In Search of Angels About the author

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In a small yard by the River Lee, opposite the Beamish brewery in the city of Cork, I watched Padraig O’duinnin build a boat in a morning. In the midst of the clutter of halffinished repairs to rowing boats, bundles of tree branches and sheets of canvas, he had lain on the ground two curved lengths of timber and arranged them into an oval shape, like a flat rugby ball. In what would become the gunwales of his boat, Padraig had bored a dozen small holes on each side. A fluent Irish speaker, he flecked his talk with Gaelic words. “Craobh nan sithean – magic wood,” he said, when he picked up a bunch of green hazel rods of differing lengths. Whittling one end to fit, he jammed them in the holes in the gunwales before bending them and tying them together with twine. When all twenty- four rods were in place ( with Padraig constantly measuring and adjusting by eye alone – I never saw him with a tape or rule), the skeleton shape of the boat became clear.

Laths were then tied lengthwise from bow to stern and then black canvas stretched over the frame. So that the boat stayed rigid and did not fold under the pressure of water, benches were fitted crosswise to act as thwarts. Only wood, twine and canvas were used, and no metal fittings of any sort were needed. In only a few hours, Padraig had built a seagoing curragh. The sole change from those that sailed the coasts of Ireland two thousand years ago was the substitution of canvas for cowhide. With a broad smile, its builder picked up his curragh and, through a gap in the wall, shot it out on to the River Lee before clambering aboard.

These ancient boats were the vessels of the Lord. The monks who prayed on Isle Martin came there in curraghs. They and many other holy men came from Ireland in these simple craft, their voyages themselves acts of faith. "When the sea is big,” Padraig told me, “you must have faith, must not panic or move around. At times like that I imagine a seagull sitting quiet on the waves, letting the swell carry it up and down. The curragh is so light that it sits like a bird on top of the water. When we go out on choppy seas, I tell my crew that we should think of it as a treat that we are sailing like those brave old monks.”

Alistair Moffat is a

Scottish writer and journalist. In Search of Angels, in which he tells the story of the Irish saints who brought Christianity to the Hebrides and Scotland's Atlantic shore, is published by Birlinn, price £ 20.