The Parish (3 page)

On the first page, to capture the whole essence of the
Candlelight
concept, we put a photograph of a little girl in a long nightdress, lighting a Christmas candle. Every year
afterwards we added another child, and now we have twenty-four children, alternating each year between boys and girls. After the first ten years we had the challenging scenario of trying to have ten children simultaneously looking angelic and lighting ten candles without at the same time setting fire to the candle-lighter in front of them. After a few close shaves, with singed hair and scorched fingers, we decided on a cut-off point of five children. The earlier photographs were then transferred to the sides of the page and framed the new children in the centre. Over the years we discovered the main qualification for a
Candlelight
child was to have a pleasant and helpful mother!

So, after a certain amount of huffing and puffing, the first
Candlelight
saw the light of day. We were a printer’s nightmare because we hadn’t a clue. However, whereas in some cases I might be a slow learner, where
Candlelight
was concerned there was no time for pussy-footing about, so I learned fast. We sold it in our own parish, in Kinsale and Bandon, and we lost money. The point of the exercise was never about making money but we still needed to get our financial act together. The following year we got sponsorship from a few well-to-do professionals in the parish, and there are generous people like that in every parish but you cannot keep going back to them indefinitely, so the following year we charged enough to cover our expenses. Finally we got a proper grip on the situation and decided that, if we believed in the
Candlelight
concept, we would need to set a decent price and any profit would go to parish projects.

To date we have restored a huge historic parish map of the village which is in the local church and we have helped finance a village sculpture of Billy the Blacksmith.
Candlelight 
is written by the people of the parish, so any returns belong to the parish. It is probably something that is happening in many other parishes up and down the country.

We may have originally considered
Candlelight
a once-off, but as soon as the first edition hit the parish, people started to talk about the following year. It soon dawned on us that it was now expected to be a permanent feature of the parish Christmas. One man who had previously refused to write because he deemed it to be beyond him said to me, “Well, was that all ye wanted?” and so decided to do an article.

Over the twenty-four years,
Candlelight
has served many purposes. After the first edition, one woman told us, “You know something: that Christmas magazine has somehow brought us all together under the one umbrella.” She had a very good point as it keeps those of us within the parish aware of what is going on because everyone is free to write and tell their own story, and it keeps people long gone from the parish in touch with their home place.

The real treasures are the old school photographs; people are fascinated by them. Sometimes there might be only one such photograph in the parish, and when we publish it everyone enjoys a trip down memory lane. From the Twin we got one of these photos that had been taken about sixty years earlier, and not only did we get the photograph but we also got a detailed description of the day it was taken. Apparently that morning before going to school the Twin, who always possessed a sense of occasion, had wanted to put on his good suit for the photo call but his mother would not allow him. “And there now,” he proclaimed six decades later, “wasn’t she wrong because I’d be looking much better now in my new suit.”

The photograph, like all black and white photographs of the time, was crystal clear, but it was unframed and the folder holding it a bit battered around the edges. After that Christmas we had the photograph framed to preserve it for the Twin, who hung it up in his front hall where it was admired by all his callers. After he died, I went to his auction to buy the photograph for the local school. It was in a box with other odds and ends and I took note of the number. However, just before it came under the hammer, I went back to check on the box, only to discover that the photograph was gone. Somebody had taken it. It takes all kinds of people to make up a parish!

Candlelight
records things that would otherwise be lost and often, when a contributor dies, their family is glad to have their
Candlelight
articles, some written many years previously. New families are now coming to live around the parish and
Candlelight
fills them in on the history of their chosen place. It also gives new writing talent a sounding platform; one of our original writers is now with
The Irish Times
and another with the
Irish Examiner
. We are not claiming that we contributed in any way to their success, but it makes us feel good to think that they started with us.

Some of our writers now have their names written in the golden book and to browse though the back numbers is to realise how much our parish has changed over the last twenty-four years. The cow shed that was behind Jeremiah’s carpenter shop is now the Private Collector Art Gallery, selling original Irish art at prices that in Jeremiah’s time could have bought out the entire village.

