Synge on Aran Heaney compares the wind’s erosive force with a poetic voice capable of equal abrasiveness. He portrays a much respected literary figure who accepted a sick man’s exile for a time on one of the Aran islands in Galway Bay in an attempt to overcome a life-threatening illness. Winds, from all points of the compass, sharpened by Salt off the sea, are like knives that peel and pare down the landscape. Nothing, neither locked rock nor rind of shrivelled ground has resisted their cutting-edge. Chisel-like, these winds fashion Nature, producing bull noses… on cliffs. The Islanders, too, are [...]