In these recessionary times it was an unusual pleasure to hear of an investment yielding rich dividends. Yet on Friday, 17th April, a formal book launch in Enniskillen county Museum represented a successful return for several investors, including the Mercy Development Fund. The dividends took the form of a book of local history of a particular Fermanagh region called Boho. This is an area rich in tradition, a homeland deeply cherished by all who have roots there. Its story, set out so beautifully in the book launched on Friday, is aptly designated as a treasure trove of the history and lore of Boho.
Boho book cover
Several members of our province were in attendance at the formal launch of Boho Heritage: A Treasure Trove Of History And Lore. It was an occasion of pride for us, because Sr. Edel Bannon was one of the three-member editorial committee responsible for gathering into book-form a wealth of memories, recollections, photographs and artistic sketches and relevant extracts from State surveys. Edel has been a member of the Boho Heritage Committee since its foundation five years ago. For her and her co-editors, this book is a testimony to their inspiration and, even more, to their dedication. To call it a labour of love sounds like a cliché, but I for one can testify to the reality of the labour involved, having seen at first hand the work in progress.
One of the speakers at the launch, Professor P. Murphy, Chairperson of the Lottery Heritage Fund, spoke of the aptness of the word ‘heritage’ in the book’s title. In explaining the distinction between history and heritage he described the people of Boho to-day as the inheritors of what their forefathers had made of and in Boho.
Sr. Edel Bannon at the book launch
It was therefore particularly fitting that Edel Bannon, who nearly forty years ago made her Profession as a Sister of Mercy in the local diocese of Clogher, should have such a pivotal role in the making of this tangible expression of her Boho heritage. For the book has a plethora of accounts of family life in Boho, schooling in Boho, parish and church life in Boho, all the round of daily and yearly living that shapes each of us into the adults we ultimately become. Edel’s involvement in the making of this book was, I think, a recognition, perhaps overdue, of what we as Sisters of Mercy in this Province, owe to the areas that made us what we are.
When the Principal Speaker at the launch declared how indebted all Boho people would always to Edel and her co-editors, her sentiments would have echoed in the minds and hearts of us members of the Province who heard her. We all have cause to be grateful to Edel, to the Provincial Team who made office space available for the project and to the Mercy Development Fund. The book-launch exemplified for us, in these troubled times for Congregations and Provinces, how going back to the past may be a rich and generous contribution to our present.
Elizabeth Fee rsm
Northern Province