Over those years, some writers came to us from the most unexpected places. Having read my book,
The Village
, one man wrote to me from England. His mother had been one of the
travelling people and she had called to all the houses on the road from Innishannon to Kinsale. Later he was taken into care as his father had got into difficulties, and the young lad spent his childhood in the orphanage of St Patrick’s Upton in our parish. At the age of sixteen, he went to work with a local farmer and one night, coming home from a fair in Bandon, the farmer and himself had visited Mrs Hawkins behind her butcher’s shop in our village. There, he wrote, he got the biggest and the first steak that he had ever seen. He went on to tell how he had left Ireland and gone to work down the coalmines in England. There was a scheme prevailing at the time whereby your fare was paid and in return you went to work down the mines. When he got out of the coalmines, he became a long-distance lorry driver and did well.

His letter was articulate and well written, with no trace of bitterness. He had experienced a life style that very few had documented and I knew from his letter that he could write a good article. The following summer he came back to Ireland and called to see me. He was a grand man and, after a short time in his company, I felt that the world was a better place. He had a lady wife now and two attractive daughters, but he talked about his time in the orphanage and how good they were to him, adding, “The food was bad but they had no better themselves.” He also told me about walking down to the village to see the travelling theatre groups known as the fit-ups.

I gave him a copy of
Candlelight
, suggesting that he might like to write his story, and sure enough, we published it the following Christmas. Shortly afterwards he wrote to tell me that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and that his time would be short. In life he had got off to a tough start
but he had pulled himself up by his bootlaces and carved out a good quality of life for himself and his family. He was one of the most positive and well-rounded people that I had ever met and I was glad that he had written his story for
Candlelight
. Great people like him should not leave life without getting the opportunity to tell their story, and sometimes their story helps to keep others afloat.

“H
ave you thought about the millennium?” asked a tentative voice at the other end of the phone.

“Well, not really,” I said, taken by surprise. “Sure, that’s months away.”

“People are already planning what they’re going to do,” she told me.

“Don’t I know it?” I assured her. “They seem to be flying in all directions for the occasion.”

“Do you think that we should have something in the parish hall?” she asked

“Will there be anyone left in the parish to go to it?” I wondered.

“At the moment it looks doubtful, but the very young and the old won’t be going anywhere, and wouldn’t it be nice to have something for them?”

“I suppose it would,” I agreed. “Did you have anything in mind?”

“Well, nothing in particular,” she said vaguely, “but I thought that we might organise something. You’re good at
that kind of thing.” As alarm bells began to ring in my head, she continued: “That ‘Meet the Neighbours’ night was a great success and wouldn’t something like that be grand?”

A few years previously a “Meet the Neighbours” night had been organised for the newcomers to the parish so that they could get to know each other and meet the
home-grown
residents. The night could hardly be described as having achieved the purpose for which it was intended because most of the newcomers never came, but for those who did, it had been a great night. Our village, like many other small villages, was expanding at such a rate that we could lose our sense of being a village, and nights that brought us together helped us to retain that sense.

After the phone call I sat at the kitchen table and wondered where to begin or whether to begin at all. Diarmuid, who was in his twenties, breezed in and sized me up pretty quickly.

“You look a bit bothered,” he declared, viewing me across the table.

I filled him in on the phone call and he grinned, rubbing his hands together.

“Mother,” he gleefully informed me, “you’ve got a jumping monkey.”

“What’s that?” I demanded.

“Well, in our business if you have a job that you want to get done but don’t want to do yourself, then you have a jumping monkey. So the trick is to meet up with a colleague and pass on the job. Then the jumping monkey jumps from your back on to their back. So, Mother, a jumping monkey has just landed on your back!”

“If I decide to hold on to him, do you think that people would come to the parish hall on the night of the millennium?”
I asked.

“Not a hope in hell,” he told me. “Sure, wouldn’t it be full of screeching children and old fogies?”

“Like me,” I said.

During that day I ran the idea past some people in our shop. The village shop and post office is a great place to be if you want to do a parish survey on anything. But the general reaction to the millennium night was that nobody with a glint of imagination or a sense of adventure would be found in the parish hall on the night. Faraway places beckoned. That evening I put the idea to my husband Gabriel who always had his finger on the pulse of the parish.

“Well, of course we should have something in the hall,” he declared. “When millennium night comes around, a lot of those high flyers will have come down to earth.”

Later, when our cousin Con, who had been part of the family for over thirty years, came home from his school in Bandon with a bundle of textbooks under his arm, I asked: “Con, what had you planned to do for the millennium?”

