Irish society has changed enormously since John Healy urged the neglected districts of the West to move for action and to take pride in their own village, town and county. Local patriotism was at the heart of a healthy nation, he told us, and near the end of his book Death of an Irish Town he quoted John Kennedy's phrase "a rising tide lifts all boats".
These thoughts came to mind when two local histories - both from Meath - were opened. The short one first: a picture book with commentary Glimpses of Skryne and Rathfeigh, a neat, lively and varied collection of photographs from the shops, the farrier, the horses and hounds, church occasions, such as first Holy Communion - the life of the area in not much more than a hundred pages of pictures (one to a page). It even includes a picture of the printers of the book - A. & J. Print, which started as a hobby in a spare room of a flourishing family business. Karen Carty took the pictures and designed the cover; Joan Gallagher, Marie Fennell, Leo Curran and Father Joe Gleeson helped to compile the whole. Mary Begley edited it.
A more ambitious publication is a History of Kiltale, made possible by "the marvellous support of Leader II" in finance and other ways. And local contributions too. A beautifully designed book. Editor's note: "The memory of how things were, will be lost forever, if a last effort is not made to record the ordinary simple day-to-day happenings of Meath especially pre-1960, before TV and home movies became the norm." Kiltale, incidentally, is described as a parish of 405 acres, three miles west of Dunshaughlin.
A parish school in Galtrim, opened in 1801 and privately sponsored, taught Catholic and Protestant children, sustained by private subscription with a set of rules hung up including: "Remember your learning is for your own advantage and make the most of what you can get .. ." And a reminder "that scholars must come with hair clean combed for if your head is at dirty your hair must be cut off."
Famous Kildale people include Dom Columbia Marmion, recently beatified; James Clarence Mangan, the poet, whose mother came from there; Captain Con Power, famous Army rider; Dick McKee, murdered as reprisal in the Castle. Not all natives but people connected with the parish.
Lastly, a slim publication of the Rathfeigh Historical Society with practical articles, one "Early Developments in Producing Clean Milk'.