Jenny crosses to Station Island

Jenny crosses to Station Island

Literature--Twentieth Century--Sean O'Faolain--Lough Derg

Jenny gets a sensory impression of the island as she approaches and encounters its contents and topography

Sean O'Faolain, 1900-1991

The Lovers of the Lake', in The Collected Stories of Sean O'Faolain, Vol. 2, pp. 18-43, here pp. 24-25

Constable and Company, London

1981

Citation for the purposes of criticism

Edited edition

English

Collection of short stories

DD_0238

54.608689,-7.870387

“The big, lumbering ferryboat was approaching, its prow slapping the corrugated waves. There were three men to each oar. It began to spit rain again. With about a hundred and fifty men and women, of every age and, so far as she could see, of every class, she clambered aboard. They pushed out and slowly they made the crossing, huddling together from the wind and rain. The boat nosed into its cleft and unloaded. She had a sensation of dark water, wet cement, houses, and a great number of people; and that she would have given gold for a cup of hot tea. Beyond the four or five white-washed houses – she guessed that they had been the only buildings on the island before trains and buses made the pilgrimage popular – and beyond the cement paths, she came on the remains of the natural island: a knoll, some warm grass, the tree, and the roots of the old hermits’ cells across whose teeth of stone barefooted pilgrims were already treading on one another’s heels…”

Short stories