Corran Herald 2019 - The Philosophy of Pat Gallagher

The Ballymote Heritage Weekend saw the launch of issue 52 the annual journal, The Corran Herald" published by the group. This, in over 90 pages, contains academic articles, popular history, photographs, poems and stories.

This journal has been published since 1985 and the group's website has copies of all the issues, except the most recent. There is a wealth of history in these pages.
http://ballymoteheritage.com/corran-previous-issues/

This year I contributed a poem called "The Philosophy of Pat Gallagher". Pat, pictured here, was my great grandfather and was secretary of the local branch of the United Irish League from 1901 until 1915. He contributed short report on club meetings regularly to the Sligo Champion. I took pieces from these reports and created a "found" poem from them.

I don't know if it works as a poem but it does give a flavour of the rhetoric of the times. Brief extract below.

"Each man must pledge himself to do a man’s part.
The people must be prepared for any sacrifice, even
life, any time their privileges and liberties are
  being tampered with.

Any member absenting himself without a satisfactory
explanation will be struck off and a new member put in his place.
We will not readily let down a man who is a consistent
  Nationalist, and his father before him.

He was a loving son and a faithful comrade, as was
shown on last Sunday when sixty-four young
men wearing white sashes carried his remains
to the grave"

The Corran Herald is on sale in shops in Ballymote and in bookshops in Sligo town.