“Never even gave it a thought,” he told me mildly.

That was the end of my survey and, as with lots of surveys, I was as wise at the end as I had been at the beginning.

The following week a supplement fell out of a newspaper that I was reading on a train home from Dublin. The headline ran “Last Light Ceremony”. I read and reread the article, marvelling at the simplicity and imagination of the entire concept. The idea was that everyone in Ireland was to be furnished with a millennium candle to be lit on the evening of the old millennium so that the entire country could be united in this Last Light ceremony. The accompanying message with the candle would read: “As the sun sets on the millennium on
December 31st 1999, the National Millennium Committee invites you to join with family and friends, neighbours or colleagues, to light your millennium candle at this milestone in history.
Mílaois faoi sheán is faoi mhaise
.”

It was, I thought, an imaginative and visionary concept. The last light of the millennium would fade out over Dursey Sound and our parish would be in its dying rays. Our parish could build its whole millennium celebration, incorporating the congregations of both churches, around the Last Light ceremony. We would gather in Christ Church at four o’clock, which was the scheduled time for the Last Light ceremony, and later go up the hill to St Mary’s for a second ceremony, and finish with a party in the parish hall to welcome in the new millennium. The possibilities of the project gave me food for thought that lasted the entire train journey.

When I got home, I rang my friend Joy, an active member of the Church of Ireland.

“Joy, what do you think of a Last Light ceremony in Christ Church at four o’clock for both congregations and later a joint ceremony in our church and then a party in the parish hall for all of us?”

“Sounds great,” she enthused. “But will all of you come to our church?”

“Of course we’ll come,” I assured her, never doubting it for a moment. Relations between both congregations had always been cordial; we attended each other’s weddings and funerals, though up to this we had never shared ceremonies. We ran the idea past both sets of clergy and there was no problem.

That year, Christmas took a back seat as the whole country waited with bated breath for the coming of the new millennium. It seemed that people were planning to be in the
most exotic of places to welcome it in.

On Christmas Eve, a man from the bogs of North Cork came into our village selling huge pieces of bog deal. He was pointed in my direction and his cargo made me gasp in awe. What would be more appropriate as a centre-piece for a millennium celebration than bog deal from the deep belly of ancient Ireland? This bog deal was probably as old as the millennium itself. There was a huge claw-like
creachaill
on the top of the trailer which was the jewel in the crown of the load. It was probably placed there to act as bait. He was a large, jovial man in a hand-knitted jumper, with a twinkle in his eye, and would have made a great Santa Claus. But this was no Santa Claus! He had what I wanted and he knew it. Like the cattle jobbers at the fairs of old I tried to mask my enthusiasm, and so began a long bargaining session.

He assured me regularly: “Ah, Missus, you’ll never see the likes of it again!” He was right, but I sensed that he had raised his prices to an exorbitant level in order to bring them down and make me feel that I was getting a bargain. It rained softly down on us and his knitted gansey draped across his large round belly glistened with raindrops, but we were both so stuck into our wrangling that we would not give in to the rain or to each other.

Eventually we reached a compromise, but to get a good price I had to take the entire load, so he probably came out the better of the deal. But I had enjoyed battling wits with him and he told me, “You’re a hard woman, but sure ’twas great doing business with you and I wouldn’t have enjoyed it half as much if you gave in on the first round.”

So he stacked the bog deal in the backyard and every day I admired it and loved it more. I recalled the
creachaills
of bog
deal that had been brought home from the bog when I was a child. We had splintered them up to start the fire and my father had used them to light his pipe. Sometimes they were pared into long strips to act as scallops for thatching. Now they are no longer needed for practical purposes but they speak to us of an earlier age when they formed the floor of an ancient Ireland. It was wonderful to have this treasury of the past to welcome in the new millennium.

During the days of the dying year, a small group of us moved into both churches. Old candelabras that had been relegated to the lower regions of Christ Church and into the abandoned gallery of St Mary’s were polished and brought back into active service. Candles and flowers were the order of the day in both churches but for the parish hall a more flamboyant atmosphere was required for the parish party. The dark red curtains of the stage became the backdrop for two enormous silver trees, festooned with blue stars, and Elizabeth brought in her solid silver candelabra with blue candles for centre-stage. In every parish there are big-hearted people like Elizabeth, blessed with a great sense of occasion.

