SUCCESS stories are fairly thin on the ground west of the Shannon, but Kiltimagh is a bright example of thriving local development.
The town that gave the word "Culchie" to the English language is walking tall these days. New jobs are flowing wealth is being generated and the hopelessness of the past is but a memory.
Along with economic success has come a desire to explore local history. And people with Kiltimagh antecedents have been well served by Peter Sobolewski and Betty Solan, who have edited a handsome chronology of this area entitled: Kiltimagh - Our Life and Times.
Drawing on a range of historical sources going back to the Annals of the Four Masters, the editors have laid out almost 1,600 years of social and cultural records in a contemporary, newspaper style format, concentrating on the past 150 years.
The ebb and flow of war; invasion, consolidation and decline; the names of local people; details of land holdings; famine, emigration and slow economic recovery - it's all there.
The waves of change and unrest which broke over this Mayo town were no different from, those in the rest of the country, but the responses and the personnel were shaped by Gailenga heritage.
Long before Kiltimagh was heard of the town appeared on a map for the first time in 1813 - the parish of Killedan, held sway. It was part of the Barony of Gallen, formed by the Normans in 1239. Before that, the territory was known as Gailenga.
The people of Kiltimagh have an odd relationship with badgers. The name "Gailenga" comes from the nickname of a third century Celtic chieftain, Cormac, son of Tadh Mac Cein, and means "the fouling or desecration of honour".
Sacred Totem
According to reports, Cormac held a feast for his father at which roast badger was the main course. Now, the name Tagh comes from an old Celtics word meaning "badger" and apart from this insult - his father had also decreed that the badger should be the sacred totem of the tribe.
Eating the sacred totem was regarded as unusually bad form by other Celts, hence the name "Gailenga".
Breaking the "geas" on badger killing had echoes 1,000 years later. A sure fire, local defence "against wicked men, pestilence and hailstorms" was said to be the teeth from a badger, drawn while the animal was still living, and worn on the person. Suet from rendered badger fat would also cure fever.
The Vikings, Normans and English came, plundered and confiscated. The Penal Laws brought virulent Protestant Catholic friction and, for a down trodden peasantry, the Pastorini Prophecies which foretold the downfall of Protestantism and the universal victory of Roman Catholics in 1825.
The local blind poet, Raifieiri, extolled the beauty of his birth place, Cill Aodain, and spoke of going to Coillte Mach, in his fine poem on springtime in Mayo. In his spare time the poet supported the Ribbonmen, who pledged themselves "to destroy Protestant kings, to burn churches, to destroy heretics and to spare no man but a Roman Catholic".
1,208 evictions
When the potato crop failed, famine carried away 400 souls in Killedan parish in the six months to April 1847. And in the following year Lord Lucan evicted 1,208 families from his Mayo holdings.
There was a predictable outcome in 1849 Mayo prisons, designed to hold 180 persons, contained more than 500 inmates.
By 1870, Kiltimagh was on the move and boasted six slated, houses in the main street. There was further famine and agrarian unrest in 1876. But the era of the landlord was passing and "Catholic small holders were taking over.
Publication of the 320 page local history coincides with the centenary of the arrival of the St Louis Sisters in Kiltimagh, in 1897. It was a time of great expectations the town had been linked to the railway system four years earlier and the best and largest pig and cattle fairs in the county were being held locally.
But the great leap forward did not happen.
Fr James McDyer's "Save the West" campaign came and went in the late 1960s. There were some small industrial successes and other failures.
A series of articles by Caroline Walsh in The Irish Times in 1989, which recorded a dying community with a 75 per cent emigration rate, finally spurred the townsfolk to action.
Portuguese
Kiltimagh, with a population of 2,500, raised £41,000 in the first year and formed the first Integrated Resource Development agency in Mayo with a full time, professional manager.
The scheme, based on a Portuguese model, linked community groups, employers and State agencies in a solid, self help arrangement concentrating on local strengths.
The first plan, from 1990 to 1994, generated 200 new jobs; trained 160 people; increased local economic activity by 60 per cent; provided 11 social, housing units and attracted 150 emigrants back home.
Property prices rose by 60 per cent on average. And Kiltimagh won a series of national awards. The latest project involves the establishment of a North West School of Music, catering for 300 students and costing £600,000.
Peter Sobolewski and Betty Solan have done their community a service.
Mr Sobolewski, who was born in New York, moved to Kiltimagh at the age of three and now teaches in Dublin.
Ms Solan is chairperson of Kiltimagh Historical Society and the project, she says, is the fulfilment of many years of hope.
Hope is something Kiltimagh now has in abundance and book reflects a new spirit of confidence and initiative. The publication costs £10 and is a useful template for other communities.