About: Hyacinth by George A. Birmingham

HYACINTH

Produced by David Widger

HYACINTH

By George A. Birmingham

1906

CHAPTER I

In the year 1850 or thereabouts religious and charitable society inEngland was seized with a desire to convert Irish Roman Catholics tothe Protestant faith. It is clear to everyone with any experience ofmissionary societies that, the more remote the field of actual work, theeasier it is to keep alive the interest of subscribers. The mission toRoman Catholics, therefore, commenced in that western portion of Galwaywhich the modern tourist knows as Connemara, and the enthusiasm wasimmense. Elderly ladies, often with titles, were energetic in the causeof the new reformation. Young ladies, some of them very attractive,collected money from their brothers and admirers. States men and Bishopsheaded the subscription lists, and influential committees earnestlydebated plans for spending the money which poured in. Faith in theefficacy of money handled by influential committees is one of thecharacteristics of the English people, and in this particular caseit seemed as if their faith were to be justified by results.

Mostencouraging reports were sent to headquarters from Gonnemara. Itappeared that converts were flocking in, and that the schools of themissionaries were filled to overflowing. In the matter of educationcircumstances favoured the new reformation. The leonine John McHale, thePapal Archbishop of Tuam, pursued a policy which drove the children ofhis flock into the mission schools.

The only other kind of educationavailable was that which some humorous English statesman had called'national,' and it did not seem to the Archbishop desirable that anIrish boy should be beaten for speaking his own language, or rewardedfor calling himself 'a happy English child.' He refused to allow thebuilding of national schools in his diocese, and thus left the clevererboys to drift into the mission schools, where they learnt carefullyselected texts of Scripture along with the multiplication table. Thebest of them were pushed on through Dublin University, and crowned thehopes of their teachers by taking Holy Orders in the Church of England.There are still to be met with in Galway and Mayo ancient peasants andbroken down inhabitants of workhouses who speak with a certain prideof 'my brother the minister.

' There are also here and there in Englishrectories elderly gentlemen who have almost forgotten the thatchedcottages where they ate their earliest potatoes.

Among these cleverer boys was one AEneas Conneally, who was somethingmore than clever. He was also religious in an intense and enthusiasticmanner, which puzzled his teachers while it pleased them. His ancestorshad lived for generations on a seaboard farm, watered by salt rain,swept by misty storms. The famine and the fever that followed it lefthim fatherless and brotherless. The emigration schemes robbed him andhis mother of their surviving relations. The mission school and themissionary's charity effected the half conversion of the mother and awhole hearted acceptance of the new faith on the part of AEneas. Unlikemost of his fellows in the college classrooms, he refused to regard anEnglish curacy as the goal of his ambition. It seemed to him that hisconversion ought not to end in his parading the streets of Liverpool ina black coat and a white tie. He wanted to return to his people and tellthem in their own tongue the Gospel which he had found so beautiful.

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