It is the May Bank Holiday, a bank holiday we
acquired years ago when the Labour Party of this island nation of ours were in
Government. Prior to that, we celebrated
the Feast of Corpus Christi on the first week end in June. Once we returned to school on 7th
January after Little Christmas we lived for St. Patrick’ day to fall on a
Monday or Friday so that we would have a long week end off school. Half Term holidays were not the norm in my
childhood; unless it was a very long term until Easter. We also had school on Saturdays and two days off at Halloween.
June and the Corpus Christi week end are filled
with memories for me. Once we made our
Holy Communion we were considered fit enough to join in the Corpus Christi
procession. For weeks before the Big
Occasion of Our Making Our Holy Communion [the nun’s always seemed to refer to
it in sentences containing capital letters] we were paraded around the school
grounds wearing veils of every description and hue, from brilliantly Tide White
to Sunrise Yellow. Veils often donated
by past pupils and veils made from net curtains. The purpose of this? Well, I think the nuns believed that if we
were marshalled enough; and used to wearing the veils enough two things would
happen. We would walk like little saints
in our parish procession at Corpus Christi, and maybe the idea of wearing a
veil might hint a few 7 year olds into thinking about joining the convent. In a class of 33, twenty six took the
veil. On their wedding day. We’re not counting the 14 divorces and
widowhoods here, of the other seven only one was inspired to join a convent,
and at that, much to Mother Ignatius’ disgust, a different order.
From the age of 7 until, and memory is shaky here,
either twelve or The Vatican Council’s changes, my friends and I were dragged
down to the parish church, faces that would turn the milk sour on us, and
pucked into angelic smiles by Mothers who didn’t want anyone to think their
darling daughter wasn’t a living saint.
There is nothing like an Irish Mother to land a tight fist between the
shoulder blades and look at the same time as if she was straightening your
cardigan. If your own Mother didn’t
descend to such tactics, you could rest assured that Mrs Mulligan had no such
hesitation in landing both you and her own daughter Maura a “laminer” as we
used to call it.
Boys seemed to get off lighter, we were caught with
the veils. What had seemed wonderful in
May on First Holy Communion Day, all dressed up in white lace and cripplingly
tight shoes, was agony in a crowd of people, all walking along mumbling the
Rosary and swatting at midges. I blame
the midges. A swatter never stopped to
look if he, or she, were pulling at your veil as they vented their ire on the
insect. Mothers had a happy knack of
putting your veil on, tightly adhered to your head by clips, and God help you
if Mr O’Callaghan, and he 70 years of age, aided by a walking stick and a hip
flask of “Holy Medicine” caught your veil.
If he didn’t pull the hair off your head as well as the veil, then God
was surely on your side then.
Mr O’Mara and Mr O’Callaghan combined could bring
down the veils of a nation with sublime ease.
Mr O’Mara, in the year of 1962, stays in my memory. Painfully.
We were gathered in procession, sons, daughters and proud parents,
shuffling along down the church lane, up the drive of the local Big House, and
back up the church lane, singing “Bring Flowers of the Forest”, reciting the
rosary, and generally aiming to look as pious as possible. My friend Mary and I had come to terms, as
hardened communicants of two years, with the fact that the veil and the
procession were unavoidable aspects of our lives. Pure selfishness on our parents’ parts
deprived us of the joy of racing off over the hill with our other friends,
playing cheyneys, hide-and-go-seek and collecting blooms from a local woody
dell. No doubt, as part of a major grown
up scheme to get them into Heaven when the day came, parents had concocted this
punishment for us to make them appear holier to God. We were convinced of it.
That CC procession started out well. We were
scrubbed till we glowed; the boys had their best short trousers, sleeveless
jumpers, shirts and ties on and all of them had their hair slicked down with
the Daddy’s Brylcreem. We had our summer
school uniforms on us, pale blue gingham in my case, pink spots in Mary’s, [we attended
different schools] and our veils were pinned to our heads [I am sure my Mother
aimed for my hair] with whole packets of clips.
As we came along the home straight, just out of the gates of the Big
House, and almost onto the church lane, Mr O’Mara and his daughter barged in
mid centre of the line. Mr O’Mara in his
wicker bath chair pushed by his only surviving single daughter, Mildred.
It was not in Mildred nature to either say “excuse
me” or “Sorry” to anyone under the age of forty. She treated us to a glare from behind her
long red nose and bottle lensed glasses and hissed “make way for Father”. I fell in one direction, and would have broken
my arm only Mum grabbed hold of me and Mary staggered into the wall across the
lane, winding up with a shiner of a black eye where she had put a hand up to
protect her face. The picture of saintly
holiness, Mildred ploughed on and if she missed a few parishioners, well her
father was nothing if not diligent in striking out with his walking stick. An evil looking shillelagh with a nob on it
that would strike fear in the heart of the Parish Priest himself. Still we survived these years. In later years we often told each other that
it helped us negotiate Grafton Street in Dublin in rush hour. We were adept at ducking and diving by then.
To-day the parish church is closed after the last
Mass of the day at 11.15. Where once there was a Parish Priest and two curates,
today’s incumbent services three churches, He has three miles to go for the
10.15 in our village church and then after 11.15 in the parish he heads to
another village for the 12.30. Mass,
which could and did take up to two hours back in the day now takes twenty
minutes.
Twenty minutes that is unless you go to the other
Parish nearby at 10a.m., on a Sunday morning.
It’s a family Mass. Being a
wealthy parish it has a different parishioner attending this Mass. This is the Yummy Mummy and Hands On Daddy
Mass, with little Saoirse, Caoilan, Bethany-Marie-Eve and Torquil. On entering the church, the cacophony of
sound assaulting your ears is like the chattering of a wood full of sparrows. Mummy’s stand in the aisles chatting to each
other, Caoilfinn thumps Darragh, who in turn uses Piglet to take a swipe at
Hayleigh-Sarah-Louise. Foodie Dads chat
about that wonderful beer they discovered at that terrific market down in
wheredjacallit, and the joys of tofu, gluten free bread [and not a coeliac
among them] and green tea; the elderly also attend this Mass, especially the
women. It was the traditional time to
bring children to Mass if the husbands had attended the 8.30 sodality, after
Vatican II removed the fasting before taking the Eucharist rule.
Nowadays these elderly women can look forward to a
mass filled with the voices of yuppie children raised loudly in singing
Allelulia, Allulelia and even on occasion Alleluia, kicks in the back of the
knee from some four year old terrorist who Mummy is trying to stop from racing
off up the middle aisle to demand “one of those white bikkies, now, I said NOW!”
from the Priest. Oh! The poet had it
right, “all’s changed, changed utterly.
A terrible beauty is born”. There’s
nothing beautiful about the temper tantrums these little darlings can throw.
