Week ending 24th February 2015
When people remark at this time of year that winter is nearly over, I try and bring them down to earth by remarking that it was on the 25th of February that the great blizzard of 1947 began. I know, because my sister Mary came with the snow. I don’t remember noticing either herself or the snow, as I was in a sense footless at the time. No, not with alcohol as I was just over a year old. I have often been told that I did not start to walk until I was a year and three months, so I suppose it is fair to say that the snow and myself left the ground about the same time. I am reputed to have been a flyer on my bum around the floor, I am reliably informed that if there had been such a discipline in the Winter Olympics of the time I would be the proud possessor of a gold medal. I was never to become very fast on my feet and to this day have the not so proud boast that I never won anything on a field of play in my life. I have not given up yet though, as I will soon be eligible for the over seventies duck-egg and silver spoon race.
The first time that I remember noticing my baby sister was probably about a year later, the day she threw her bottle out of the cot. Baby bottles then were made of glass, so it shattered into smithereens on the concrete floor. I was loitering without intent on the same floor and was amazed to see the shards of glass sparkle like diamonds in the light of the oil-lamp. I grabbed the piece nearest to me and within seconds there was blood spurting from the thumb of my right hand. That was in itself fascinating, as it seemed impossible that such a small thumb could produce so much blood. My mother sat me on her lap and squeezed my hand and thumb until the blood stopped. In the meantime my father had gone out to the barn from which he returned carrying a great big dirty cobweb. It was that which eventually congealed the blood and kept me from bleeding to death, so in thanksgiving I have not, in so far as I know, ever hurt a spider since.
There was no talk of stitching such a wound then, so my thumb still carries that scar from stem to stern. It is the same thumb that now rubs holy oils on the foreheads of babies and those who are sick, or rubs on ashes on the first day of Lent. It is probably the main reason I did not go in for a life of crime as “Scarthumb” might have become as famous as “Scarface.” Even at the infancy of finger-printing I would have stood out like a sore thumb, if you will pardon the pun. That episode is one of the few I remember from under the age of three, though I do remember my grandmother’s funeral about a year later, or at least some aspects of it such as the coffin that arrived outside our house on the roof-rack of the only car in the village. I am reputed to have asked “What is the lovely box for?”
When I look up that village of Ballydavock in which we lived, on the 1901 or 1911 Census websites I am surprised to find family surnames of people I never heard of, even though I was born less than forty or fifty years later. I can understand why, as my own and a number of other families that walked those roads and tilled those fields, Fahys, Hughes, Bodkins, Skeffingtons and Stauntons no longer have a presence there. But as long as we live we carry with us the memories of the happy times as well as the mishaps that helped to shape us. The fields look smaller now than when we covered every inch with hay-fork and rake, but they travel with us wherever we live. People come and go like February snow, but the sun still shines on those rounded drumlin hills of fond memory.
The first time that I remember noticing my baby sister was probably about a year later, the day she threw her bottle out of the cot. Baby bottles then were made of glass, so it shattered into smithereens on the concrete floor. I was loitering without intent on the same floor and was amazed to see the shards of glass sparkle like diamonds in the light of the oil-lamp. I grabbed the piece nearest to me and within seconds there was blood spurting from the thumb of my right hand. That was in itself fascinating, as it seemed impossible that such a small thumb could produce so much blood. My mother sat me on her lap and squeezed my hand and thumb until the blood stopped. In the meantime my father had gone out to the barn from which he returned carrying a great big dirty cobweb. It was that which eventually congealed the blood and kept me from bleeding to death, so in thanksgiving I have not, in so far as I know, ever hurt a spider since.
There was no talk of stitching such a wound then, so my thumb still carries that scar from stem to stern. It is the same thumb that now rubs holy oils on the foreheads of babies and those who are sick, or rubs on ashes on the first day of Lent. It is probably the main reason I did not go in for a life of crime as “Scarthumb” might have become as famous as “Scarface.” Even at the infancy of finger-printing I would have stood out like a sore thumb, if you will pardon the pun. That episode is one of the few I remember from under the age of three, though I do remember my grandmother’s funeral about a year later, or at least some aspects of it such as the coffin that arrived outside our house on the roof-rack of the only car in the village. I am reputed to have asked “What is the lovely box for?”
When I look up that village of Ballydavock in which we lived, on the 1901 or 1911 Census websites I am surprised to find family surnames of people I never heard of, even though I was born less than forty or fifty years later. I can understand why, as my own and a number of other families that walked those roads and tilled those fields, Fahys, Hughes, Bodkins, Skeffingtons and Stauntons no longer have a presence there. But as long as we live we carry with us the memories of the happy times as well as the mishaps that helped to shape us. The fields look smaller now than when we covered every inch with hay-fork and rake, but they travel with us wherever we live. People come and go like February snow, but the sun still shines on those rounded drumlin hills of fond memory.