The balcony at the back of the hall was smothered by Noreen in mounds of ivy, threaded through with silver ribbons. Our best flower arranger, Rose, created a huge arrangement in the millennium colours of blue and silver, and the food tables around the hall were draped in white and silver cloths. We had bought wine and soft drinks and the parishioners brought in an abundance of home-made food.

The women of parishes around Ireland will still come good when it comes to providing eats for festive occasions, and fortunately we have not yet reached the stage where we need to get in professional caterers to provide for parish
events. There is a great sense of togetherness in the sharing of bread that has been baked by parish people. As I watched the laden trays arrive, I felt that a large communal cake had been baked and would later be shared by all. By late afternoon, we were ready to feed a small army, though we still had no idea of numbers.

To welcome in a new year, not to mention a millennium, a clock was needed to add a sense of drama to the occasion. We required a substantial timepiece, preferably a grandfather. But could you ask anyone to move a valuable grandfather clock and bring it to the parish hall? We did not need to ask because one farming couple, Ted and Phil, not only offered their clock but Ted brought it along in his tractor and trailer. We all held our breath, wondering how grandfather would take to his new position in front of the stage, but once he was level, he took the move like a man, and tick-tocked into action. In the centre of the hall we had laid out the huge sea of ancient bog deal and on it we mounted an enormous millennium candle. It was an island of bog deal and light, around which the activity would flow. All was ready for the party to begin!

It was a calm misty evening as we climbed the steps of Christ Church, and the trees in Dromkeen Wood across the river were slowly gathering their dusky coats around them. Along the street the shadows were drifting into doorways and silently people were emerging and all heading in the one direction. The traffic on the road outside had slowed to almost non-existent as by now everyone in the whole country had gone to their chosen places to welcome in the millennium. People were pouring into Christ Church and taking time to sign the leather-bound Millennium Book, which would be a record of all those present on this historic night. The seating
capacity of Christ Church is about three hundred and fifty, and every seat was occupied, and more people were standing along by the walls. Joy and her friends were trying to find a place for everybody and eventually there were almost five hundred people packed into the church.

When the incoming tide waned, it was decided that the ceremony should begin. A delighted Canon Burrows—who was later to become Archbishop of Cashel—emerged from the vestry and assured us smilingly that he was not accustomed to such a packed house. He rose to the occasion with an inspiring homily befitting a special event, which he combined with playing the organ and leading the people in songs of praise.

Some lights had been left on to guide people to their seats and now these were all turned off. The church was in darkness. Slowly three members of St Mary’s emerged from the back porch and walked up the aisle, bearing the gift of a tall Jubilee candle which they placed on a central table. Canon Burrows lit it from a little candle that he had brought from Iona earlier that year. St Columcille had taken the light of Christianity from Ireland to Iona in the sixth century, and this gave the small candle a special symbolism. A light was then carried to the candles in the windows, and the light slowly spread along the pews as all the little millennium candles were lit. This was the idea of the National Millennium Committee becoming a reality: the church was aglow with candlelight, and voices were raised in songs of praise as we all sang from the same hymn sheet.

Afterwards people drifted slowly from the church, reluctant to leave the communal pool of peace. Some stayed on to sign the Millennium Book which had not been possible for all on the way in, and as they queued now, they chatted quietly. The
Jubilee candle was left lighting in the centre of the church, and on the gothic windowsills candle-lit floral arrangements flickered light along the now empty pews. As we went down the sloping pathway from the church, we looked back at the candles softly illuminating the rich stained-glass windows.

Then three members of Christ Church brought the
still-lighting
Jubilee candle through the village and up the hill to St Mary’s. Our parish priest welcomed them and led them in procession to the altar. Twenty-four people followed the candle-bearers, all members of different parish organisations, each carrying a symbol of their own organisation. On the steps of the altar, six people represented the different age groups in the parish, ranging from Denis, the oldest at eighty-seven, to Sarah Louise, the youngest at four months. The light was passed down through the ages and then down along the church. The small millennium candles glowed for the second time that night and the dark church was turned into a sea of wavering candles. Members of both churches did the readings and raised their voices in songs of united praise.

Afterwards the Jubilee candle led a candlelight procession down the hill and along the village street to the parish hall. With the street empty of traffic, it was a night when our parish could move at its own pace.