Irish News

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2, 11 January 1906, Page 9

Irish News

CORK— O'Donovan Rossa O'Donovan Rossa, who has received the appointment of corresponding secretary of the Cork County Council, arrived in Queenstown on November 18, accompanied by his wife and two daughters. On Arriving in Cork he was accorded a very enthusiastic welcome. A Practical Suggestion In the course of a speech at the second annual .exhibition of the Cork Industrial Association the Rev. Father Dowling, CM., gave a few figuresfto illustrate what a difference might be made if Irish people .showed a little bit of industrial patriotism.. In County Cork alone, he showed, if the 150,000 adult males of that county bought their annual suit of clothes of Irish cloth, they would keep going three first-grade mills, employing from 250 to 300 hands each, and -each paying a yearly wage bill of £10,000. Applying these figures to Ireland in general, he found that they .might support thirty woollen mills of the first grade, giving employment to 9000 hands, and directly or indirectly supporting 45,000 people, and paying £300,000 .a year in wages. Yet, at present, there are only 15 first grade mills in Ireland, and even a great deal ,of their production is sold outside the country. But this does not exhaust the economic possibilities of the situation. The making of suits referred to, in Cork, ,as Father Dowling pointed out, would mean a wage bill to the tailors of Cork County amounting to over £100,000 a year, or £100 a year to 1000 families. .Father Dowling's figures may not be strictly correct, either on the one side or the other, but they suggest what a great industrial revival in Ireland might bring .about. DUBLIN— A Venerable Priest The oldest priest in the diocese ol Dublin, Very Hey. Canon Leahy, P.P., Sandyford, passed away on November 15, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. He •was a member of an old and well-known Dublin family, which gave three sons to the Church. Canon JLeahy was ordained in 1848, at Maynooth College, .and, after some time spent in Kingstown, was appointed to the pastoral charge of Sandyford, where he spent the remainder- of his long life doing good quietly and unostentatiously,. He was an ideal Soggarth Aroon. GALWAY — An Appointment At the meeting ol the Committee of Management ■of the Ballinasloe Asylum Mrs. Nora Harris O'Connor, daughter of the late Mr. Matt Harris, JM.P., was appointed Governess by 12 votes to 9 for .Miss Connaghton, Loville, Ahascragh. Wireless Telegraph Station The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company have purchased 350 acres of land from Mr. Kendal, landed proprietor, at the- village of Detrygehila, convenient to Clifden, for the sum of £1,800, and are about opening up communication with America when they have the station erected, for which the material has already arrived. Finding of Pearls The wife of the owner of the Ardagh oyster fishery at Clifden, Connemara, was recently on the oyster beds with her husband and picked up a mussel which •she opened. Inside she found a small pearl. Orders 'were given to one of the men to bring in about a ton weight of mussels, and from these some sixty pearls were extracted, varying from the size of a small •rape seed downwards. KERRY— Death of a Priest At Glenflesk, Co. Kerry, on November 15, Rev. Maurice O'Flaherty, P.P., died' in Ms ©Ist year, for 18 years of which period he was pastor of the district in which he ended his days. Father O'Flaherty was a native of Listowel, and was educated at Louvain. By his kindly nature he endeared himself to all classes. LlMEßlCK— Visiting the Sick Poor Fourteen thousand nine hundred separate visits to -the homes of the sick poor of Limerick were paid last year by four nurses of the St. Vincent de Paul jNursing "[Association. Appointed Dean On the nomination of the Most Rev. Dr. O'Dwyer, -^Bishop of Limerick, the Pope has appointed the Very Key. T. R. Shanahan, St. Munchin's, to the Deanery of

Limerick diocese, in succession to the late Dean Flanagan, Adare. Father Shanahan is .one of the oldestpriests in the diocese. He was ordained in J.6S&, and was parish priest of Ballingarry for 20 years. He was transferred to St. Munchin's ten years ago, and .was made Vicar-General of the diocese in succession to the late Very Rev. Father Moloney. The new Dean is a brother of Monsignor Shanahan, Thornaby-on-Tees, EngMAYO— Sporting Rights At Ballina Petty Sessions a case was heard whlich. shows the importance of tenants acquiring the game rights when Jpurchasing out their holdings under the Land Act. A tenant named Patrick Fox, on the Town-send-Kirkwood estate, was fined 5s and costs for trapping a snipe on his own land, the summons being brought by Dr. Laing, Ballina, who has rented the game rights from the landlord. Mr. M. V. Coolican who appeared for the complainant, said the game rights were reserved to the landlord. MEATH — An Appreciation The following editorial note appeared in a recent issue of the ' Church of Ireland Gazette ' :— ' The Roman Catholic Bishop of Meath is about to resign his office owing to increasing ill health. In a letter of admirable- expression and much pathos he thanks those members of his flock who have offered him ' their sympathy. "My days of labor," says Dr. Gaffiney " arenumbered, and the only hope I can entertain is that God may leave me a Little sight to help me to spend the weary hours with profit." The dignified sadness of language hk'e this must touch the general heart of men apart from all questions of creed or politics In paying a tribute to the fidelity and affection of his flockOn Gaffney says : " Outside its fold there are manynoble spirits to whose genuine worth I bear glad testimony. A spirit of harmony prevails on all sides and a toleration not known in the past." We are glad to be able to endorse in a large measure these encouraging words in politics and in social affairs. Dr. Gaffney has displayed during his term of office a genuine desire for friendliness and good feeling among all classes in the district, and in this respect the conditions of life in Meath are better than in the majority of Irish counties. Irish churchmen in Meath and elsewhere will not fail to sympathise with this Roman Catholic gentleman whose fine submission to a great infirmity recalls the thoughts of one of Milton's noble sonnets. 1 ROSCOMMON— A Remarkable Find • In the early part of November in a bog near Roscommon town, while a farmer was engaged thereon in digging work, his spade came in contact with a small " wooden box, which he unearthed. In opening it thewood ,went to pieces. Inside was a leathern covering which was also deteriorated by age, and inside this again was another covering, and the last that met the finder's gaze was a book entitled ' Discourses on the Sacraments, by King Henry V 111.,' in a splendid state of preservation. On the inner leaf is- the following :'A Defence of the Seven Sacraments against Martin Luther, by Henry VIII., King of England, France, and Ireland, to which are adjoined his epistle to the Pope the oration of Mr. John Clark (Orator to his Majesty) on the delivery of this book to his Holiness, and the Pope's answer to the oration, as also the Bull by which his Holiness was pleased to bestow upon that King (for compiliing this book) that most illustrious, splendid, and most Christian-like title of Defender of" the Faith.' The book is bound with leather, and on the first page are the following words, apparently written by the person who consigned it to this strange place : ' This Is a most valuable book, being the work which was written by< Henry the Eighth of England, and which procured him the title of Defender of the Faith.' The find has aroused great curiosity, and the lucky farmer has received some substantial offers for purchase. TIPPERARY— Roscrea Bacon Factory The establishment of a bacon factory in Roscrea on co-operative lines is now a certainty. Of the £10,000 share capital aimed at over £9000 has been subscribed, and in addition all the shareholders have individually signed a guarantee to supply all the pigs they need for a period of five years under a penalty of 10s for each pig if otherwise disposed of. The disused military barracks in Castle street have, after considerable negfc tiatiions with the War Office, and through the kindly .offices of Sir Horace Plunkett, who is interesting himself very much in the movement, been purchased from the War Office at a merely nominal price. The work of fitting up the factory will be commenced almost immediately, and it is expected it will be in full working

