Darver Dromiskin seeks to hold out a hand in friendship and extend a Cead Mile Failte." With these sentiments Kathleen Brennan and Pat Corrigan, on behalf of Darver community, welcomed all people of whatever colour, race, religion or minority group, to a festival in Darver Community Centre on September 14 last. The festival theme was the pretty wild flowers blooming in a local wild flower garden. The flowers represent the diverse peoples past and present in the area. The event began with the planting of an Oak tree (Darver means Oak) with everyone placing handfuls of soil round the roots and the local priest extending a welcome to all.
Those present included people from the Philippines, Ukraine, Lithuania and Malaysia. Children were prominent in the celebration, their work together with expressions of local and international culture proudly enhanced the building. Flags of many nations, including the Union flag and Irish tricolour, welcomed everyone to the Darver community.
The area has a complex history and boasts a range of Norman tower houses. Nearby the ruins of Stevenstown House, once associated with the Fortescue family, still stands. Faithful Fortescue came to Ireland with his uncle Arthur Chichester in 1606 and was for a time constable of Carrickfergus Castle. His son William was 40-years-old when he eloped with 14-year-old Margaret Gernon the sole heiress of the Catholic Old English Gernon family at nearby Milltown. She was disinherited because of her clandestine marriage to a Protestant Williamite.
Captain Fortescue secured Bandon in Cork for King William but later surrendered and was imprisoned by King James while Margaret and her children were evicted from their home. Despite the age difference, their marriage appeared a happy one and her husband William asked in his will to be buried beside his 'dear wife' at Dromiskin. From this unpromising marriage many prominent people, politicians and clergy descend. The notable Vere Foster dedicated his life and fortune to assisting emigration, building schools and publishing educational books for the poor. His memory is highly regarded locally as a Protestant who gave his fortune to help the mainly Catholic poor. In 1900 he himself died in poverty in Belfast.
Not far from Darver beside the new motorway we find Dunmahon Tower House where nearly 300 people were massacred in 1642 by the Dundalk garrison.
Various stories recount what happened. All share the theme of people gathered together, perhaps for a nuptial Mass, when a young woman admitted the garrison and the slaughtering took place. There was a romantic and heartrending element to the tragedy. The young woman had fallen in love with garrison commander Townley and opened the door to her lover. The result was that her parents were also slaughtered. Townley deserted the girl on the pretext that if she could betray her own parents she would betray him also. He ended his life on his own gallows. The area is on the edge of former border-lands between the English Pale and Irish Monaghan. Over the centuries raids took place both ways with slaughters on both sides among the mainly nominal Catholic people.
Sometimes alliances between Irish and English fought other alliances of English and Irish. Occasionally a marriage consolidated relationships. In the early 1600s, after a raid by the Irish and a slaughter of local people, another Margaret Gernon of Killincoole Castle married Ross og McMahon from a leading Monaghan family before settling at Corfynlough near Clontibret. Their first son, Hugh og McMahon, took part in the 1641 insurrection and was killed in 1653. After her husband died Margaret returned to Louth and married Patrick Bellew from another Old English family.
In the 1960s the local Church of Ireland closed its doors and only a vandalised shell remains. However, relations between people are good and some of the remaining Protestants join with Catholic neighbours in interdenominational services to remember loved ones and pledge to a better future.
That such a small scattered community with a tortured past can come together to mark and welcome a diversity of past and present is an example we could all emulate.
One unionist participant from nearby Newry quoted Ghandi saying he wanted to open the windows to all the cultures of the world but would not be blown off his feet. That is surely the way to go. Our cultural perceptions and activities reflect a difficult past but like Deitrich Bonhoeffer, the German opponent of Naziism, we need to acknowledge and accept where we belong – warts and all – then patiently move forward with greater confidence.
