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THE FLYER
Sponsor:
William Durkan
Carrowkeel, Bohola
Sculptor:
Tim Morris
Project Managed by
Mayo County Council
Millennium Sculpture Initiative
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THE FLYER: A SYMBOL FOR BOHOLA
One of the central conditions of life for Irish
people, especially in the west, has been the necessi-
ty of flight for sons and daughters, and less often in
the past, more often thankfully in the present, their
return.
As if a kind of forced aviation both deprived a
district of their progeny, and yet called them back
with all the power and poetry of place.
The sons and daughters of the west, of Mayo
itself, of Bohola, may have travelled far, but the
secret music of their hearts hears always the magi-
cal notations of their home district.
And the poignancy of the truw work, the faithful-
ness, of those that remain also contains a kind of
flight, the soaring of the soul when after great toil
some vision of the western heavens opens, and the
home place is revealed in all its mystery and majesty.
Even those long living in the cities of Ireland,
Europe and America, even after generations have
passed, still carry this central essence of the home
place, the extraordinary statement in the inner self
of both staying and leaving, stillness and flight. It is
the sum of these human experiences that consti-
tutes a place, like Bohola, in the setting of its beauty
and its challenge, its reality and its dream.
This sculpture wants to honour, mirror, and
express that essence to say the sentence of a place,
to sing the hidden song of this enduring locale.
For the people that went, for the people that
came back, for the people that stayed.
Sebastian Barry
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