An Irishman's Diary

THE NEW Government is enjoying quite a honeymoon so far, with the Taoiseach’s triumphant visit to Washington, a string of Irish sporting glories, and a dramatic improvement in weather. Now, to cap it all, we’ve received a letter from a veteran Columban missionary, based in London, which emphasises the goodwill felt towards our new leader in particular. It’s worth quoting in full.

"Dear Sir, Through The Irish Times, I would like to send congratulations to the new Taoiseach, Enda Kenny. His father did me a good turn in 1966. I met him in Mrs McGinley's house in Malinbeg (of the golden strand) in the west of Donegal. I was about to return to the Philippines (in those days we got home every seven years). I asked Mrs McGinley where I could get a good bottle of poitín. Henry Kenny was sitting by the fire having a cup of tea. He said: 'For God's sake don't get any poitín from around here, it's not safe! I will get you a bottle when I get back to Mayo'.

“I told him I had no transportation to collect it in Co Mayo. He said not to worry about that, he would give it to Paddy Harte in the Dáil. Paddy was a TD at that time, from NE Donegal. So Paddy Harte brought me the bottle having passed roving gardaí and alert customs officials over the border and safely into Donegal.

“It was also a ‘reserved sin’ and only the bishop could forgive anything to do with poitín. This was alright for me as I came under the bishops of the Philippines. A few days later I left Ireland. [The poitín] was a Godsend against the flu and colds, which we often caught because of climate change – from the wild and windy weather of Donegal to the beautiful sunshine in the Philippines.

“I met Paddy Harte about 10 years ago and I asked him if he remembered Henry Kenny getting me the bottle of poitín from the hills of Co Mayo. Paddy responded: ‘I remember it well. He got no bottle of poitín from the hills of Co Mayo. He went into the Garda barracks in Castlebar and said, “I want your best bottle . . . for a missionary priest going back to the Philippines”.’

“So Enda Kenny, thanks very much to your father. I pray he is happily living in heaven.

“Here in London I sometimes get a cold because of all the pollution from cars and buses and the likes. Mr Kenny, next time you are passing the Garda barracks in Castlebar please see if they still keep the cure. Your father was right, it was very good quality! Yours, Aodh O’Halpin.”

NOT TOquestion the quality of the Mayo product, now or then, but I suspect Henry Kenny may have been a bit harsh on the stuff from Donegal: a county with unrivalled experience of distilling, especially in its northern parts. After all, at the historic height of poitín production – circa 1825, before Father Matthew went to work – a government report estimated there were 10,000 unlicensed stills in Ireland and that "fully one-third" of these were in "the barony of Inishowen". Some quality, as well as quantity, must surely have resulted. At any rate, when that modern-day whiskey revivalist, Derryman Willie McCarter, helped set up Cooley Distillery, one of the first things he did was to buy a couple of dormant whiskey brand-names from his native northwest: Tyrconnell and Inishowen. Donegal is thus – pardon the pun – the spiritual homeland of a company now revitalising the industry with some of the same zeal that Fr Matthew put into killing it.

That said, there’s no doubting the expertise of distillers in Connacht either. Indeed, their work used to be very well known to another branch of the Irish missionary movement: the Redemptorists. When they weren’t worried about sex, the Redemptorists were obsessed with the dangers of alcohol: especially the illegal kind. They even at one time held special “poitín missions”. And these tended to focus on Ireland’s wild west: from Clare up to Mayo, with particular attention on Connemara.

In the early years of the State, the Redemptorists built on St Patrick’s banishment of the snakes by attempting to banish the “worms” – spiral copper pipes – and other paraphernalia used in poitín-making. They would hold public bonfires to burn them and then to swear former consumers to sobriety. In 1931, at one site alone near Rosmuc, “50 gallons of poitín, 15 stills and worms and a ton of malt” were successfully decommissioned and all the local men took the pledge.

It would hardly have cut any ice with the Redemptorists, but the use of poitín for health reasons – as alluded to by our correspondent – was also well-known in Connemara. If a patient had the flu or other such ailment, he would be given poitín mixed with very hot, almost boiling, milk. The resulting concoction was thought to “sweat the badness” out of the person affected. No doubt this argument found a more sympathetic audience among the bishops of the Philippines.