” Inishkea, where the people form an independent state of their own, and must be pretty near heathens. They acknowledge no landlord, they pay no rates, they elect a monarch of their own and though a priest does come at intervals to confess, to marry or to christen them, they have an idol they regularly worship and propitiate before their boats put out to sea,’ so wrote Alexander Innes Shand ”

From ‘ Mayo’s Lost Islands – The Inishkeas ‘ by Brian Dormant.