On a little island, everyone is a Very Important person... Of course, but, there's few who have a special role.
Sean Doherty Light House Keeper[]
Sean Doherty-The light House keeper
Sean Doherty is the light House keeper. Ok. He knows all about the light house. It's well known that the light house is haunted. Footsteps noises and a very special story told by Sean himslef. It's about an other Light house keeper. One night he was sleeping in the light house, and all the night his arms gone up and down without his voluntee... I don't know if after this night, this light house keeper keep is job or if he escaped. All I Know is Sean Doherty is the light House keeper and he is a great man not afraid of ghosts at all.
Patsaí Dan Mac Ruaidhrí- King of Tory[]
Patsy Dan Rodgers is the english version of the real name Patsaí Dan Mac Ruaidhrí.
King of Tory Island, Musician (accordion player),Singer, pretty good dancer, Painter, Story Teller, this man was too a fisher and a farmer. One man, one life, one hundred ways to be a man in a life.
His biography is the Tory Island History for the last sixty years... Where do I begin to told this story? May I begin with a fado, fado... or it's so much? It's so much.
I'll explain in other page of this wiki how is elected the king. The king is elected, it's a tradition from the 6th century. Role of the King of Tory island is to regulate conflicts, represent his island and take care that everything is alright on the island. Patsy Dan Rodgers has been elected in 1994 by islanders. Before to be king of Tory Island, he proved already his ability to be a leading man.
He was one of the biggest voice to struggle against the possibility to leave the island in the late 70's with the father O'Peicin.
He is the last painter of the original Tory school of Painting inspirated by Dereck Hill. Painting on Tory Island is much more than a hobbie or even Art itself. It's weird to say it in this way, Art is many thing of course. But Painting allowed Tory Island to be known, recognized, and to assert to world its very special way of life and culture.
If you go one day on Tory, you can't miss him, he is the first person you will see, he have a gift of ubiquity or something like that, he is every where, all the time...
The King Playing accordion.
Derek Hill[]
Tory Island Derek Hill
The little house is still there. A very little house, four walls and a roof, looking at the ocean, hanged on a cliff. Far of the other houses. Only one room in this house.
The man is painting there. With his pencils, he looks away, as far as he can. He wants to put on his canevas, the storm, the life, the ocean, houses, dreams, fears, night, day, people, even the soul of each thing have to be there... The english man found something here, something nobody can explain. We never should try to explain what love is, and especially why we love something.
The english man, he was born in Hampshire, in 1916. He travelled a lot, He worked as theater designer somewhere in Leningrad, in the 1930's, still very young man, a bit after theater he works as an historian.
After history, he choosed to do arts. To be a painter. He began with portraits.
Sitting near the little house, he was doing the portrait of a giant. As obsessed by him, huge piece of stone, beating inside, a giant married with an irascible one, beautiful and harsh, using love and hate for kisses, dark and deep blue as the soul of melancholy. The man done their portraits, together, separated... He was in love for this eerie couple from the silent age.
He arrived on Toraigh without any idea of what he would find here. Henry McIlhenny,, an irish-american art collectionner called him for do a portrait of him. The grand father of Henry gone find fortune in America, he found it, and Henry came back in his Donegal. Then the english man discovered Ireland.
And by the game of meetings done in a life, he gone on Tory. He stayed in the little house. He painted many years there. He leaved, and come back, and leaved again, but always come back. This place is a magnet.
One day he was painting, alone, near his house. An old islander came to see. James Dixon. He looked the painter work. The painter asked: 'What do you think about?', the old islander said 'I can do better'. The painter purposed him pencils and painting, but James Dixon done his own gear. That is an other story. James Dixon became famous. But it's an other story.
The english man became famous too, he was talented. James Dixon and him initiated a love for painting on this island wich never stopped to paint after the coming of the english man in his little house.
Derek Hill died in 2000, in London. Each wall of the little house remenber of him, and each step he done is still in the floor. Each breath he took is still in the wind, and each color he used is still on islanders pencils.
Paul Rodgers[]
Iermarth! I understood that Iermath! means Slantcha in Britanny... This expression came back with him from a concert in France. He was fisherman, and now an huge accordion player and Story teller of Tory.