***
Edward’s tenure in Achill was punctuated by bouts of poor health, depression and emotional volatility. Periods of intense activity, elevated mood, high productivity and extraordinary verbal output alternated with episodes of illness, fatigue, despondency, and occasionally total collapse: features of what nowadays could be labelled bipolar disorder. Childhood trauma, residual vulnerability from his Cavan breakdown, difficult living conditions and constant conflict in Achill may all have been contributory factors.
In the weeks immediately after his arrival in Achill, excerpts from Edward’s diary reveal that his chest was causing him concern.6
Monday, 18th August – Obliged, from soreness to my chest, to give up our morning meeting. Our school is greatly increased; sixty-eight children on the roll. Wrote several letters.
Monday, 25th August – My chest so weak this morning that I was obliged to order Downey to assemble the people and read to them … It is a great cause for thankfulness that when I am unable to speak, in consequence of the weakness of my chest, I can still write.
Tuesday 26th August – Arrived at Newport at three o’clock…my chest very poorly.
Tuesday, 2nd September – Still poorly in health; our readers met with much opposition this day.
Monday 8th September – My chest very sore.
Edward’s spells of illness were defining life events. A contemporary writer on psychosomatic disorders has noted that, even when compared to the most aggressive multisystem disease, psychosomatic trauma-triggered illnesses are noteworthy for how little respect they have for any single part of the body.7 Edward suffered numerous symptoms through his many and varied illnesses: headaches, stomach and joint pain as well as seizures – a possible manifestation of psychological distress. It was as if his explosions of passion and energy were sustainable only if countered by intervals of lethargy and fatigue. It was a pattern that added to the harsh conditions of life in Achill as the Nangle family faced their first winter on the island with its inhospitable storms; and Eliza was in the early weeks of pregnancy.
Hostilities broke out within weeks as the Achill Mission’s programme to bring the scriptures to the people swung into action. To add to Edward’s troubles, gale force winds swept across the island and he feared that the roof of one of the new colony buildings would be demolished. One squall from the north-west descended from Slievemore with such force that it threw two men off their ladders but, providentially, they escaped serious injury.
He was heartened when twenty children attended the mission’s first Sunday school, but the event was not without incident when a ‘Popish zealot’8 stood near the gate with a rod and threatened to beat the attending children. One of the scripture readers was attacked, thrown to the ground and his clothes torn by two men about four miles from Dugort. When a mission steward travelled by boat to nearby Mulranny to purchase some farm implements, he was met by a hostile crowd.
Worryingly, Edward got word through an informant of a secret plan to attack the colony, kill those living there, burn the buildings and put an end to the Achill Mission. He informed Captain Reynolds, chief officer of the Achill coastguard, who made plans to have his men armed and ready on the night of the suspected attack. Eliza even took the precaution of moving the children’s beds away from the positions where they might be hit by bullets. No attack took place and Edward believed that the preparations they made had deterred the assailants. Others claimed that the alleged attack was a figment of Edward’s excitable imagination and that his charges were driven by a motive to attract sympathy and support for his cause.
Achill hit the headlines repeatedly in subsequent months as summonses were issued for purported assaults against the missionaries, and those charged with the offences congregated at Newport and Westport to attend court hearings. A Connaught Telegraph writer was infuriated at the ‘outrageous proceedings’, when more than forty islanders were obliged to travel, at great inconvenience and hardship, to attend the courts and answer what the paper claimed were entirely vexatious charges.9 Prior to the arrival of Edward Nangle, said the writer, the Achill islanders had lived a life of peace, harmony and goodwill towards one another but now discord, ill will and hatred were being propagated through the island. Achill had become ‘a theatre of riot and confusion’.
***
At seven o’clock on a mid-October evening in 1834, as the sun was setting in the west, 300 important guests, all men, gathered at the Mitre Hotel, Tuam, some sixty miles from Achill in a south-western direction, for a celebration dinner to honour the elevation of the new archbishop, John MacHale. Earlier in the day, at the chapel of Tuam, every available space was filled for the ceremony of installation as the Te Deum rang out from choir and organ. John MacHale had travelled that day from Castlebar, in an elegant Swiss carriage presented to him by the people and clergy of Killala, where he had ministered for almost a decade. A Freeman’s Journal journalist estimated that crowds numbering up to 40,000 greeted the new prelate on the route into Tuam which was bedecked with flags, while an arch of green boughs festooned the town’s north bridge.
When the dinner guests had eaten and drunk heartily, John MacHale rose to respond to the toast. He was, he said, humbled and overawed and, perhaps, a little fearful lest his future be like ‘a brilliant taper which might shed a brilliant light in a narrow apartment, but would only twinkle when exposed in a broader atmosphere’. If he had been criticised for indulging in the exposure of the grievances of the poor in the past, this was an accusation to which he would freely confess, he said, without the least contrition.
Within the week, the Freeman’s Journal was extolling the triumphal elevation of the archbishop, ‘now the bright luminary of the Catholic hierarchy, fearlessly vindicated’.10 John MacHale, asserted the writer, had vindicated his religion and cast the shield of protection around the poor at a time when besotted bigotry was at its height, and to be a Roman Catholic was considered a disgrace.
The new archbishop embarked on a tour of his extensive diocese, greeted everywhere by blazing bonfires. At Newport, a large procession greeted the archbishop outside the town, those at the front of the parade on foot, followed by horseback riders, and next the carriages. Tar barrels blazed in every direction, illuminating the town. The archbishop’s carriage halted at the house of the priest, James Hughes, and the people knelt to receive the episcopal benediction. One journalist claimed to have observed the rector and parish priest’s neighbour, William Stoney, watching among the crowd.
More than likely, prelate and priest discussed the worrying developments in Achill as it would have been unimaginable to both men that they could allow Edward Nangle to continue with his work at Dugort uncontested. The archbishop would soon visit the troublesome island.
John MacHale and Edward Nangle had several traits in common: an ability to deliver powerful rhetoric not tempered by prudence, restless energy, combative natures and an unshakeable belief in their version of the truth. Each man excelled in the crafting of belligerent polemics and in the thrill of robust, vicious public debate. Both had outlets through pen and pulpit for their venomous words to take poisonous flight. Both exhibited also a dangerous propensity for egomania and narcissism. What a coincidence that this pair of clergymen shared the stage in nineteenth-century Ireland and played out their antagonism theatrically on a remote Atlantic island.
Their mutual hostility soon focused on education and the mission schools, for education was Edward Nangle’s main bridgehead for conversions. He would combat popish error by establishing a system of scriptural education to teach the children the principles of Protestantism and civilised living. Not for the first time in the battle for the souls and hearts of a people, schools became the focal point of a religious crusade.
CHAPTER FOUR
Scriptural Education
It is hard to grasp, almost two centuries later, the phenomenon which was the Achill Mission colony and the disruptive chaos which it unleashed. What if an independent international adventurer stumbled upon the Achill scene and left behind a third-party account? As it happens, we have precisely such