History

Missioners

by
fromair.jpg
Clare Barker writes on behalf of her father Arthur McGuigan of Derrybeg Drive.  Arthur recalls the Missions of old, where the first week was for women alone, the second for men.  Arthur and his mates ‘bunked’ the service and kept warm by sitting in the empty buses on The Mall!  A religious mate would be waylaid on his way home so that all could report on what the Missioner was on about that evening!
 
All went well until his father Raymes caught them.  To the last man, they were frog-marched to the Church and supervised for the duration of the service.
 
I must admit I rather enjoyed the Missions.  All that ‘fire and brimstone’  taught me a love of horror movies!  
 
Then there was the Confraternity.  Again, one night for men, one for women.  You sat under a Shield naming your area.  A clever device that, for ‘absent’ colleagues could quickly be identified and followed up!  Seriously though, the Cathedral was always packed.  I miss that level of community faith.

Egyptian Arch

by
arch.jpg
The Egyptian Arch was completed in 1851 and was designed by William Dargan.  The design was based on the Pylon, or gateway to an ancient Egyptian Temple.  The latter of course is the origin of the name that we give to those giant steel structures that carry power lines between settlements.

 

Read moreEgyptian Arch

St John of God Centenary

by
St John of God was born Joao Cidade in Portugal in 1495 (about the time Christopher Columbus was making his voyages of discovery to the New World, later to be deemed America) but from the age of eight years, he lived in Spain.  
 
The Irish congregation of the St John of God community was founded in Wexford in 1871 by Bishop Thomas Furlong and Mother Visitation Clancy.  Just thirty-three years later, in August 1904, following the request of Dr O’Neill, Bishop of Dromore, three members of the Order travelled to Newry to take charge of the Daisy Hill Infirmary.  
 
Inevitably they worked too in the workhouse that was on the same grounds.  Agnes Boyd of the Board of Guardians (grandmother of Russell Boyd, of Boyd’s Stores) saw to that.  Sr M Malachy Kearns was appointed as nurse of Newry Workhouse at

UnChristian Guardians 1860

by
whfoyer.jpg
An editorial in the Dundalk Democrat of 21 July 1860 decried the miserliness of the Guardians of Dundalk Union in regard to the paupers’ diet. 
 
‘This ‘wise’ Committee led by the cheese-paring Lord Clermont deliberated for hours not on how they would make the victims of misrule and poverty more comfortable but to ascertain the length they could go in hurrying them to the grave without incurring the guilt of murder.  All to save a paltry one hundred pounds a year on diet. 
 
The unfortunate paupers have been in the habit of getting some soup made from the necks and hocks of meat.  A neck part of a forequarter was sent in once a week, the better part of which was given to the officers and the neck and inferior parts boiled into soup for the paupers.  Too good for them, the Committee deemed.  In future they were to taste only a cow’s head boiled into two hundred pints of water as soup!
 
The Dundalk Board take as their best example the pauper-starving Board of the Newry Union who act so shamefully as to send the poor to bed groaning on the two pence worth of food doled out to them during the day.
 
The editorial goes on in this vein, condemning the unchristian acts of men who know little of charity and whose penury (i.e. Newry Guardians) it would not be creditable to emulate.  It refers scathingly to the ‘Cow’s head Committee’.

Fields of Grace

by
FieldOfGrace2.jpg
In rural Ireland long ago – and often in towns as well – handicapped, deformed or less-able members of the community were hidden away from society or secreted in upper rooms or in barns, I’m told.  That is certainly my mother’s recollection and we have all read about such matters in the literature.  From what I now learn, they were the lucky ones.
 

Read moreFields of Grace

Ballagh Millstone

by
WomenAtWork.jpg

On the edge of the Calliagh Berra’s lake on the top of Slieve Gullion is a massive millstone, clearly recognizable in the photo from its circular shape and the hole in the middle. I’ll tell you the story and it’s the God’s truth, for indeed any other attempted explanation would be preposterous.

There was a time when the milling of corn was one of the chief, and indeed the most lucrative enterprises in the country. People have to eat, don’t they, whether in war or in peace? And the owner who has the hardest, and most long-lasting and largest millstone, capable of grinding the greatest quantity of wheat in the shortest space of time and over an extended period of many years, clearly would have the advantage over his rivals.

There was a mill in the Ballagh district one time in need of a new millstone and the owner, one Peter O’Mara was determined to outshine his rivals. He knew that the granite stones that made up the stone-age passage grave on top of Slieve Gullion could not be beaten for their hard and long-lasting qualities. He cared nothing for the customs and long-held beliefs that these graves should not, at any cost, be interfered with. In the middle of the night – for despite his callousness, he cared not to let his neighbours know the source of his new millstone – he arranged to have one of the largest and appropriately shaped granite rocks removed and transported to his mill. It took little shaping to turn it to its new purpose and in no time at all, it was grinding out meal by the ton. Peter’s mill thrived for many a day and he became rich.

