Local history: Only one commandment mattered - the sixth

By Tom Gillespie

PART TWO

MIKE Garry from Clogher, in the 2012/13 Balla, Belcarra, Clogher, Manulla Parish Magazine, recalled growing up in the 1930s. Last week we reprinted how he attended, aged nine, his first fair in Balla in January 22, 1936.

This week he reflected on educational reform, emigration and dramatic changes in the Church.

Mike wrote:

If most people were asked to name the greatest man of the last century, they would probably go for one of the patriots that we honour every year. But I would say it was a man that’s almost forgotten - the late Donagh O’Malley (Minister for Education). I knew that Archbishop McQuaid hated him but he also hated the best Minister for Health we ever had, our own Noel Browne

I spent nine years going to Clogher school, the only school that the vast majority of my comrades and myself ever went. In all that time, only five children did the Leaving. Unless your parents were very rich, they couldn’t afford to send you to boarding school, and there were very few rich people in those days.

Donagh O’Malley (the Fianna Fáil Minister for Education from 1966 to 1968) changed all that and gave every child, rich and poor, a chance to avail of secondary school education. A great change for the better.

One of the things that used to make me sad was to see so many young people having to emigrate. (The curlews were calling, that day that I left Castlebar).

Thousands left Castlebar and all the other railway stations in the west. The night before they would leave, they would have a dance in their house and that was called an American Wake.

I was a useless dancer, but I used to sing and the most popular song at the time went ‘Goodbye Johnny dear, when you’re far away don’t forget your poor old mother, when you are far away write a letter now and then and send all you can, and don’t forget were ere you go you’re an Irish man’.

Most of them did send all they could and they kept the home fires burning.

The shoe is on the other foot now and parents are scraping trying to pay for their children in third-level education. They, too, may find it hard to get a job here, but at least if they have to go they will be well qualified, unlike the ones who went before them. Another great change for the better.

But I think the most thing that has changed in my time is the Church. Seventy years ago (1942) it was a mortal sin to go into a Protestant church and take part in a service there. So serious was it that an ordinary priest couldn’t give you absolution, you had to go to Tuam to the Archbishop.

In those days only the odd one had bikes or could cycle and no one at all had cars and it was a long way to walk.

Then there was the matter of fasting (on Friday), another mortal sin. Strange enough, if you could afford it, you could eat all the salmon you liked, but daren’t touch the pig that you killed for yourself.

Every three years we had a mission, the same in Carnacon, and we went to both. For the most part they preached fire and brimstone. The best you could hope for when you died was to escape hell, but no matter how good you were, you could expect to spend a term in purgatory. It was just as hot there, but you wouldn’t be in it as long.

The Lord gave 10 Commandments to Moses and the Church added six more. But according to the missioners there was only one that mattered to us and that was the sixth. It only had five words - Thou shall not commit adultery, but there was a whole rake of things commanded and forbidden by those five words.

Like most young lads, I was very fond of the girls but was afraid to go near them.

According to the missioners it was a mortal sin to leave your hand on any part of a girl from her neck down or her ankle up. No wonder we had the highest number of bachelors per head of population of any country in the world. Those who did get married waited until they were old men.

The 156-page Balla, Belcarra, Clogher, Manulla Parish Magazine is a magnificent record of social history.

Members of the magazine committee were Fr. Denis Carney, Jackie Biggins, Mary Jo Cannon, Padraig Brennan, John Ryan, Noel Rowland, Mary Commins, Evelyn Murphy, Enda Sheridan, Peggy Hennelly and Mary Jo Dempsey.

Concluded.