In the same month that Edward alighted on Dugort strand, the Catholic pontiff, Pope Gregory XVI, then three years into his papacy, made an important announcement in Rome when he confirmed the appointment of John MacHale as Catholic archbishop of Tuam, which included Achill Island in its jurisdiction. There was consternation in Britain that John MacHale would now be among the four most powerful Catholic clerics in Ireland. ‘Anybody but him’, the British prime minister had implored the pontiff, for the political establishment viewed John MacHale as an agitating prelate who inflamed passions at a time when sectarian tensions in Ireland were intense.3 Perhaps nervous of John MacHale’s impetuosity, the Pope warned his new archbishop to maintain ‘in every transaction of your rule singular prudence, moderation of spirit, and the greatest care for peace and beneficial quiet’.4 The archbishop’s tenure in Tuam could not have been more different in action and in tone from that recommended by his pontiff.
John MacHale was a tall, lean, athletic man fired with a colossal energy. Born a decade before Edward Nangle in the shadows of Nephin Mountain, County Mayo, he shared Edward’s experience of having lost his mother as a child. He was a prominent, assertive, Irish-educated Catholic cleric, who had already made his mark as a scholar, teacher and vigorous public speaker and writer. He and Edward had crossed swords before Edward’s arrival in Achill in truculent public exchanges that set the tone for their vigorous and uncompromising sparring throughout their long lives.
A year earlier, while both men were based in Ballina, County Mayo, newspapers published an open letter from John MacHale carrying a tirade against Protestantism in Ireland, contrasting its wealth and patronage with the lamentable condition of the people. The established church, he thundered, was ‘the prolific womb from which all the misfortunes of Ireland teemed in fearful succession’.
Edward could not leave John MacHale’s letter unchallenged and he set to work. Each week, throughout the months of August and September, he wrote a long letter of reply, defending the established church and venting a full-blooded condemnation of the evils of Irish Catholicism. The language bristled with frenzy and hysteria, conveying the sense of one teetering on the brink, such was the fierceness of emotion and hostility in the letters.
In a breathless diatribe, Edward condemned the practices of Roman Catholicism, its ‘masses, and purgatory, and penances, and pilgrimages, and priestly pardons, and crucifixes, and holy ashes, clay, candles, bones, teeth, hair, nails, rings, cords, scapulars, and all other thrash and filth, which has become encrusted on it from the muddy stream of a corrupt and sinful world’.
All the religious and folk practices of the people were derided and demeaned in a vitriolic rant.
His most vehement condemnation was aimed at the most central and revered of Catholic beliefs: the mass and the Eucharist. How, he asked, could a mere wafer, ‘a bit of senseless, motionless paste’, be worshipped in a most odious practice? Provocatively, he queried if such a belief indicated that Catholicism condoned cannibalism.
Edward was furious that John MacHale did not take the bait by replying publicly to the letters. Is it ‘beneath your dignity to reply to my statements?’ he asked petulantly in his final letter in September. ‘But who is Doctor MacHale? What entitles him to assume such a lofty position of self-exaltation?’5
The tone of the relationship between John MacHale and Edward Nangle was already set. The colony on the slopes of Slievemore would be the dramatic stage on which their raging antagonism would play out as the pair jousted, their words polished and honed with precision in support of each man’s version of the truth. The pair symbolised, in a spectacular way, the social and religious fault lines that bedevilled the Ireland of their times.
Here were two driven, articulate, larger-than-life men, each with his own version of the Christian truth.
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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
