February 1, 2009. James MacNerney’s article, for some electronic reason, could not be uploaded from Ireland. The website administrators in the US are pleased to accommodate a request from John Flynn - a regular correspondent - that it be uploaded here. Most of all, we are profoundly grateful for James MacNerney’s article - a task today - a promise for tomorrow.
THE MOYNE WAY
A Brief Look at The Latin School
For the past one hundred and eleven years the Latin School has perched on an outcrop of rock in the townland of Legga, at the junction with Firmullagh and Moyne townlands, parish of Dromard in the north of County Longford. The site, a rood of ground purchased from Paul Duignan, Jr. for £11.10s.0d. must have seemed in 1897 a most unprepossessing one, bounded by a sheer rock face which glowers above and behind it, and by the busy Longford-Arva road in front. From such humble beginnings it was to become the permanent home of a Latin school which had flourished in the area for many generations. Since 1892 it had occupied a temporary home in an almost derelict national school beside Moyne church where Fr Philip Duffy taught the classics. A native of Cortober, Arva, Fr Duffy had been ordained in Rome in 1879 and had had wide experience in the diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnois as a curate but mainly as superior of two schools, one in Ballymahon and the other in Athlone. His appointment to the Latin School in Moyne came in 1892 and it was then that he first dreamed of building a fitting and lasting abode for his school. The new two room academy opened its doors in 1897 to the delight of the entire district.
The Latin School (“the home of the Muses”, in the words of Fr M J Masterson in the Antiquarian Journal of the diocese, 1935 p. 39) was also known as St Mary’s Apostolic School or the Classical School. It had been on the move from house to barn to shed in the area for around one hundred years. The prodigious devotion to classical education in the school’s wide catchment area had ensured that the school survived during this period. Its forerunner, the hedge school, had had an unstable and precarious existence from the 1650s right through the 1700s, extending into the first half of the nineteenth century. This long, enduring tradition of education is a hallmark of the north Longford, south Leitrim, south west Cavan area, and it continues today in Moyne Community School which opened in 1974, a short journey away in terms of distance but a world away in terms of size, breadth of curriculum and modern facilities.
One of the organisers of the 2008 reunion, John J McNamee, spoke of the quality of the education he had received in the Latin School as “second to none and as good as anywhere. What was also unique was the dedication and extreme competence of the teaching staff. With minimal resources they managed to squeeze a quality education into sometimes very unwilling heads. They did a remarkable job. I have done graduate and post-doctoral research in four countries: Belgium. Germany, Spain and the United States and I can tell you from personal experience that the education I received at the Latin School was as good as what the best schools in these countries provided for their privileged sons and daughters. And the Latin School did it with no frills for £10 a year.”
Moyne Latin School was not unique insofar as that there were many such classical schools scattered around Ireland. What gives Moyne its signal distinction is the vast number of priest graduates who passed through its educational system. No school I am aware could boast of so many clerical past pupils. Canon Edward Boylan and Fr Frank Gray have identified approximately six hundred in their thoroughly researched history “The Latin School” 1979. The small parish of Dromard where the school was located during most of its life contributed almost two hundred priests. Surely no other similar parish in Ireland, even perhaps in the world, can claim such a distinction. Every house either had or aspired to have a priest and no sacrifice was deemed too great in order to achieve that aim. Distance was no object, nor was trekking across miles of hilly countryside day after day. Students from Kenagh, from Mullinalaghta, from as far afield as Co. Monaghan stayed in local houses during the school term, such was the reputation of the school. The Kenagh students were brothers who boarded in Morris’ of Legga, one becoming a doctor, the other a stockbroker.
The Latin School priests traversed the wide world carrying the Good News to the Americas, the Antipodes, Africa, the UK as well as our own Irish church. They pioneered evangelisation in the Deep South, the Wild West, in the Bush and the Bible Belt. They built countless churches and schools and spent themselves unstintingly in the service of others. Their contribution to the building up of civic society in the remote, uncivilised places where they served is incalculable. Their bravery, courage and leadership have not been adequately appreciated or documented. It is a study which would be richly rewarding and would reflect the integrity and intensity of the family and religious traditions and values from which these heroic figures sprang. Their remittances to their families could also be usefully studied; in many instances they kept body and soul together, helped to raise living standards and provided the means for families to improve the thatched home, put on an extra storey and Bangor slates.
