Banned book published after 85 years

A BOOK that felt the full wrath of the Church when it was banned it on its attempted publication in 1932 is to finally hit the bookshelves of Kerry thanks to the work of Tralee man Brendan McCarthy.

It’s title seems fairly inocuous, Fr Ferris’s Parish Histories of Ballymacelligott, Ballyseedy, O’Brennan and Nohoval, but it rocked the hierarchy on its way to the printers.

Not because it contained anything lurid by today’s standards, but because it departed from tradition as to the final resting place of St Brendan!

The book is a detailed history of the parishes of Ballymacelligott, Ballyseedy, O’Brennan and Nohoval where the Kerry priest spent several years during his ministry in the parish of Ballymacelligott in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Fr Ferris collected a vast archive of local history from his parishioners and it is described as a ‘real history as lived and recounted by the ordinary people and their authentic voices’ which comes through clearly and evocatively. Fr Ferris refused on principle to make the changes requested by Bishop Michael O’Brien and the manuscript has lain dormant in the archives ever since. Brendan McCarthy has spent the last five years finalising the book which is now to be published by a new Kerry history imprint ‘Cló Staire Chiarraí’.

“The book is fully indexed and includes a detailed biography of Fr Ferris who was a fascinating individual in his own right,” Brendan said.

“He was a Sinn Féin activist, gaeilgeoir, polemicist, temperance advocate and free-thinker. He was a formidable presence in Kerry and beyond during the first half of the twentieth-century.”

Brendan describes the book as unique, not just because the content is new to the public but also because of its depth of local history, genealogy, reminiscences, folk memory, place names, and archaeological heritage.