Father, James Costello
Father's Aunt (as told to me)
By Sarah Costello

Father, James Costello, used to tell of his aunt and uncle (her husband) being saved by a miracle during the famine of Ireland.

Their bins of grain were getting dangerously low, so her husband told her not to give away any more grain to the needy lest they too would starve. During the time, a needy woman came to get something to sustain her family. She said her family was starving. She had some small children to feed and no food.

Father's aunt could not resist the woman's plea and gave her what grain remained. She then, realizing what she had done, knelt in prayer until her husband came home. She was afraid to face him, so when he came in the door, she continued to pray. On entering, he lifted the lid of the bin and found it was full to the rim with meal. In astonishment he asked, "How did this happen?" She then told him what she had done, and they both knelt down and thanked God for his kindness to them.

Father used to tell another little episode that helped his family and neighbors survive the famine.

It came about through a dream of some buried money on one of the Islands of Arran in Galway Bay. The money was presumably buried by an ancestor during the period of religious persecution and was inaccessible due to the mountainous area that it was in. The tenant who lived on the island land near the treasure agreed to give Grandfather and his neighbor who went with him, half of the treasure if they found it. However, when Grandfather found the treasure, the tenant refused to keep his promise, so Grandfather and his neighbor got very little of it. The tenant owner that night turned his stock loose and left during the night. With the small share Grandfather got, he helped his neighbors.

Many years later when we were leaving Ireland in 1883, Mother found one of these old coins when cleaning the house. She took it to a banker in Galway. He told her that on account of age, the coin could not be used as money, but he would give her its value in gold, which he did. The coin was made during the time of James I. It was James I who had driven most of the Catholic landowners out of their homes and estates in Ulster, North Ireland and given their lands to his friends and political supporters, who were mostly Protestants, many from Scotland.

No doubt, many of these exiled people buried their gold in out of the way places where they hoped someday to find it again in better times. These times never came during their lifetimes.