'In My Father's House'
John Barkley, historian, theologian and ecumenist, is one of the most
influential clergymen in Ulster. In his preface to the book from which
this extract is taken, he states: 'What I have written is not worth
reading, unless behind the back-cloth of hate there is to be seen the
hope that flows from belief in the grace of God and Christ.' In the
following he describes his memory of a harmonious community in Malin,
Co. Donegal, where his father was ordained in 1913, and remained as
Presbyterian minister until 1917.
Although I was born in Belfast, all my earliest memories of life are of
Malin - Church, Goorey National School, playing tig with my sister,
horses, dulse, sand dunes, loanins, the smell of spring soil, Willie Tom
Colhoun, Rab of Bellegaghan, Molly of Priestfield, Henry Boggs, the
Davises, Doagh Island, Inistrahull, the roaring of the bar, Trawbreaga
Bay, Quigley's bull, Lagg Chapel, Mr Lamont, school-master in Keenagh,
(who threw his arms around me on the floor of the Assembly Hall as if I
was his own son on my appointment as a professor); and washing through
and around it all, the great current of Irish Presbyterianism.
May God forgive me should I every forget my roots with the Boggs,
Fultons, Sterritts, Hendersons, Colhouns and Davieses of Malin.
It was in Malin that I first attended church. Shortly before my sister
was born, I was proving somewhat of a nuisance so, to give my mother
peace, my father took me by the hand and gave me over to Willie Tom to
sit with him.I have been given to understand that I was quite well
behaved, but did not think very much of my father's sermon as I asked
for my penny back when the service was over. My father later ministered
in Aughnacloy (1917-26) and in Loanends, County Antrim, and Claremont,
Derry (1929-44).
I recall three small but significant things that may give you a flavour
of life in Malin. When my sister Alison was born, my mother was very
ill, and every Sunday Father Doherty prayed for her at Mass. I remember
my father speaking of this in appreciative terms. Then there was the
Ancient Order of Hiberians. They may not have paraded every year past
the manse, but sometimes they did. This was noteworthy for the fact that
when they came to the manse marching, the band stopped playing until it
left the townland of Ballymacgroarty.The same practice was followed at
the meetinghouse.
While it did not mean anything to me then, I remember favourable comment
on this behaviour. There was respect for those of a different opinion.
The same could be said of Henry Boggs and his workmen. Henry was a
Presbyterian and they were Roman Catholics. He had the salmon fishing
rights on Trawbreaga Bay and caught dabs and so on, as well as the
salmon. So the fishermen got fish on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, roast beef on Friday and fish again on Saturday. Unlike today
there was no accusations of discrimination or sectarianism. All knew the
butcher's van only came round from Carndonagh on a Friday.
Henry was an interesting character. He wouldn't handle paper money, only
sovereigns. He loved his cows so much that he had a door from the
bedroom into the byre in case one was calving or sick. When my father
was leaving Malin, Henry said to him: 'Mr Barkley, I'd rather one of my
cows had died than you'r leaving us.'
My father always held that it was one of the highest tributes he had
every been paid.
To go to Malin, one leaves Derru, shirting the shores of Lough Foyle,
and heads for Culmore and Muff, for Moville and InishowenHead but, a few
miles short of Moville at Quigley's Point, one turns left up into the
mountain passes through Glen Tougher, for Carmdonagh. About three miles
further on, one comes to the bridges over Trawbreaga Bay and Malin Town
and, following the shoreline about three miles further, one comes to
Goorey rocks and the road which formerly led to the National School and
passes Davis's, then the road ends and one steps on to the foreshore.
There, sitting on the sand is Malin meetinghouse round which the
Atlantic sweeps in twice a day. At this point, too, standing in the
sandhills, is Laggg chapel. There they stand, a living memorial to the
days when Presbyterians and Roman Catholics were treated as religious
and social outcasts.
Not surprisingly, given the tides, Malin meetinghouse had no graveyard
of its own. This was true until well after my father's time, when a main
country road was built. I later learned that three of the first four
Presbyterian ministers of Malin were buried in the Catholic graveyard at
Lagg. Not only that, some years ago, when I went to search for the three
graves I found that the original Boggs, Hendersons, Colhouns and so on,
had also been buried there.
Theological differences had not destroyed social relationships. Today,
things are greatly changed - the country road runs between the
meetinghouse and the sea. Goorey National School has been turned into a
summer residence and Presbyterians no longer bury their dead in Lagg
having a kirk-yard of their own.
The congregation consisted of a school-teacher, the post-mistress and
some sixty farming families. Life was hard. The daily fare was porridge,
somethimes bacon and eggs, home-made bread, with potatoes and salt. Meat
was scarce but a pig would be killed and cured for the winter. They were
a sober people but it was possible (if one knew where) to get a taste of
the 'craitur'.
They knew all their neighbours worshipped in Lagg, and that they
themselves worshipped in the meetinghouse, but they lived together, and
were devout, conservative and tolerent in their ways. They reverenced
scripture and 'The Shorter Catechism', and because there was no
wireless, the community was centred on the church and the fair at
Carndonagh.
John M. Barkley. 'Blackmouth and Dissenter' White Row Press - 1991.
--
John Caughey
http://www.caughey.demon.co.uk
http://www.egroups.com/list/pobal