“They were just like us”
“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 brought me into their world.
This line in Molly’s letter to Brigid is exactly how I might have written to a confidant about the prospect of a visiting Parish Mission in the 21st century, the exclamation mark said it all. Of course, little comparison with today’s lens having these views, openly smiling at the prospect of a visiting Mission in 1919 Ireland was nothing short of blasphemy. The church at its peak, adored from all and sundry. Molly knew there was no explanation needed writing to Brigid, they had their code, a link back to the old days. I imagined 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 the dance hall owners wanted to cash in. A sure recipe for success. The Catholic Church had a strangle hold on almost everyone in Ireland and few escaped. Yes, a Mission brought many cultural benefits, community spirit, togetherness, comfort, however 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 transfixed like a herd of cattle looking out over a hedge. Separate nights for the men and the women, it wouldn’t do to be giving either side ideas. No doubt the menfolk enjoying the distraction of thinking it was down from the hills they were and in need of taming.
The Redemptorists filled the in-between hours with doing the rounds of the houses, targeting the poor unfortunates who thought it was because they were special when it was to extract a more intimate confessing 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 agree on what sin you would say when your friend would rob yours and you had to start all over again.
Just Like any well-oiled business, the Redemptorists would do up their report in the Mission Chronicle justifying their presence. Opening with a note on the overall adherence of the parish, how many had participated, difficulties encountered, who had gone wild, the barefaced lies, basically who were the principal abusers of the place. A star was given for a striking conversion of a sinner or a reconciliation that was brokered over a patch of land. Not unlike the bank ledgers of old depicting outstanding qualities such as ‘Village Drunk’ or ‘Philanderer’. Almost definitely 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 farm house. Biddy O’Connor leading the local Legion of Mary surely saw it as a blessing that Brigid had not come back 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 would any poteen maker in the congregation go as far as to trample on it, for the very making and drinking of it was no different!
Was Thomas under pressure in the shop with the selling of English Sunday newspapers that were a danger to Irish Catholic morals. Would he do a bit of a tidy on the shelves when the Redemptorists were in town or would the secret vigilance committee have already marked their cards.
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 end. Thinking 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, their adult lives not delivering a continuation of the theme. How I wished for just one day I could have gone to one of those dens of inequity 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, maybe 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.
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