Walter Pringle was just three when his Protestant farmer father, Joseph, died in 1951, leaving his mother, Isabella, to rear six children and manage the family farm outside Clones in Co Monaghan, just a mile and a half from the Border.
The family’s neighbours, all of them Catholics, were the difference between disaster and survival, remembers the 77-year-old Pringle, who is now a lay Church of Ireland preacher in the Clogher diocese.
“The Johnny McGurks, the Paddy McGurks – different families – the Paddy Beggans, the Daltons, the Duffys, the Sreenans, the McKennas – they treated our farm work the same as their own.
“Pringle’s hay needed to be saved, Pringle’s potatoes needed to be set, they helped with it all, did it all,” he goes on, noting how the kindness of neighbours then influenced the later lives of all of Joseph Pringle’s children.
RM Block
The Pringles’ story is far from unusual in the Border counties and especially in Heather Humphreys’ own county of Monaghan. The county is home to a 10th of the State’s Presbyterians, of whom the Fine Gael presidential candidate is one.
Today, Pringle is pleased that a fellow county woman is running, hoping that her candidacy will help increase understanding of the different traditions on the island.
If Pringle is happy to talk, however, there is a caution in others left over from the Troubles, where Border people – not just Presbyterians and Church of Ireland – recoil from intrusive questioning about identity.
“Religion isn’t an issue for the vast majority. The only question is whether someone is a good neighbour, or not, but we’re private people here,” said one person who preferred to speak anonymously.
So far, the presidential campaign has not ignited, though there is a quiet support in the Cavan/Monaghan constituency for the woman who served as a Fine Gael TD for 13 years, regardless of political allegiances, or religion.
The nervousness this week is partially explained by a newspaper report that made much of Humphreys’ husband Eric’s past membership of the Orange Order – something once almost obligatory for Protestants living in the Border counties.
“I was born in ’53 – if you weren’t in the Orange Order in my youth, you were the odd man out,” says local historian Noel Carney, whose Catholic father worked closely with Humphreys’ father, Freddie Stewart, to develop Monaghan Co-Op and Creamery.
“It was an accepted thing that Protestants would stay together and marry each other. The same on the Catholic side. Thankfully, that’s all changing now. In the past, it was difficult to find a Protestant who wasn’t a member of the Orange Order,” he said.
Humphreys was born and raised just outside Drum village in Co Monaghan, about 6km from Cootehill – a place often described as “the most Protestant village” in the State, though other faiths and none live there now.
The Protestant primary school in the village where Humphreys spent her early years is now home to the Wee Drummers preschool, with the playground filled with the voices of children from faith and non-faith backgrounds.
The name harks back to the village’s Protestant heritage, where each year a number of bands – many of whom also turn out for local St Patrick’s Day parades – play in what is locally called “The Picnic”.
It is not, however, an Orange parade, and this is important in Border terminology, even if the distinction confuses some. The only Orange parade in the Republic occurs annually in Rossnowlagh, Co Donegal, taking place on the Saturday before the Twelfth.
In fact, there has not been an Orange parade in Monaghan since 1931 after a series of attacks by republicans took place in Leitrim and Cavan, with one attack prompting the penning of a poem remembering “The Battle of Ardrum Hill”.
“The Picnic in Drum has nothing to do with the Orange Order. It’s run by the accordion band, it’s a community event, open to the public. Everybody’s welcome. The Orange Order are not running it,” says Angela Graham, a lifelong friend of Humphreys.
Éamon Ó Cuív, then minister for community, rural and Gaeltacht affairs, came one year, Graham remembers. “He was up on the 40-foot trailer, and he addressed everyone, got a great welcome. It was a big evening for us and such excitement,” she recalls.
A return of Orange marches in Monaghan was urged, however, by Sinn Féin councillor Vincent Conlon, who was also a former IRA volunteer. Mr Conlon died last summer. So far, one has not happened.
Graham went to primary school in Drum alongside Humphreys, and later the two were sent by their parents to St Aidan’s Comprehensive School in Cootehill – which took in pupils from all faiths long before it was common elsewhere.
