An T-Atair Miceál Ó Gallacubair (Father Mick) (1941)

Father Mick Gallagher was my uncle as I said before and I was only three weeks old when he came to Achill as a parish priest. He came in 1847, he spent a while in Turoc (a place about 4 miles from Castlebar on the road to Ballyvary) and a while in Islandeady (a place between Castlebar and Westport) It was from Islandeady he came to Achill ,when he came he was living in a small house in Cashel l(a village in centre of Achill Island) He got the house repaired and he had a fine comportable thatched house then. When the jumpers got the land in Cashel the priest had to leave it. He came up to Bréan-Asgaill(a village about 3 miles south of Achill Sound on west side of the Sound). Bréan- Asgaill was in Pike’s estate (Pike was a landlord and grandfather of the present Mr Pike who lives about half a mile west of Achill Sound). Pike was a great friend of the priest also Pike was a Protestant. He put a man out of his house in Bréan- Asgaill and gave the house to Father Mick, but he build a house for the man he put out, indeed Pike was very good to my uncle(Fr Mick) . He gave him eight acres of land at Kildownet chapel and fenced it in for him, you can see it today, it is on the south side of the chapel and it is now divided into eight stripes, if you count eight stripes up(southwards) from the chapel you will come to an aitnn ditch. All them eight stipes was land that Pike gave to my uncle. Fr Mick was a great horse-man and he used to have a good horse always. He had one grey horse once and indeed he was a fine horse. There’s a likeness of the priest riding on the grey horse, in Pikes below yet (in Mr Pike’s residence, half a mile west of Achill Sound). You can see the house in Bréan Asgaill where my uncle was living, it is down at the shore. It is a two storeyed slated house now but it was only a thatched house in my uncle’s time. There is a man named Scanlon living in it now.