Another 'Irish Outrage'

New Zealand Tablet, 1 November 1906, Page 10

Another 'Irish Outrage'

6f the making, .' faking ', or ' adapting ' of • Irish outrages ' there is no end. But, thanks to the clumsiness , and indiscretion of a the manufacturers and adapters the • Irish outrage ' now -stands on about the same ley el of. veracity as the 'missionary tale ', the ' fish story ', and the ' snake yarn '. As, -a political resort, thu 'Irish outrage' has 'ftom' time to time played- an important part— when Home Rule was to be opposed or a. Coercion Act to be rushed through the Commons, with the application of the ' gag ' or closure. But that is no ilowger possible since the days when Mr. Labpuchere convulsed k the House with his famous analysis and exposure of the' methods by whioh ' outrages ' were officially manufactured and officially catalogued iii the Green Isle for political purposes. - Mr. Labouchere broke a rotten party stick, on the back of the party that used it. A small boy in Mayo may (and will) still get fined or imprisoned for whistling ' Harvey Duff. So will a law-abiding Galw ay. peasant who • smiles dn a threatening manner* at a ' peeler ' (policeman) ; and a like penalty, awaits a Malahide man who • blows his nose in a disrespectful way towards ' a sensitive ' number iv the force'-'- -at the other side of the street. But such desperate felons no longer appear (as a .rule) upon the parliamentary returns asthe perpetrators of Irish • agrarian outrages '. Nay, Pat Molloy may even, in the course of a casual 1 argymint '—in which he has gdt 'au bout de son latin,' to the end of his verbal weapons of. conviction —heighten the color of Neil White's , left eye ; Neil White may retort in kind ; and the chances are against the brief encounter being ,iif this year of. grace 1906 entered in the official records: as five separate and distinct * outrages ■'. Under the coercionist regime of the early eighties, the official ' outrage '-mongers looked at such, an incident . with the multiple-eye of a blow-fly, but without the blow-fly's capacity for seeing the multiple image as one. They rated the verbal' 'argymint' as one ' outrage ' ; Pat Molloy 's right-hander wasnumber two ; Neil White's response was~the third ; a pane of glass , accidentally cracked, during the latter part of the discussion counted ' as the fourth ; and a spilled jug of milk the fifth and last. Such methods, of enumeration give a point to the familiar degrees, of comparison in falsehood: lies, thumping lies, and statistics. . . -.;•«»- - - . * ' • Here is - the^ latest Bulgarian atrocity from Ireland— we take it from last -Saturday's issue of a New Zealand daily contemporary :—: — [ ' ' An extraordinary condition of affairs existed at the end of July at Keadue, County Roscommon, Ireland where the parish priest (Father Meehan) and the school . teacher were .relentlessly, boycotted by the parishioners A vacancy for a teacher occurring, ."Father Meehan ap^ pointed a stranger to, the position, but his parishioners demanded the appointment of the son of" the former teacher, and insisted on popular control. At latest

advices there was no appear anccVof ' either side -giving way. Violent scenes have taken place. Graves were dug outside the residences of Father Meehan and the imported-, teacher, who had to be placed under police protection. The. Bishop of the "'diocese (Dr. Hoare) excommunicated- several of the leaders of '—' ■> . A < line is riVissing here.."- But ftj matters not. The difference between this ; and the o her ' Iris-h- ottrages ' recently cabled to our shores is this: that they were fabrications pure and simple, and this has' a colorable substratum of truth. But then ' a lie which is" halt a ?r trutu is ever the blackest ~of lies 'i- The story is,, journalistically,; old enough to be mildewud. It was going -the rounds of the British- Wss as far' back as July, and -at" the time of . I-epuljlicaiibn in New Zealand the ' latest advices ' to hand later than the middle of September. Moreover, 4 the; story was already severaji weeks old whenT the^' Glasgow Observer ' set about investigating it, and, - afWhaving been at --considerable pains - sto ascertain the truth of the mat-, ter, it was able to publish the real (facts of the case in its issue of September 8. „ J *'" - .)' , ' . -. ♦ . '■',>£- rf -vThe substratum of truth in connection with \ ; this -latest ,' agrarian outrage 'is this :j that as far back as .October, 1903, there was some trouble in connection ' with the appointment of a new male "teacher. The fest of,, the story- is malevolent distortion, , exaggeration^ ■ and 'fake. Here are the facts of the. case as vouched for by the~ 4 Glasgow Observer's ' correspondent on., the spot : (1) There was no boycottr-relentless or otherwise—either of Father Mcehaji qr of/the teacher by ..the parishioners '. (2) The question -of ' popular control ' never cropped up. The appointment; was 'made by Father Meehan (manager of the school) in full accord- ' ance with his legal rights and the 1 regulations in the case made and . provided by the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland. (3) The trouble was caused, not by • the parishioners », but by a. small and noisy knot of them who desired-,' the appointment of a particular man to whom they, were united- by ties of blood or friendship, but who was deemed 'by the responsible manager of the school to be quite unfitted for the position. (4) No ' graves \ were 'dug, as .alleged, either outside the residence of Father Meehan or of the imported teacher '. A hole or grave (not ' graves V) was dug in ;the school grounds, but there was nothing to indicate jor whose, benefit this laborious bit of *umor* was intended. (s) "The 'latest advices' were some six wseks old when the courts dealt with the. last attempt of- the interested parties to annoy- 'the imported teacher '. ' Since then ', says the ' Glasgow Observer • 4 there is peace . \ v > - ' 3 The parochial ripple has subsided, and Keadue has relapsed into its accustomed calm. But the reader who is unacquainted with the faqUvalue of 'Irish outrages ' would imagine, on -reading .the -story as re-told in our New Zealand contemporary,- that all Keadue was, .« at latest advices', beiiig swept and rent and slfiyered by social earthquakes,, cycl&fes; waterspouts, aftd. tornadoes. The methods and 'proqeedings of interested factions, whether in Ireland or -in New Zealand . are not commonly marked witht ' . ' „,..-" r That repose- . . T . - Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere '... " But the knot of excited and- disappointed peasants in remote Keadue were Bayards o£, chivalry- compared with . the coarse-grained fanatics who a -few' years ago befouled the Rongahere State school (Otago), burned the teacher's (Miss Annett's) house, , with- her piano • and her. other effects— just -because} she was a * Papist '—^ and made her fiyJor her -life from a district * in ' wfrich (as one- of the Dunedin papers declared) the still unpunished perpetrators : of the outrage had sympathisers on every side. Bishop Hoare and- Father Meehan found a means of according a male teacher in Keadue ari« immunity from persecution that neither the police nor the outspoken * Dunedin press, nor public opinion nor

all combined, were able" to secure for a virtuous and talented .young Catholic lady' teacher in Rongahere. But as this was itaerely a Rongahere outrage, and not an ' Irish outrage 'yj .little ,or nothing was heard x>f it beyottd. the limits of the province in which- it , took place. ... Happily there- \ was in New Zealand no outragemongering news ageacy to-, mould and ' fa»ke : ' the incident into s a first-class sensation, awl cable it to the uttermost ends of the earth. And there is no political, party or faction interested in making it appear that the white population of- this country is composed of. semi-, savages who are. incapable, of managing their own affairs, and who must be kept in subjection beneath the iron heel of. a -standing regime of armed coercion,. '.