But like all before him and since, that dared to interfere with things of the ancestors, bad luck plagued him thereafter. Though his mill thrived, his cattle and indeed his family did not. His cows were dropping off with all sorts of disorders and over the space of a few years he lost his wife and three of his children to strange diseases. It was an oul’ neighbour woman that suggested to him that maybe he had done something to bring the curse of the gentle people upon himself. Then he knew.

He arranged, as fast as he could to right this wrong. But it was easier for the oul’ donkey to carry his heavy load down the mountain than it was to carry it back up again. He was but two hundred metres from the passage grave, at the side of the Calliagh Berra’s lake, when he dropped down dead and the millstone landed in its present location.

But no more harm came to Peter for his intention was good.

And if you can think of a better explanation why that stone is there, well, I’d like to hear it!

Fulacht Fiadh

by
newgrange.jpg
In connection with the recent archaeological finds at Loughbrickland we noted that a Fulacht Fiadh site may have been identified. 
 
Our photo shows one a Fulacht Fiadh at Rathlogan, Kilkenny which portrays the typical horseshoe shaped mound and the normal location in marshy ground close to a water source.  The practice of using such sites persisted from the Bronze Age (the later of the two recently identified settlement eras near Loughbrickland) into the historic period and the method of using them is well described in early texts.  Their remains are frequently discovered during land reclamation.
 
Almost invariably they contain a rectangular pit lined with wooden planks or stone slabs to form a trough, discovered during archaeological excavation under the open part of the horseshoe-shaped mound.  Water was heated in the trough by rolling hot stones into it from a nearby fire.  It has been proved by experiment that water can be boiled in this way and meat cooked in it.  The hot stones often shattered on contact with the water and the mound was formed by shovelling the broken stones out of the trough for the next cooking session.  Part of the timber trough often survives in the damp conditions often prevailing on these sites.

Frank Carroll: Missionary

by
PopeandFrank.jpg

Attending the Abbey Grammar in the ’60s we could look out a window to the home at 71 Castle Street, of Archbishop Francis Carroll.  The Christian Brothers never tired of lauding his praises as the greatest of their past-pupils.  Perhaps we were too young or sceptical then to appreciate their words.  To show they were not – in the words of my old mentor, Paddy Arthur Crinion – ‘wasting their sweetness on the desert air’, I post this tribute!

Francis Carroll was born the son of Patrick and Mary Carroll and attended the Abbey Christian Brothers School in Newry.  Deciding to become a priest he studied theology at Dromantine until June 1937.  He was one of eighteen priests ordained by Bishop Mulhern in St Colman’s Cathedral in December 1936.  Frank was to have a distinguished missionary career in Africa.  Attempts to establish a mission in the Monrovia district of Liberia had met with limited success before his arrival.  Liberia was (and is) an impoverished country with a dispersed population, simmering political unrest, poor communications and a virtual absence of medical facilities.  The difficult climate – just a few degrees from the equator, and known as the Whiteman’s Grave – the isolation and the poverty exacted a heavy toll on members of the Irish province of the SMA. 

 

Frank took charge of a mission composed of young and inexperienced priests.  His jurisdiction on the Kru Coast was accessible only by sea and was the least developed region of that underdeveloped republic.  Yet through his energetic and outgoing personality, his excellent relations with the indigenous population and with the Americo-Liberian government of President Tubman, his clear conception of what he required, his skill in obtaining funds and his exceptional ability to ‘get things done’, he succeeded in transforming the moribund coastal mission of 1951 into the thriving, vigorous mission of 1958. 

 

Frank’s achievements when he became Bishop were no less impressive.  His skills as a diplomat when he later served as apostolic delegate and Vatican representative were of inestimable value.  For his lifetime’s work Frank was four times decorated by the Liberian government for outstanding services to the nation in education, health, social welfare and evangelism.  It is a tragedy that the ‘country of the freed slaves’ today does not have the services of one of his qualities.  Liberia unfortunately is once again one of the most afflicted countries on the African continent.

 

Frank Carroll’s remains lie in St Mary’s Cemetery.  An obituary by a senior colleague summarized his life’s work:

 

‘A missionary in Liberia for forty-two years .. when Archbishop Carroll retired he was beyond question the foreigner who knew more Liberians from all walks of life and all social classes than anyone else.  All this time he promoted Liberian education at every level.  He took particular interest in the poor and the sick, establishing orphanages and clinics throughout the country.  His door was always open not just to diplomats and government officials, but to the poor.  He gave particular attention to youth.  In a country where Catholics are a small minority he made the role of the Church appreciated by all.  He leaves behind the memory of a man of deep faith who had a great love for the people of Liberia.’  And for the people of Newry, I might add.  May he rest in peace.