The Irish standard., 1916-02-26

Inc recent SAFE OF Ln6 ACnlll MIS-.
sion Estate to the Congested Districts
Board has caused a writer in The
Catholic Bulletin (Dublin) to review
very interesting chapter in Irish
history.
Achill Island, as those familiar with
Irish Geography know, is off the west
coast of Ireland, County Mayo. 1t has
population of about 5000, most of
them being Catholic. Yet Achill dur
ing the famine years was the scene
of great proselytizing activity. The
starving people were bribed during
these years. with food and money to
go to the mission" churches and to
send their children to the proselytizing
schools. "Silver Monday" as they
called it. was the day on which they
received the price Of their perversions.
To the honor of the people be it said,
they nobly withstood the temptation,
and most of them preferred starva-
ton to apostasy.
Well. the Mission, although for years
it had not achieved one "turn-coat,"
continued to hold a large part of the
best land on the island. The Con-
gested Districts Board, appointed for
the purpose of acquiring the large es-
tates of arabic land in the west of
Ireland and settling upon them the
poor people who were attempting to
make q living for themselves and
their children by cultivating bare and
barren sections of the country, should
have negotiated for the Achill Mission
Estate among the very first of such
estates, but the Achill Mission Trus-
tees refused to sell, and for twenty
years kept the islanders from sharing
in the benefits the Nationalist party
had won for the Irish people. Three
years ago the tenants of Achill re-
solved to pay no more rents until
their request that the estate should
be sold to the G. D. B. was granted.
Hostile to the last, the trustees of
the Mission were, however. compelled
to let go their grip on the estate, and
at the same time of any lingering
hope of making Achill stronghold
of Professionalism. Proselytism and
landlordism had done their worst to
crush the people, but finally the
Achill Mission, anti-Catholic and anti
Irish, was overthrown.
The writer in The Bulletin notes
with evident qualification that the
overthrow was brought about by the
combined efforts of the Catholic and
Protestant tenants on the estate.
The proselytizing efforts Of the
founder of the Mission and his asso.
ciates had failed. Taken as a whole"
says the writer, "Achill Island, after
having been for q half century the
great battlefield, is today as Cath
Ollie as though the Achill Mission had
never come into existence. And no.
where in Ireland as in Achill do we
feel how miraculous has been this
survival of the Irish Catholic-so iso-
lated were these little villages look
ing out on the Great Atlantic waste,
SO terrible were the forces ranged
against the Faith"
One Edward Nangle came to Achill
in 1881, on a vessel laden with Indian
corn for the starving people of the
West, and unlimited means to pervert
them under stress of famine. Missions
were established at Dugort and at
Mweelin, on a large scale, but not
even famine could compel the island
ers to apostatize. Dugort was popu-
lated by Professionals, who had been
brought from the mainland. The Cath
olics preferred to live in mud cabins
and keep the Faith rather than &C.
cept comfort and Professionalism. Nan
gle bought the Achill estate in 1S49,
and thus tenants were entirely in
his power.
Some seven years before the pur-
chase, Constable Hall and his wife,
Professionals, in book describing their
tour through Ireland, said:
1T was impossible not to appreciate
the magnanimity of the poor, miser-
able, utterly destitute and absolutely
starving inhabitants of Achill, who
were at the time of our visit endur-
ing privations at which humanity
shudders-and to know that by walk
ing a couple of miles and protesting
to change their religion they would
have been instantly supplied with
clothes, food and lodging. Yet these
hungry thousands, for it would scarce
ly be an exaggeration to say that in
the month of July last, nine-tenths of
the population of the island were en-.
tirely without food, preferred patient
ly to endure their sufferings rather
than submit to what they considered
q degradation Such fortitude we do
believe to be without parallel in the
history of any irgnorant and unen.
lightened people since the creation of
the world"
These were the people Nangle
thought to subdue by means of his
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