This is the history of how the Catholic Church in Ireland influenced the law in the 1930s – and made it possible for any parish priest to stop any dance he didn’t like, for any reason, with the full cooperation of the Irish government and police. One priest “was wary, in particular, of outsiders – ‘devils’, as he saw them. ‘Persons who came to these dances from outside towns in motor cars were scoundrels of the lowest type, and were devils incarnate,’ he said.”