Week ending 17th February 2015
We all tend to make ourselves the stars of our own history, to look at life through the lenses of our own agendas. I have watched a number of well made television programmes recently which looked at aspects of history big and small, local and national from a point of view with which I would agree, but which were not open to a contrary or equally legitimate opposite view. Good viewing, but poor history. Those programmes will however be accepted as historically correct by those who have not lived through those periods of what is now the last century. They will not know any better. How could they? Two of the programmes dealt with small revolutions in Gaeltacht areas more than forty years ago. “Ní Dhúnfar Scoil Dhún Chaoin” (Dunquin School Will Not Be Closed) on TG4 dealt with an attempt to close the nearest national school to the Blasket Islands, and the ultimately successful efforts locally and nationally to have that school reopened, as well as its survival to the present day. Sacrifices were made, teachers worked voluntarily or on small pay for a number of years until it was eventually declared officially reopen by Minister for Education Dick Burke in the early days of the Fine Gael/Labour coalition of 1973 to 1977. As well as local pressure, the school had a powerful lobby in Dublin in which poet Máire Mhac an tSaoí and her husband, Labour Minister Conor Cruise O;Brien were prominent. It was a “winner takes it all” documentary, with no obvious effort to speak to anyone on the other side of the argument.
The other programme, “An Mar A Chéile Muid?” (Are We Still The Same?) also on TG4, documented the Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement of around the late sixties/early seventies, through footage from the time as well as interviews with those who were prominently involved. This mainly young idealistic movement helped to bring about an Irish Radio station (Radio na Gaeltachta) and eventually a TV service, (TG4) as well as the elected Gaeltacht Authority, recently gelded of its democratic mandate by the present Government. The main purpose of the programme seemed to be to ask the question was there anyone prepared anymore to stand up for Gaeltacht or Irish Language Rights. Some would argue that many of those involved in both Dún Chaoin and Conamara ended up in good jobs in Radio na Gaeltachta and other institutions, and were noticeable by their absence from subsequent withholding of cartax protests which brought some of us to jail in the eighties. It is not so much “To the victors the spoils” as “To the tellers of history the spoils.”
On a national level, I enjoyed the RTÉ programme: “A Rebel Act, Poems that shaped Ireland.” I had a particular interest in the early Irish language poets, and was very pleased to see them represented, even though I would suggest that our own Antaine Ó Raiftearaí was closer to the mood of the people than anyone of the mainly Munster poets quoted. Perhaps he was not seen as enough of a rebel. I was glad too to see Pádraig Pearse get due recognition as a poet as well as a rebel leader. It was natural enough that “rebel” poetry would have a go at all the hoary old institutions that can be blamed for everything that is wrong in the world of the rebel. It does not seem to have been noticed yet that in the secular sectarian world beloved by so many of our intellectuals, religious poetry is now rebel poetry because it goes against the grain of what is accepted in the polite society cocoon of the arts and media establishment. Have a grain or two of salt ready for the flood of media “history” we are about to get for 1916.
The other programme, “An Mar A Chéile Muid?” (Are We Still The Same?) also on TG4, documented the Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement of around the late sixties/early seventies, through footage from the time as well as interviews with those who were prominently involved. This mainly young idealistic movement helped to bring about an Irish Radio station (Radio na Gaeltachta) and eventually a TV service, (TG4) as well as the elected Gaeltacht Authority, recently gelded of its democratic mandate by the present Government. The main purpose of the programme seemed to be to ask the question was there anyone prepared anymore to stand up for Gaeltacht or Irish Language Rights. Some would argue that many of those involved in both Dún Chaoin and Conamara ended up in good jobs in Radio na Gaeltachta and other institutions, and were noticeable by their absence from subsequent withholding of cartax protests which brought some of us to jail in the eighties. It is not so much “To the victors the spoils” as “To the tellers of history the spoils.”
On a national level, I enjoyed the RTÉ programme: “A Rebel Act, Poems that shaped Ireland.” I had a particular interest in the early Irish language poets, and was very pleased to see them represented, even though I would suggest that our own Antaine Ó Raiftearaí was closer to the mood of the people than anyone of the mainly Munster poets quoted. Perhaps he was not seen as enough of a rebel. I was glad too to see Pádraig Pearse get due recognition as a poet as well as a rebel leader. It was natural enough that “rebel” poetry would have a go at all the hoary old institutions that can be blamed for everything that is wrong in the world of the rebel. It does not seem to have been noticed yet that in the secular sectarian world beloved by so many of our intellectuals, religious poetry is now rebel poetry because it goes against the grain of what is accepted in the polite society cocoon of the arts and media establishment. Have a grain or two of salt ready for the flood of media “history” we are about to get for 1916.
