The Broth of a King

Inishmurray is a 100-acre sliver of rock off the northwest coast of Ireland's County Sligo. In World War I, a British destroyer mistook its low-lying shape for a German submarine, let fly with a torpedo. The explosion shook the island up a bit but it failed to deflect the inhabitants from the pursuit of customs stemming back to the time of Saint Columba, who is said to have stopped off at Inishmurray on his way to convert Scotland to Christianity.

Among the customs to which the inhabitants have clung down through the ages is that of having their own righ, or king. Michael Waters, a cultivated man, sometimes scoffed when visitors called him the King of Inishmurray, but he was connected, through his grandmother's first marriage, with the O'Heraghty family. As far back as anyone could remember, the O'Heraghtys had been rulers of Inishmurray. King Michael, a man of powerful physique and strong will, carried on the O'Heraghty tradition. Said one islander: "He was a learned man, in every way a king. When he settled a dispute, he settled it properly."

Michael's Inishmurray had no police, no magistrate, no roads, no shopsand no taxes. Although a lone Protestant resident, a schoolteacher who spent a short time on the island in the early 1800s, was held responsible for "the land losing its fertility and the fish forsaking the shore," the islanders went on potting lobsters, growing vegetables and grazing cattle. They were safe in the knowledge that their economy rested on another custom, the origin of which was also lost in the mists of antiquity: the manufacture of poteen illicit whisky.

A 19th Century observer reported Inishmurray poteen flowing "extensively over the whole seaboard from Sligo to Bundoran and even to a considerable distance inland." In 1893, a detachment of Royal Irish constabulary was quartered there for revenue duty, but in later years, news of police visits usually reached King Michael in time for the great stone jugs of poteen to be hidden in the island's shallow lake. Once sentenced to pay a -L-50 fine or spend six months in jail for poteen-making, King Michael said: "I would have paid -L-10, but they would not make it -L-10, so they had to keep me for six months, which was bad business."

When barley and potato prices rose during and after World War II, the poteen industry languished. In 1948, Waters and some 60 remaining inhabitants of Inishmurray petitioned the Irish government for new land, were moved to Sligo. There King Michael, a huge figure in homespun tweeds, with a sweeping mustache, continued to hold court among those of his subjects who revisited the island every summer, ostensibly to graze cattle, but actually, it was said, to engage in their traditional industry. In Sligo last week, at the age of 80, Michael Waters died. His eldest son Michael, known to the islanders as "Princie," a fishery agent in County Sligo, is not likely to assume the throne.

Unless a new dynasty of mighty poteen-makers is established, no more kings will rule on Inishmurray.

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