If you want to buy a new book – one that will become a much sought-after volume in future years, go along to the joint launch this Thursday, in the Greville Arms Hotel, Mull- ingar of Peter Wallace’s “Ballynacarrigy, Sonna and Emper” – a 386 page collection of the area’s history and folklore, which includes much of the sporting and social and musical heritage, and much much more.
The first launch of the book took place in Ballynacargy last Thursday, 17 July, with local TD, Willie Penrose doing the honours, and his lavish words of praise for the new book and its importance were no way overstated.
Seven years in the making, this very substantial publication will keep you and your family, and future generations, informed, entertained and enthralled, and the self-effacing local historian from Multyfarnham has done the areas immediately to the west of his native place a great service by succeeding in his ambition.
As another noted local historian and writer, Seamus O’Brien says in the new book’s foreword, this is “an exciting and very interesting new history” of Ballinacarrigy and the two outlying areas of the parish, and the contributions made by an array of other people to his book – including Seamus O’Brien – make it most interesting and entertaining.
The Multyfarnham man has been a keen member of Westmeath Archaeological and Historical Society for decades, and his interest and attention to detail shine through.
Peter Wallace – whose book Multyfarnham Parish History, written in 1987, remains the most comprehensive study of his native area, is a farmer who has now somehow managed to find the time to follow the promptings of the late Fr. Michael Deegan, Ballynacargy PP, and put together another parish history, even more comprehensive than his earlier work. He put in a huge amount of painstaking work into this latest labour of love and also invited others to contribute material and play their part, and they have done so in style. The result is a very informative and readable book, lavishly illustrated with (more than 150 photos or drawings, including sixteen pages of colour photos). There’s something for every family in the area somewhere in this book, and even the locals whose antecedents emigrated to far-off Argentina are given plenty of space, as are the many locals whose earthly remains lie at rest in local cemeteries like Templeoran, Templecross, Kilbixy, Kilmacnevan, Churchtown, Milltown, Sonna and Walshestown.
There’s nine different sections in the new book, with a dozen or more sub-sections in some of them, and each of them has its own attractions. Like remarkable and fascinating sections on the Irish language and Irish words used in Emper – which was compiled in 1907 by Eamonn Mhac an Fhailigh (Edward Nally) of Emper. The Emper area was noted for local people still with the “blas” of native Irish speakers into the 1900s, and in Ballymore Feis in 1913, Emper girls received the prize for the best knowledge of conversational Irish.
As we’ve said, Peter Wallace’s book is a compendium of information and surprises that will prevent you from leaving it down, once you start reading. Like the story of the great blizzard in February 1933, when huge drifts of snow covered the local countryside, and the bus from Ballymahon was abandoned on the Mullingar side of the village. A man walking home on a plateau of snow, higher than the hedge-tops suddenly found his leg sinking to knee level before hitting something solid. He realised then he was standing on the top of the Ballymahon bus, abandoned the previous day! And Anna May Drew of Lakingstown remembers the snow still on the slopes of the Deerpark in the month of May that year.
As others have rightly said, Westmeath is one of the most historic and archaeologically important areas of the Irish midlands, from earliest times, but this has, for far too long gone unrecognised. Peter Wallace’s new book goes some way towards redressing this, with Dr. David McGuinness contributing a highly informative chapter on local archaeology. The history down centuries is traced, and Seamus O’Brien’s research into the realities and horrors of the Famine years in the area and its deadly effects, is extremely effective and portrays in stark relief just how awful were those years of want and despair, when nearly 40% of the local people were relying on soup kitchens to remain alive.
The book was produced locally, printed by Temple Printing, Athlone and has a very attractive cover featuring the famous drawing of the ruin of Tristernagh Abbey on the front, with the distinctive trees in the Deerpark, outside Ballynacargy on the back cover.
