“My good man has gone for a motor to Dublin today with a friend and I am left alone, and I do not like it at all, even though we have a Mission on here at present – Isn’t that great excitement!”

Reading Brigid and Molly’s letters hinted they were just like us, the same hopes, dreams, and disappointments. Their words brought me into their world.

This line in Molly’s letter to Brigid is exactly how I might write to a confidant about the prospect of a visiting Parish Mission in the twenty-first century, the exclamation mark says it all.

Of course, there is little comparison when seen through today’s lens, openly smiling at the prospect of a visiting Mission in 1919 Ireland might seem almost blasphemous. The church was then at its peak, revered from all and sundry and questioned by few. Molly needed no explanation when writing to Brigid; they shared their own code, a link back to the old days.

I imagine them skitting and laughing at the lectures on the evils of the dance halls, the “Godless literature” coming in from England and the making of the Poteen that sent the menfolk mad.

Times were shifting. Young people wanted outlets for fun, and dance hall owners wanted to cash in. A sure recipe for success.

The Catholic Church held a stranglehold on almost everyone in Ireland, and few escaped it. Yes, a Mission brought many cultural benefits—community spirit, togetherness, comfort—but it also brought the dictatorial, dogmatic wrath of the evangelists.

Being graced with the presence of the Redemptorists usually lasted a week. Morning mass, a practical instruction, and the main event in the evening—an hour-long sermon. The parishioners sat transfixed like a herd of cattle looking over a hedge.

Separate nights were arranged for the men and the women, it would never do to be giving either side ideas. No doubt the menfolk enjoyed the distraction, thinking it was down from the hills they were and in need of taming.

The Redemptorists filled the hours in between doing the rounds of visiting the houses, targeting the poor unfortunates who believed the attention meant they were somehow special, when in truth it was to extract a more intimate confession of their sins.

“Forgive me Father for I have sinned” was drilled into all of us. The consternation of sitting in the pew in preparation for confession, trying to decide on what sin you would confess—only for your friend to rob yours and you had to start all over again.

Like any well-oiled business, the Redemptorists would draw up their report in the Mission Chronicle, justifying their presence. It opened with a note on the overall adherence of the parish—how many had participated, the difficulties encountered, who had gone wild, the barefaced lies, and who were the principal abusers of the place. A star was given for a striking conversion of a sinner, or for a reconciliation brokered over a patch of land.

Not unlike the bank ledgers of old that recorded outstanding qualities such as ‘Village Drunk’ or ‘Philanderer’.

Almost certainly there would have been a vigilance committee to stamp out the mixed bathing. And I sincerely hope there was the odd all-night dance in a farmhouse.

Biddy O’Connor, leading the local Legion of Mary, surely saw it as a blessing that Brigid had not returned from Yankeeland with a pair of ‘slacks’ for Molly. It was bad enough that the Hughes girls were coming down from Dublin with their war paint.

It would be hard not to smile thinking what Tomsey would have made of the Redemptorist placing his crucifix against the wall of the church, asking whether any poteen-maker in the congregation would go as far as to trample on it—for the very making and drinking of it were, in truth, no different.

Was Thomas under pressure in the shop for selling English Sunday newspapers, considered a danger to Irish Catholic morals? Would he do a bit of a tidy on the shelves when the Redemptorists were in town, or had the secret vigilance committee already marked their card?.

I knew all the names of the dance halls, enthralled as my mother and her cousins reminisced until one of them would say ‘Frank was awful fond of you Alice,’ and then the conversation would come to an end.

As a child I thought it was because they could not talk about romance in front of a child. Knowing now, it was because it brought them back to their carefree happy days of old, when their adult lives had not delivered a continuation of the theme.
How I wished for just one day in one of those dens of iniquity, long before the Carrigan fella made it a law to have a licence. Oh, the excitement as the girls lined one wall with the fellas sloped along the other. The tension palpable at the prospect of a dance.

Even then it was a long way from De Valera’s vision of comely maidens dancing at the crossroads.

The simplicity of their innocence—or were they just like us.