Week ending 10th February 2015
This week is a busy one in Cill Chiaráin, the half parish of Carna, as it hosts the annual novena in honour of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, or Muire na Síor-Chabhrach as it known in Irish. I am led to believe that it is the only all Irish language novena in Ireland and it was originally organised by a former curate, a Redemptorist priest, an tAthair Prionsias Ó Maolaithe who worked in the parish from the millennium year until his death in 2006. This novena tends to coincide with the one held in Galway Cathedral each year under the auspices of the Redemptorist Order and it draws large crowds from other Gaeltacht parishes in the area. The feeling of a real mission is engendered by the mobile stalls that arrive from Northern Ireland in order to sell religious goods. It will come to an end on Shrove Tuesday, just in time for Ash Wednesday and Lent.
Shrove, or Pancake Tuesday is a long way from the carnival in Rio, but it is one of our last remnants of what was once a strong tradition of pre-Lenten enjoyment, because of course Lent was a lot more scary in terms of cutbacks and belt tightening then than it is now. I remember the days when church fasting rules laid down: “One small meal and two collations.” As a youngster growing up at the time of this State’s second Coalition Government between 1954 and 1957, I found it hard to get my little brain around how the name of the government had found its way into Lenten regulations. Collation was explained to me later as a light breakfast or tea, preferably not containing an egg.
A glance back fifty or sixty years through the Marriage Register in any parish shows that Shrove Tuesday was a big day for weddings, as ‘eating the fat and drinking sweet wine,’ as referred to by the prophet Nehemiah, not to speak of frothy Guinness or lethal poitín would be frowned on bigtime during Lent. There is a tradition in many faiths that fasting is preceded or followed by a bit of a party. We hear quite often of Ramadan these days and how Muslims celebrate afterwards. I have often drawn attention to how many of our feasts, festivals or occasions for enjoyment have their roots in religious celebrations. The experience of officially God-less societies during the heyday of communism in Europe suggest that enjoyment was sadly lacking for many people during those times, and that in itself probably hastened their downfall.
Lent itself has not gone away, you know. It has taken on a different form. People decide themselves on what they will or will not do for Lent, rather than being dictated to. Despite that, it is surprising how many people actually start some programme of spiritual or physical rehabilitation, or both, for Lent. It fits neatly enough into the after Christmas operation transformation, as many of us have, perhaps unknown to ourselves, followed the advice of Nehemiah in eating the fat and drinking the sweet wine. Then too, there is the Trócaire tradition which is there for about forty years now, and which has taught us that giving is more important than giving up. We can of course do both and enjoy ourselves even more afterwards as we “eat the fat and drink the sweet wine” of celebration of Christ’s resurrection.
Shrove, or Pancake Tuesday is a long way from the carnival in Rio, but it is one of our last remnants of what was once a strong tradition of pre-Lenten enjoyment, because of course Lent was a lot more scary in terms of cutbacks and belt tightening then than it is now. I remember the days when church fasting rules laid down: “One small meal and two collations.” As a youngster growing up at the time of this State’s second Coalition Government between 1954 and 1957, I found it hard to get my little brain around how the name of the government had found its way into Lenten regulations. Collation was explained to me later as a light breakfast or tea, preferably not containing an egg.
A glance back fifty or sixty years through the Marriage Register in any parish shows that Shrove Tuesday was a big day for weddings, as ‘eating the fat and drinking sweet wine,’ as referred to by the prophet Nehemiah, not to speak of frothy Guinness or lethal poitín would be frowned on bigtime during Lent. There is a tradition in many faiths that fasting is preceded or followed by a bit of a party. We hear quite often of Ramadan these days and how Muslims celebrate afterwards. I have often drawn attention to how many of our feasts, festivals or occasions for enjoyment have their roots in religious celebrations. The experience of officially God-less societies during the heyday of communism in Europe suggest that enjoyment was sadly lacking for many people during those times, and that in itself probably hastened their downfall.
Lent itself has not gone away, you know. It has taken on a different form. People decide themselves on what they will or will not do for Lent, rather than being dictated to. Despite that, it is surprising how many people actually start some programme of spiritual or physical rehabilitation, or both, for Lent. It fits neatly enough into the after Christmas operation transformation, as many of us have, perhaps unknown to ourselves, followed the advice of Nehemiah in eating the fat and drinking the sweet wine. Then too, there is the Trócaire tradition which is there for about forty years now, and which has taught us that giving is more important than giving up. We can of course do both and enjoy ourselves even more afterwards as we “eat the fat and drink the sweet wine” of celebration of Christ’s resurrection.