Russell B Ferrall’s “History of the Ferralls 1891” describes graphically the harsh physical conditions faced by his ancestor who arrived in Virginia in 1750: “It is not necessary to reiterate the rawness and hardships of pioneer life, but there were other difficulties, both economic and political to cope with. … It is the way he overcame these more subtle problems, as I continued my research, that first aroused my admiration for the adaptability and astuteness of our first American ancestor, William Ferrall, for his was truly a pioneer success story.” (pp.110-111) Lawless and extremely difficult conditions persisted for more than another century in the United States as the frontier pushed ever west, proving an attractive challenge to many nationalities seeking to tame the wilderness and establish successful and enduring family units in the New World. Countless similar stories could be told of Australia, New Zealand and Africa. It is therefore not difficult to understand the challenge and the attraction which these potentially rich vineyards of the Lord held for young men of farming stock in the area where three counties and three provinces meet. The Latin School education was the key to unlock for these men the door of opportunity to work for the Lord in fresh fields.
It is worth noting that among the Latin School alumni enumerated by Canon Boylan and Fr Gray were six bishops: William O’Higgins (Ardagh), Bernard O’Reilly (Hartford, Conn.), Thomas Heslin (Natchez, Mississippi), Matthew Gibney (Perth, Australia), Francis Gilfillan (Missouri) and William Henry Moorehead (Anglican Bishop of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada).
Until 1951 the Leaving Certificate did not exist in the Latin School which had not yet been recognised by nor registered with the Department of Education. The Intermediate Certificate was first held in the school, on a trial basis, in 1949. Before that the curriculum consisted mainly of Latin, Greek, English, Irish, Maths and Religious Knowledge. Despite the narrowness of the programme being offered, Moyne alumni were welcomed in all the seminaries such as All Hallows, Wexford, Waterford, Thurles and Carlow. These alumni, very well grounded in Latin and Greek, were much in demand and could more than hold their own with those who had sat the formal state exams in these subjects. In St Peter’s, Wexford, we are told there was a “Moyne walk”, “ a path for Moyne men only. I’m not sure of its value but maybe we could say there is ‘a Moyne way’, a humility that has a good chance of truth, a courage that has a good chance of perseverance, a sense of sacrifice that bears with a difficult and a down to earth sort of wisdom that keeps life on track.” These words spoken by a Moyne alumnus, Msgr Michael J Doyle, forty-nine years in Camden, New Jersey, in his homily at the July 5, 2008 reunion Mass in Moyne church, sum up succinctly the ethos, the essence of the Latin School and the key to its longevity. “We salute them all, clergy and laity, ordained or not ordained, priests who changed course on the journey, the men and women of Moyne’s long history, those who went far afield and those who never left their field, all who tried to follow ‘the Moyne way’”.
Msgr Doyle concludes: “In this Mass let the lives and work of everyone who ever went to the Latin School in kitchen, barn, byre or schoolhouse be lifted up, the lives of every teacher who ever struggled to instill values and a smattering of Latin and Greek, the lives and hopes of all connected to Moyne Community School be placed upon this altar of the Holy Eucharist. Let it be blessed. Let it be magnified. Let it be preserved forever.”
The voices of its countless past students are raised in approbation. The lives of sacrifice and struggle endured by its graduates and the fruits of their labours shout to the heavens in agreement.
(Excerpts from the reunion homily of Msgr Doyle and Dr McNamee’s launching speech, as well as some photographs, are courtesy of the website www.thelatinschoolmoyne.org)
James MacNerney
James MacNerney, a past pupil of the Latin School and St Mel’s, former principal of Moyne Community School, is editor of Teathbha, a life member of the Society and author of “From the Well of St Patrick”, a history of Dromard parish. He feels that, though the clerical reputation of the school is deservedly dominant, we should not overlook the huge contribution to society of the many lay graduates of that famous academy, male and female, and those women who in the school’s more recent history entered religious life.
