By Eoin McGarvey

HUNDREDS of stillborn and unbaptised babies, together with several unidentified sailors were remembered at an interdenominational service on the seashore at the Carrickfin boat strand on Sunday afternoon.

Oileán na Marbh is a small island just yards from the shore at the boat strand, accessible by foot at low tide. Relatives and local people occasionally walk to the island and offer prayers for those buried there. Many people who use the beach all year round, particularly visitors, are unaware of the sad history attached to it.

Ron Smith Murphy and Seamus Peter Boyle, who kept the memory of Oileán na Marbh alive over the years.

The rocky island is where up to 500 stillborn babies were buried in years between the great famine and the early 1900s when they were banned from consecrated ground. Mothers and fathers made the sad journey to the island to lay their tiny babies to rest, many in the dark nighttime hours.

Stories have been told locally in the past of fathers walking to the island after dark carrying a small box and spade, while grieving mothers watched from the shore just a short distance away. One memory of local people is being told of a man from nearby Rann na Feirste burying his stillborn twin babies on the island, again after the hours of darkness.

In 2009 a commemorative plaque was erected on the island following a campaign by local man Seamus Peter Boyle and former schoolteacher Margaret Boyd.

Joining the interdenominational service on the seashore at the Carrickfin boat strand on Sunday afternoon.

The island was also blessed on that occasion and this helped shine a light on it for many who did not know its history. The memorial plaque reads: ‘In memory of the stillborn babies, Famine children, and sailors buried here in Oileán na Marbh up until the early 1900s. Erected and dedicated by the community. Is é an Tiarna m’aoire.’

Fr Nigel Gallagher PP, Annagry led Sunday’s service with the assistance of local Church of Ireland Reverend Arthur Burns and diocesan reader Norma Burns. Up to 100 people from the community and visitors who were on the beach took part in the service, as did local Church of Ireland and Annagry Church choir members.

Locals at the service at Oilean na Marbh on Sunday.Photos: Eoin Mc Garvey

Sisters Greta Duffy and Michelle Ferguson at the Oilean na March service.

In his homily, Fr Gallagher described Oiléan na Marbh as a place that holds the weight of sorrow and the quiet dignity of memory. He said for generations, the small island has been a silent witness to heartbreak.

“During the famine years, when hunger and hardship hollowed out our communities, a terrible custom arose. Infants who died in stillbirth, who by the rules and fears of that time were denied burial in consecrated ground, were carried here.

“No prayers were spoken, no church bells tolled. They were laid to rest quietly, lovingly, but without the words of faith their parents longed to hear.”

Annette and Colm O’Donnell at the Oileán na Marbh service on Sunday afternoon.

Several unidentified sailors washed ashore near Carrickfin during war years are also said to have been buried on Oileán na Marbh and Fr Nigel also remembered them.

“Alongside these little ones lie the remains of strangers – unnamed sailors washed ashore, far from their families and their homeland. Their identities are lost to history, but not to God. Here they lie together, the most vulnerable and the unknown, bound in the common humanity that death lays bare,” he said.

Thomas Boyd from the Church of Ireland choir at the Oilean na Marbh service.

He told the gathering that everyone has returned today as a faith community – Pobal Dé, to give what was withheld. “We come to speak the prayers that were never spoken, to name before God the nameless, to offer blessing where there was only silence.

“This is a work of love, of faith, and of healing, not only for them, but for us,” he said.

“May our presence here today bring healing to old wounds, peace to troubled hearts, and hope to the living.”