Week ending 3rd February 2015
I once overheard a boy and a girl under the age of five discuss the clouds that passed overhead as they sat side by side on their swings that had slowly swung to a halt. They were picking out the clouds on which they believed their dog and cat and even relations that had passed away now lived. “No, it’s not that one. That is a rain cloud. They must be on a fluffy one. Look at that lovely one. I’m sure they are on that one.” Imagination is one of our greatest gifts, an essential basis for any kind of faith. The lovely thoughts and desires expressed by the children came to my mind on the day my millennium dog Mocca passed on to the great kennels in the sky. She had a great innings, a couple of thousand walks to Tourmakeady waterfall, before spending almost five years on Carna’s many beaches, frolicking in the Atlantic waves in all kinds of weather, almost to the end, when she could barely walk.
Mocca was not a full Labrador, or if she was, she never showed me the papers that proved it. I suspect the reddish hue on her back that led her to be named after coffee had a connection with a red setter. Her retriever instincts that led her to carry sticks or larger pieces of timber through and from the wood, as well as slataí mara, sea rods from the shore in more recent times, back up that theory. It didn’t matter what her pedigree was, she was a lovely dog that like myself grew to be an old sea-dog, preferring swims to walks, as arthritis and cancer took their toll. She certainly got many mentions in this column, and it is not long since a colleague asked me at a meeting of the clergy how she was. It was good to hear that my ramblings reach as far as some of the other presbyteries.
Ranger was the first dog I remember, always there in the first twelve years or so of my life, a black and white terrier running ahead of us as we went to drive cattle to water on scattered stripes of land. He was a minder who would never let us children out of his sight, turning around to check on us every twenty or thirty paces. We would sometimes hide behind a wall or a bush to try and trick him, but he would have sniffed us out in a matter of seconds. As he got old and stiff our father tried to provide him with a humane ending by feeding him a full box of “aspros,” which were somewhat of a cure-all for colds and flus back in the fifties. Ranger was like a young pup the following morning, and he was much brighter for the last six months or so of his natural life.
Then there was Spot, a bounding collie with more energy than he had an opportunity to use, as we did not have sheep. He fell victim to poison at a young age, and such was the sadness at his passing that he was not replaced. Hearts did not need to be broken again. Stan, named after myself arrived at the presbytery door in Carraroe on the lead of a young boy who said his father had threatened to kill her because she had bitten the head off a duck. She was to spend three years on the Aran Island of Inis Meáin without ever seeing the mainland. The day she arrived back onto the pier in Spiddal she picked out the car she had known three years earlier from among twenty that were parked there. Some people’s lives are written in prose or poetry. Much of mine was written in dogs, but then “the dogs in the street” are the ones that are said to know everything. All we need to do now is to find a way of translating the “bark.”
Mocca was not a full Labrador, or if she was, she never showed me the papers that proved it. I suspect the reddish hue on her back that led her to be named after coffee had a connection with a red setter. Her retriever instincts that led her to carry sticks or larger pieces of timber through and from the wood, as well as slataí mara, sea rods from the shore in more recent times, back up that theory. It didn’t matter what her pedigree was, she was a lovely dog that like myself grew to be an old sea-dog, preferring swims to walks, as arthritis and cancer took their toll. She certainly got many mentions in this column, and it is not long since a colleague asked me at a meeting of the clergy how she was. It was good to hear that my ramblings reach as far as some of the other presbyteries.
Ranger was the first dog I remember, always there in the first twelve years or so of my life, a black and white terrier running ahead of us as we went to drive cattle to water on scattered stripes of land. He was a minder who would never let us children out of his sight, turning around to check on us every twenty or thirty paces. We would sometimes hide behind a wall or a bush to try and trick him, but he would have sniffed us out in a matter of seconds. As he got old and stiff our father tried to provide him with a humane ending by feeding him a full box of “aspros,” which were somewhat of a cure-all for colds and flus back in the fifties. Ranger was like a young pup the following morning, and he was much brighter for the last six months or so of his natural life.
Then there was Spot, a bounding collie with more energy than he had an opportunity to use, as we did not have sheep. He fell victim to poison at a young age, and such was the sadness at his passing that he was not replaced. Hearts did not need to be broken again. Stan, named after myself arrived at the presbytery door in Carraroe on the lead of a young boy who said his father had threatened to kill her because she had bitten the head off a duck. She was to spend three years on the Aran Island of Inis Meáin without ever seeing the mainland. The day she arrived back onto the pier in Spiddal she picked out the car she had known three years earlier from among twenty that were parked there. Some people’s lives are written in prose or poetry. Much of mine was written in dogs, but then “the dogs in the street” are the ones that are said to know everything. All we need to do now is to find a way of translating the “bark.”
