An tAthair Peadar Ó Laoghaire’s (Mo Scéal Féin) illustrious time in Charleville
THIS year marks the centenary of the death of An tAthair Peadar Ó Laoghaire, the prominent Gaelic scholar and author, who was a Curate in Charleville from 1880 to 1882, and where he founded St. Brig00id’s Classic School on his arrival in the town.
An tAthair Peadar was invited to Charleville to start the classical school by the then parish priest, Very Rev. Canon Rice, who made the request to the Bishop of Cloyne, Dr. John McCarthy. An tAthair Peader was at the time a curate in Macroom in West Cork when the bishop asked him to relocate to Charleville in the north of the county.
In his classic account of his life in ‘Mo Scéal Féin’ he devotes several pages to his arrival and time in Charleville, or as he referred to it An Rath, the ancient Gaelic name for the town, which was officially adopted once again in the mid- 1970’s instead of Rath Luirc.
An tAthair Peadar taught the Classics, Latin and Greek, in a room in his own house at Chapel Street, which was located next to the then parish church. The school was arranged by Canon Rice, who also laid out the conditions under which the students should be taught. They would have to pay £6 per annum or thirty shillings per season. However, An tAaithair did not agree with this arrangement as he always taught the boys in his classes for nothing in Macroom and in Rathcormac before that.
Furthermore, some of the boys had followed him to Charleville to continue with their education, and now he would have to charge them for the classes. He eventually challenged Canon Rice on the matter, but the parish priest disagreed, and said they now have to pay for their education like any other student.
It should be remembered that the school was being provided for out of an annual grant available from the original Endowed School set up by the Earl of Cork when he founded a school in Charleville in 1667, and which, at the request of the Canon Rice was diverted to the use of the Chapel School in 1879.
An tAthair Peadar named his school in Charleville, St. Brigid’s in honour of Mary of the Gaeil, as he had done where ever he had started a school. Among the Charleville boys he taught were Daniel Mannix of Deerpark, Charleville later to be the President of St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, and Archbishop of Melbourne, Australia. One of the boys who followed him to Charleville was Terence Shealy from Mitchelstown. In his own words An tAthair Peadar describes what happened; “An Order priest came to Charleville to give a mission. He saw the St. Brigid’s School and it pleased him greatly for he had also started a school himself in Limerick to try and make priests of them, if God willed it. He was in the Jesuits, a Fr. Ronan, and ’ The Apostolic School’ was the name he had on his school. When he left Charleville, Terence Shealy went with him to the Apostolic School, which was in the Crescent College in Limerick, and also became a Jesuit Father.
Fr. Shealy S. J. became one of the most distinguished past pupils of the Apostolic School, and was the first Dean of the Law School at Fordham University in New York, and he also filled the Chair of Professor Jurisprudence. This son of Mitchelstown, and past pupil of An tAthair Peadar’s Classical schools, both in Rathcormack and Charleville, was later a famous preacher in America, who established the spiritual retreats for laymen at Fordham University and was director of the Staten Island retreat house for fifteen years.
At this time Michael Davitt had established the Land League in his native Co. Mayo, with the aim of ending landlordism in Ireland and branches spread rapidly throughout the country to demand reductions in rents from landlords.
The Land League was backed by most of the Bishops in Ireland including Archbishop Thomas Croke of Cashel.
An tAthair Peadar’s relationship with Canon Rice deteriorated further when he assumed the chair of the Charleville Land League branch that had been founded in the town by the tenant farmers of the area. Canon Rice had no love for the Land League, and probably thought it was the Fenians by another name, and that their counsel was an evil one.
A letter arrived to St. Brigid’s from Bishop McCarthy saying that he thought some of the boys would be influenced to stay away from the school because of priests’ involvement in the Land League. However, O’Leary convinced him that this was not the case and that was the last he heard of it from the Bishop, and he continued on as usual with his teaching in the school.
But he fell foul of the parish priest again when he organised a raffle to make money for the families of tenants who had been imprisoned for failure to pay their rent. For the parish priest this was the last straw and he requested the Bishop to remove An tAthair Peadar from the Charleville parish after only two years in the town.
Not long after he was sent “east to Kilworth” in place of the ageing parish priest there, thus ending the tenure of this kindly priest in North Cork, and also bringing to an end the St. Brigid’s Classical School in Charleville in 1882.
The Irish Christian Brothers came to town in 1866 at the invitation of Rev. Fr. Thomas Croke, the then parish priest. However, the Classic languages of Latin and Greek were not again taught in Charleville until they were revived by the superior Rev. Brother Prendiville in the 1890’s.
One of the pupils then attending the CBS, who would have been in those classes, was a boy from Bruree, Eamon de Valera, from 1896 to 1898.