order by May, next. The prime mov-er all through has been the Rev. Jiohn Cunningham and the clergy of the surrounding parishes, whoracted as trustees and gave their practical sympathy .and support. WATERFORD— The Emigration Evil At a meeting held in Lismore to establish a branch of the Irish Industrial Development Association, the Most Rev. Dr. Sheehan delivered an address which was replete with sound, practical advice to -those who wish to put a ptop to the emigration evil. They would never; keep the people at home, he said, until they made Ireland a country worth living in, and they would never make Ireland a country worth living in until they provided for every young man and every young woman in the country the means of earning an honest livelihood. His Lordship appealed to all classes for support of the Irish Industrial Movement, which was as universal as it was practical. It appealed to ievery (man and every woman in the land. It appealed to rich and poor, Protestant and Catholic. Dr. Sheehan's remedy is the true antidote to emigration. It is useless advising hungry people to stay at home, as they believe they cannot be much worse off elsewhere. Support of existing industiies'and their extension, for which there is ample room, is the great cure for emigration. WESTMEATH— A Sad Fatality At Ballinghort, seven miles from Mullingar, on the night of November 19, a servant named Mary Anne Smith and two children, aged 4 and 6, daughters of Michael Kearney, farmer, were burnt to death. The se*rvant took a lighted candle to put the children to bed, and falling asleep herself, the candle ignited the bed clothes.

GENERAL

Left for the West Indies After having visited several parts of Ireland, the Most Rev. Dr. Flood, accompanied by three Irish Dominicans, sailed for Triinidad early in November. Flour-milling A cfrcular issued by the Irish Flour Millers' Association gives information as to the different milling centres and a list of miills. It estimates the annual output of the Irish mills as seven million hundred-weights of flour, value £3,500,000, and three million hundredweights of bran and pollard value £1,500,000, the total value of the output being five million sterling. The Origin of « Boycott ' The ' Westminster Gazette ' draws attention to the fact that the word ' boycott ' is just a quarter of a century old. Captain Boycott, in. October, 1880, wrote his famous letter to the ' Times,' detailing his experiences in the West of Ireland, out of which the substantive * boycotting ' and the verb 't6 boycott ' entered the English language. According to Dr. Murray's dictionary; the first instances of the use of the word are taken from the ' Times ' of 'November 19 and 20, 1&80, and, as he shows, it very quickly passed into nearly every European language. A Strong Indictment "~" In the course of a letter to the London ' Standard ' Lord Dunraven, who is a strong opponent of Home Rule, writes : ' After over one 'hundred years the \fact is undoubted that the union of Ireland with great Britain has not justified itself 'in the prosperity of Ireland. At the present day, while in every other part of the United Kingdom, as of the whole Empire, population is growing, in Ireland it is steadily falling. Since 1841 the population has diminished by nearly 50 per cent. Year by year the emigrant ships are taking away from Ireland the best of the population, both physically and mentally. Every year the cloud of mental gloom settles down upon the people of Ireland with deeper intensity. Slince 1851 the ratio of lunatics and imbeciles has increased from one in 657 of the population to one in 178. Ireland's birth-rate is the lowest in the world, and, pauperism is increasing. Ireland is steadily and persistently slipping back. According to their relative capacity to bear it, the -burden of taxation falls far 'more heavily upon the people of Ireland than upon the people of any other portion of the United Kingdom, and, at the same time, Ireland contributes relatively more than any other portion to the Imperial Excheqjuer. Her administration is so wasteful as to leave only a small balance, as it is, and before long, if her downward career is not checked, she will become a burden, a pauper in 'receipt of out-door relief, for the amount of taxation derived from her will not cover her administrative expenses.'