Local history: Death of Archbishop John MacHale was deeply mourned

THE souvenir programme printed by The Connaught Telegraph to mark the official opening of MacHale Park on Sunday, June 15, 1952, contained many articles about Castlebar in that period, including a lengthy piece on Archbishop John MacHale, ‘The Lion of the Fold of Judah’, condensed from an article in The Cross by J.J. Collins, Castlebar.

He wrote about the Archbishop: The story to this illustrious Prelate is so interwoven with the memorable happenings, religious and political, of the time, that to write about him is to write about almost all of the historic events if the 19th century.

PART THREE

by Tom Gillespie

IN 1841 Archbishop John MacHale, who received his early education in Castlebar, completed the translation of Moore’s Melodies into Irish. The illustrious Irish bard, in thanking the Archbishop, wrote: “Your Irish translation of my melodies is a shame and a reproach to me, and I would willingly give up of what I know of other languages to have been able to accomplish such a work.”

When Sir Robert Peel introduced the Bill to provide Queen’s Colleges in Belfast, Cork and Galway, Dr. MacHale denounced them as ‘a gigantic scheme of godless education’; although some of the Bishops favoured giving them a trial under supervision, Rome later confirmed MacHale’s view.

Then came the Famine of Black '47 when a fourth of the population of Ireland was swept from the face of the earth.

The unfortunate people died in hundreds on the roadside from huger and disease.

Dr. MacHale and his priests were day and night with sufferers, while the Government looked callously on and the landlords seized what they could for heir rents.

Wholesale evictions followed; but the appeals of the Archbishop for his wretched people were answered and from many lands came financial aid to save those who survived.

To add to His Grace’s sorrow, his old friend, Daniel O’Connell, died (1847), and he mourned the loss of him who, under God, set our altars free.

Dr. MacHale was in Rome in 1854, for the promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and composed a lyrical poem in Irish, ‘A Pilgrim from the Sainted Isle’, which he read before the Pope and the assembled priests and prelates.

The famous Cardinal Mezzafonti, who alone of the assembly (except the Irish Bishops) understood what was said, was greatly delighted.

Having kept Irish alive (who hasn’t heard of Dr. MacHale’s Irish Catechism?) in the churches and cabins of Connacht, where Mary’s Rosary in the vernacular was the daily devotion of the Gael, he brought it as Ireland’s gift to he who brightened the long dark night of thraldom when suffering and sorrow were his country’s portion.

His noble bearing before the infamous Judge Keogh, a man before whose frown of hatred, ‘Hope withering fled and Mercy sighed farewell’, is still spoken in the Gaeltacht.

In his 84th year, Dr. MacHale was the principle speaker at the O’Connell centenary celebrations in Dublin. Fifty years a bishop, he celebrated his golden jubilee in 1875, and a grateful nation had his statue in white marble erected in front of the great door of his cathedral.

It was unveiled by his life-long friend, the historian A.M. Sullivan, M.P., who, concluding an eloquent address, said: “As the eagle may gaze at the sun, so may the eye of John of Tuam look into the whole of his past life and find no inconsistency there to dazzle or dim his vision, no public act that he can regret or wish blotted out.”

That night at the banquet, A.M.'s brother, T.D. Sullivan, author of ‘God Save Ireland’, sang verses he had specially composed for the occasion.

The authenticity of the letter signed ‘John Archbishop of Tuam’, which appeared in the press in June 1879, which protested against the proposed Land League meeting to be held in Westport, and which was to be addressed by Michael Davitt and others, has been in doubt even up to the present date.

Mr. Davitt himself did not believe the Archbishop wrote it; he felt, however, that owing to certain statements in it, he should reply.

The founder of the Land League did so, in terms of respect for the aged Patriot Prelate, whom he described as ‘the Patriarch of his race’.

The late Venerable Archdeacon Fallon, P.P., Castlebar, who had the privilege of placing the mortal remains of the Archbishop in his coffin, held the opinion that the letter was written by Dr. Tom MacHale, nephew and secretary to his Grace, whose health was impaired at that time.

Dr. Tom was educated in Paris; he was there during the revolution of 1848, and that caused him to dread any sort of advanced agitation even to save the rack-rented peasantry.

The Venerable Geoffrey Archdeacon Prendergast, P.P., Ballyhaunis, a relative of the Archbishop, possesses his Pyx, which was bequeathed to him by another nephew of John of Tuam, Father John MacHale, who died in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1916.

The passing of the great Archbishop in November 1881 was mourned not only in Ireland but in every country in which the Irish race had settled.

That we have a Gaeltacht in Connacht today is due in a very great measure to the immortal ‘Lion of the Fold’, supreme as a tribute of the people in dark and evil days, generations yet unborn will as T.D. Sullivan sang:

‘Hear the name and sound the fame

Of glorious John MacHale’.

Concluded.