Copied from an extract from the "British Weekly" of 4th May 1905
Just two hundred years ago a colony of German Protestants, forced to leave the Palitinate by French oppression, settled in the midst of an intensely Catholic population at Limerick, in the South of Ireland. A large body of descendants of the original settlers still survive, forming a separate community in themselves, still Protestant in religion, and racially, half German and half Irish. As a native of Limerick, I know the surviving Palatines well. I have been brought into intimate relations with them, in their homes, at fairs, at public meetings, and have always marvelled at their racial qualities of physical grit and force of character, which have enabled them to withstand the tremendous force of environment, and survive as a separate and distinct people, socially and religiously, after the lapse of two centuries.
Ballingran is the centre of the settlement. It is a village about sixteen miles from the centre of Limerick, and two from the country town of Rathkeale. The substantial stone cottages of the Palatines, many of which were built by the original settlers are scattered in small irregular groups about the railway station of Ballingran, on the Limerick and NewcastleWest line. Around the district there are, perhaps, four or five hundred Palatines. Their surnames: Tesky, Switzer, Ruckel, Bethel, Bovinizer, Heavener, Corneille, Neizer, Mee, Dope, Shier - tell of their German descent. Environment has inevitably affected them to some extent. As far as national feeling is concerned, they are thoroughly Irish. But the vast majority of them are Methodists, and several of the German customs of their forefathers still survive among them. The little Methodist chapel of the settlement stands near Ballingrane railway station. Inside, it is plain and simple. I remember being told by a Palatines that formerly it was the custom to summon the congregation by sounding a cow's horn, which used to hang inside the chapel door. The history of this interesting plantation has never been written. An account of it's fate and fortunes can only be picked up from stray allusions here and there in various books. The Palatinate of the Rhine, lying between France and Germany and an independent state till towards the close of the eighteenth century, was laid waste in the wars at the opening of the century between Catholic France and Protestant Northern Europe. Seven thousand of the harassed inhabitants crowded into the camp of the Duke of Marlborough, who was in command of the Allied armies in the campaign against France, and on the invitation of Queen Anne, they consented to be deported to England. They were encamped on the commons of Camberwell and Blackheath, close to London. Now that England had got the Palatines she was puzzled to know what to do with them. It is a curious fact that only a few families of the foreigners settled in this country. About 3000 of them were sent to America, and the remaining 4000 "To strengthen the Protestant interest in Ireland" which was then only one policy of English statesmanship.
The Palatines were scattered as agricultural settlers over Ireland, but in a few years most of them became so dissatisfied with their circumstances that they declined any longer to be missionaries in Ireland and joined their compatriots in Pennsylvania.
About 200 families, consisting of close on 1000 individuals, settled in the County of Limerick on the Estate of Sir Thomas Southwell, of Castle Mattress, Rathkeale; and of the various plantations this was the only one which was successful. Under the agreement between the Government and Southwell, the Palatines got eight acres of land for each man, woman and child, under a lease at a rent of 5/- per acre, and the Government stocked their farms and paid their rent for twenty years. The Palatines went to Limerick with arms in their hands. Their men were supplied with muskets and ammunition, and were enrolled in a Corps called 'The German Fusiliers", or "True Blues", which existed until the yeomanry were disbanded at the close of the Napoleonic Wars. Naturally they expected a hostile reception from the natives. I have not been able to ascertain definitely whether there were clearances of the natives to make room for them, but I am disposed to believe that they were settled on untenanted lands. At any rate the Palatines were not molested in any way on settling in Limerick, and the tradition to-day amongst the survivors is that the right through the two centuries, the relations between them and the Catholic community among whom their homes were scattered have been so friendly that they never strained, even in times of the fiercest political and religious unrest
Their language was of course German, and they were Protestants of the Moravian persuasion. They elected a Burgomaster who settled their disputes. They opened schools in which German was taught as well as English. They slept, as Germans still sleep, between two feather beds. One of their most cherished customs for many years was to lay in the coffin with their dead, an open copy of the German Bible.
As agriculturists, they held a large tract of pasture land in common, and they tilled almost the whole of their farms, growing potatoes, wheat, barley and oats. instead of digging their potato crops like their Irish neighbours, they ploughed them out. The lease under which they held their lands from Lord Southwell was for three lives or fifty years. On the expiration of the leases the rents were raised from 5/- to thirty shillings per acre, and this demand was regarded so exorbitant by the younger generation that, rather than pay it, many of them emigrated to America.
The journal of John Wesley contains many vivid glimpses of the Palatine settlement in the latter half of the Eighteenth Century. In the forty years between 1749 and 1789, that extraordinary man paid numerous visits to Ireland, with staffs of itinerant preachers, to conduct crusades of Methodism, and the Palatines interested him greatly. He says that morally they had degenerated. They had no clergymen, and no place of Public Worship. "They were becoming eminent", he says, "For drunkenness, cursing, swearing, and an utter neglect of religion". But in 1750, their Burgomaster, Philip Guier, hearing one of the Preachers in the City of Limerick, was converted and brought Methodism and morals to the settlement at Ballingran.
It was in 1756 that John Wesley went for the first time to Ballingran. Here
are two extracts from his journal:
Friday, June 18th: In the examining of the Society, I was obliged to pause many times. The words of the plain, honest people came with so much weight as frequently to stop me for a while, and raise a general cry among the hearers. I rode back through Adare, once a strong and flourishing town and full of people, now without walls, and almost without inhabitants; only a few poor huts remain. At a small distance from these are the ample ruins of three or four convents, delightfully situated by the river, which runs through a most fruitful vale.
Another extract from the Journal, written in connection with a subsequent visit to Ballingran, shows the indignation to which Wesley was moved over the Landlord's treatment of the Palatines on the expiration of their leases: Friday, June 14th, 1765 _ About noon I preached in Ballygarene to the small remains of the poor Palatines. As they could not get food and raiment here, with all their diligence and frugality, part are scattered up and down the Kingdom, and part are gone to America. I stand amazed! Have landlords no commonsense (whether they have humanity or no) that they will suffer such tenants as these to be starved away from them. Wesley visited Ireland twent one times in forty years. The final visit was in May 1789, when he was eighty-six years of age. Again ************** Castle Mattress) and Rathkeale ***, and saw **** for the last time. He hears testimony to the improvement which had been wrought amongst them by the Methodist Preachers. "There is no cursing or swearing" he says. "No Sabbath -breaking, no drunkenness, no ale house in any of them".
Many changes have taken place since the Palatines settled in County Limerick two hundred years ago. The land of their Fathers was divided among petty kings of Germany in 1815 on the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, and accordingly the name of the Palatinate is no longer to be found in the Maps. For a century the Southwell family, which brought the Palatines to Limerick "To strengthen the Protestants in Ireland" has been Catholic. But among all the changes and Vicissitudes of time, the Palatines still survive at Ballingran, having offered a stout resistance for two centuries to the powerful influence of environment. They preserved the language of their forefathers into the 19th Century. One traveller, who visited the settlement in 1810, relates that on leaving, his host squeezed his hands most affectionately, saying in his German accent "Gott pless you, my tear young man." Long ago, as a result of modifications slowly but surely introduced among them and surrounding circumstances the German accent gave away to the Irish brogue. But as it has been their custom to intermarry within the community, they have preserved casts of countenance which are unmistakably German as their names. And posses besides peculiarities of character sufficiently well defined to make them a distinct type of people, yet withal kindly Irish of the Irish.