Congress Reel “was composed by Joe Mills of Athlone in 1932, the year of the Eucharistic Congress” in Dublin. The Congress was held, in fact, 22–26 June 1932, and busses heading there from Belfast were stoned by Orangemen when they passed through Co. Down and Co. Armagh. The population of Ireland at the time was somewhere around four million, and it is reported that over a quarter of the population attended the event, as well as others from all over the world, and seven ocean liners anchored in Dublin ports accommodated some of them.