Noel Carney was a pupil there, too, though a decade before: “It was wonderful. We were all integrated and we were great friends with each other. We played together at break-time and we didn’t see the differences between us.”
Humphreys’ political career was fostered by a fellow Presbyterian politician, Fine Gael’s Seymour Crawford, who was the only Ulster Protestant to serve in Dáil Éireann during his time as a TD for Cavan/Monaghan between 1997 and 2011.
She took his place on Monaghan County Council when he was elected as a TD and, later, ascended to the Dáil when Crawford stepped away before the 2011 general election because of ill-health.
Her appointment three years later as Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht stunned Fine Gael colleagues. “She would not have been seen then as cabinet material,” said one colleague of the time.
The post began badly after she was embroiled in a controversy about the appointment of John McNulty to the Irish Museum of Modern Art board, especially when he ran to fill a byelection vacancy in the Seanad later.
In truth, Humphreys, just days in office, had been instructed to make the appointment, since McNulty could not run for the Seanad panel vacancy unless he could show a connection with cultural matters.
“It just goes to show that Presbyterians are lousy liars. She could not say that she was told to appoint him, and then she could not think of anything else to say,” says one close observer of the time, not unkindly.
The experience left her badly bruised and, equally, left with her a jaundiced view of the Fourth Estate. “I see the vultures are already here,” she told a local in Monaghan at a function at the height of the controversy.
However, she gained in experience and confidence in the roles she enjoyed in the years afterwards, including Rural and Community Development, Social Protection and Business, Enterprise and Innovation.
For nine months, she filled Helen McEntee’s place in Justice during her maternity leave, along with her other ministerial roles. “She has a capacity for hard work, and for making decisions. She’s not afraid of either,” said one official.
In Social Protection, she drew heavily on her experience as the manager of the Cootehill credit union, constantly framing actions against the backdrop of cases she dealt with during the post-2008 financial crisis.
Today, the credit union has three branches in Kingscourt, Bailieborough and Cootehill and 24,000 members. Wishing her well, its chief executive, Angela Rice, said she was “instrumental” in its growth and had provided “steady leadership”.
[ ‘Heather gets things done’: Pride in Drum as Humphreys begins Áras campaignOpens in new window ]
For now, there are concerns in Monaghan – to say that it is a fear would be overstating it – that Humphreys’ Presbyterian background will be used against her to stoke division.
Local Presbyterian minister Rev Daryl Edwards thinks carefully before making a public comment. “On a personal level, I know Heather Humphreys very well, so it is exciting to know a presidential candidate first hand.”
Though an official Presbyterian comment “wouldn’t be appropriate”, he encouraged his congregation “to prayerfully consider” who they will support, and to “pray for those in authority, and those who seek elected office, at whatever level in the country”.
Meanwhile, the Belfast-based grand secretary of the Orange Order, Mervyn Gibson, is keen to emphasise that the choice of the next president is a matter for voters south of the Border.
Pressed, however, to offer his view, he says: “Personally, I think Michael D Higgins has been horrendous for community relations. I’m looking for a president who will build on what Mary McAleese did to grow relationships with Northern Ireland.
“Look at all the good work she did over the years, which was forgotten about during his term in office. He didn’t go down well with people, period. He had no rapport with people in Northern Ireland.”
Understandably, given her long friendship with Humphreys, Angela Graham is thinking positively: “If elected, I know she will follow in the footsteps of those amazing women, the two Marys there before, Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese.”
Humpheys’ campaign slogan is “Community, Unity and Opportunity”, though the unity referred to is not the unity of the island, but, rather, the need for a president who will be “a unifying force to bring people together”.
Nevertheless, Humphreys does favour a united Ireland. “I definitely do, I have committed to that, but only through working with people and bringing them together,” she said at her Monaghan campaign launch last week.
If elected, she would be able to offer a hand of friendship across the Border in a way that no other president has been able to do, Graham argues.
“She’s lived it. She understands. It’s in her DNA. That’s what’s so important,” she says. “No other candidate will bring that. She has that unique ability to cross community divides. She wouldn’t just be talking the talk.”
