He wanted to hear everything. And each night he wrote up all he heard – who had returned from abroad, who’d gone away. He began recording what the gravestones told of that departed world of Protestantism, he wrote down speculations about stone-age settlements up at Aghadoon; he heard variations on the population of Belmullet and the population of Binghamstown; he was told stories of the old workhouse that became the fever hospital, of potato gathering in Scotland, of the disappearance of the barley and rye; he wrote short pieces on certain Saxon words still in use; he got a book from the travelling library that told him of findings from the Spanish Armada in Erris; he heard tales of the disappearance of the salmon, and the return of the salmon; he saw photographs from the good fishing days when Spanish and Welsh boats sheltered in Blind Harbour; he read of the daily trips to Sligo by sea. He wrote down tales of extraordinary and multiple animal births.

His book he called: The Mullet Ledger.

The people, learning the knack of his mind, ironically told Jonathan Adams extraordinary tales which he faithfully recorded. George Bernard Shaw going by Elly’s Bay on a white ass during the Second World War. Synge, in 1904, taking notes for The Playboy of the Western World in the Royal Hotel. John McCormack, the tenor, breaking into song in the Seaview. A phrenologist from Cork who came and measured the old people’s heads in the thirties to see was the head of a Catholic any different in size than the head of a Protestant.

“Did they arrive at any conclusion?” asked Jonathan.

“If they did, they didn’t tell us, Reverend,” laughed the woman.

“Bingham was the last Protestant to live on the Mullet,” said Bernie Burke. “The last Bingham married a Catholic in the thirties. And he and the wife had an arrangement. If boys were born they’d be Protestant like yourself, excuse me, and if girls, well then they’d be Catholic. The last Bingham must have been an honest man. In one way. And a sorry one at that. For it was girls the poor woman had and I mind my father saying he saw them when he was young. Auld Bingham did not care to cross his wife. The daughters grew up Catholic and so auld Bingham lived to see himself as the last Protestant on Mullet.”

“He was hard, you see,” said old Mrs Noone. “He brought bad luck on himself.”

“Oh, the Protestants are gone,” said Bernie. “I can’t think of one now. As a matter of fact, I don’t think there are any.” He thought for a moment. “Yes, Bingham was the last.” Then he shook his head and smiled benevolently at Jonathan. “Until you came, Reverend.”