plunged into the pool English speakers call the Wormhole, or the Serpent's Lair. Channels under the rock link it to the open sea.

The cargo ship Plassy, wrecked on Inisheer in 1960, was carrying yarn, stained glass and which drink?

Whiskey was in the hold when the ship struck Finnis Rock in a gale. Local volunteers hauled the whole crew to safety by breeches buoy, and a later gale tossed the hull ashore.

Which Irish folk group made cream Aran jumpers their trademark stage outfit, wearing them on The Ed Sullivan Show?

The Clancy Brothers got theirs in a parcel from their mother, who had read about the ice and snow in New York and wanted to keep her sons warm.

The Aran Islands are a geological extension of which stony mainland region, renowned for its wildflowers?

The Burren lies in County Clare, and its Irish name means 'rocky district'. Arctic, alpine and Mediterranean plants grow side by side there and on the islands.

What name is given to Ireland's officially recognised Irish-speaking districts, which include all three Aran Islands?

Gaeltacht status makes Irish the language of official services and schooling on the islands. Until late in the 20th century, an unusually high share of older residents spoke no English.

Which hearth fuel, absent from the rocky Aran Islands, was traditionally shipped over by sailing boat from Connemara?

Turf, cut and dried peat, had to come over from the mainland because the bare, rocky islands have no bogs of their own.

Which Irish poet included 'Lovers on Aran' in Death of a Naturalist, his first major collection, in 1966?

Seamus Heaney went on to receive the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. The debut volume grew partly out of work he had shared at meetings of the Belfast Group.

Inis Meáin, the Irish name of Inishmaan, describes where it sits among the Aran Islands; what does it mean?

Middle island is the meaning, since Inishmaan lies between its two neighbours. It is also the least populous of the group, home to under 200 people at the 2022 census.

Which island, bridged to the mainland since 1887, is the largest off the Irish coast, far bigger than Inishmore?

Achill, off County Mayo, covers about 148 square kilometres, nearly five times the size of Inishmore.

Which James Joyce short story, the last in Dubliners, mentions the Aran Islands as a place where Irish is spoken?

The Dead is by far the longest story in the 1914 collection, long enough at nearly 16,000 words to be called a novella.

In Martin McDonagh's black comedy The Lieutenant of Inishmore, the killing of which pet sets off the bloodshed?

A cat called Wee Thomas belongs to Mad Padraic, a gunman judged too unhinged even for the IRA. The Daily Telegraph ranked the play among the 15 greatest ever written.

Traditional Aran jumpers were knitted from unwashed wool, kept water-resistant by which natural oil from the fleece?

Lanolin left in the unscoured wool meant the garments shed water and stayed wearable even when wet. The yarn itself, undyed and cream-coloured, is called báinín.

The clocháns of the Aran Islands, dry-stone dwellings with corbelled roofs, are better known by which English name?

Beehive huts of the same kind on Skellig Michael, off County Kerry, served as a filming location for Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Under Cromwell's rule, Inishmore was used as a prison camp for which group, freed only after the monarchy was restored?

Catholic priests who went on ministering after a 1653 decree of banishment were arrested and shipped to the island. The last were released after the Stuart Restoration.

Which Galway Bay sailing boat, black-hulled with dark red-brown sails, once carried fuel to the Aran Islands?

Hooker crews race across the bay from Connemara to Kinvara at the annual festival of Cruinniú na mBád. The black of the hull comes from a coat of pitch.

Which novelist, born on Inishmore in 1896, wrote The Informer, later filmed by his relative John Ford?

Liam O'Flaherty won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the 1925 novel. A decade later the film version took four Oscars, including Best Director.

Which one-act tragedy set on Inishmaan follows a widowed mother as she loses the last of her sons?

Riders to the Sea grew from a tale its author heard on the island, of a local man whose body washed ashore far away in County Donegal.

Which County Clare village, known for nightly traditional music in its pubs, runs seasonal ferries to the Aran Islands?

Doolin is close enough for the islands to be seen from the village. Its ferries stop running over the winter months.

Which fishing and ferry village is the main settlement on Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands?

Kilronan lives mainly on fishing and tourism. Schoolchildren also come to the village's summer schools to polish their Irish.

On the bare rock pavements of the Aran Islands, the flat slabs are clints; what are the deep cracks between them called?

Grikes give moist shelter to dwarf shrubs and wildflowers, which is why such bare-looking rock supports so many plants.

Which Gaelic dynasty, kings of Thomond, built the castle whose ruins stand near the highest point of Inisheer?

The O'Briens were paid twelve tuns of wine a year by Galway's merchant families for guarding the bay against pirates.

Year-round ferries to all three Aran Islands leave from which Connemara harbour village, linked to Galway city by bus?

Rossaveal is the islands' main ferry port. Heavy cargo takes a different route, sailing several times a week from Galway Harbour itself.

What were the rawhide shoes once worn on the Aran Islands called, each folded from one piece of untanned hide?

Pampooties were usually made with the hair left on, which improved their grip, and lasted as little as a month before they rotted.

Which Abbey Theatre co-founder visited Inisheer in 1893, a trip that revived her interest in the Irish language?

Lady Gregory went on to gather the folklore of her own district around Coole Park, the County Galway house where the leading writers of the Revival met.

Which 2010 romantic comedy, starring Amy Adams and Matthew Goode, used Inishmore as one of its Irish locations?

Leap Year has bad weather put its heroine ashore in the seaside village of Dingle. The crew also filmed in Connemara, County Wicklow and Dublin.

The name Inishmore is not recorded before 1839; which official body apparently coined it that year?

The Ordnance Survey seems to have invented it for a new map, as an English spelling of Inis Mór. Until then the island was simply Árainn, or Aran More.

A wedge tomb on Inishmaan is called the bed of which runaway lovers of Irish legend, pursued by Fionn mac Cumhaill?

Diarmuid and Gráinne ran off from her own betrothal feast, after she slipped the other guests a sleeping potion.