Feeling the power of the pulpit
Accordingly, those doubters will again shake their heads this Thursday, when Isay that this old papish from rural Fermanagh preached and orated from no less than two dignified Protestant pulpits in Co Cork last weekend. And has not been inside a confessional box since.
Those pulpits, as a matter of fact, were located in Saint Colman’s ancient church in Farrahy, at the heart of the sun-soaked village of Kildorrery, and in the serene Kingston College chapel in Mitchelstown. Both were serving at the Mitchelstown Literary Festival, and it was my official duty, as MC, to mount them, in order to introduce the lecturers involved in what was a most stimulating weekend.
Here are more facts. The lecturer in Saint Colman’s was Dr Hilary Lennon from UCC, dealing with the works of Frank O’Connor, and the centrepiece of events in the Kingston College chapel was provided by Eleanor O’Reilly, reading her prize-winning short story from this year’s competition. It was altogether as brilliant as its title, which was ‘Saints and Kidneys’, believe it or not.
There is more. I rapidly discovered that even a Papish master of ceremonies is somehow hugely empowered by standing high over the congregation in the footsteps of now ghosted deans and rectors. Dr Lennon, a Roscommon native and a gifted speaker, later confessed to having the same experience.
It was my duty to thank her for her contribution, so I had to mount the pulpit once more. We were in the evening of yet another glorious day, the parched stubble fields on the horizons aching for the solace of twilight, and yet, from the crowded congregation, a lady asked me if I would sing my Christmas song about the spontaneous soldiers’ truce on the Western Front of a First World War Christmas. The pure truth too. And dammit, I put my head back and gave it to them full volume from beginning to end.
Surreal. I think I may have spotted a few tears in the benches afterwards too. Young men who were boys in this church would surely have gone forth to be slaughtered in those dreadful trenches. Maybe some of their spirits were not too far away. It felt that way. I have decided since the event that pulpitry somehow enhances a nicotined old voice. Next time I am asked to sing, I will demand a similar platform.
We Papishes from the other side of the border were raised in a world where the animality of the Orange demonstrations in Belfast was never too far away. We are often china cups of things, brittle. Deep inside, there is often a buried cell or two of suspicion and fear and watchfulness in the presence of strangers in strange places.
You needed that, especially in the marching month of July. It is a complex area, largely beyond my word power, but I long ago discovered that it is in the deep south of what we always called the Free State that the cold little cell totally disappears, and one is deeply at peace. and that is the pure truth too.
Just one small example of how special this Free State is, even today.
At some point, I needed a packet of cigarettes late in the night in Mitchelstown. Young lads directed me to the filling station across the road. I walked in and told the man behind the counter I would kill for a packet of Carrolls. He said there was no need for that, produced my cigarettes, accepted my €10 note, gave me my change and then asked if I was the man who wrote in the Irish Examiner.
I confessed. He said he reads me every Thursday with some enjoyment, his name was Pat O’Shea, and we shook hands as I thanked him for the compliment. I walked back up to the pedestrian crossing and was waiting for the lights to change, when I got a quick tap from behind and there was Mr O’Shea, mutely, with the gift of another packet of cigarettes lest I run out again before the evening in Walsh’s musical pub up the road was over.
Where else would you encounter that kind of gesture towards a visitor? We should be very proud of what we have been, as reflected in the masterful stories of Frank O’Connor, and equally proud of what we still are today.
Thanks Pat. I am smoking the very last of your cigarettes back home in Clare as I write this. And never has nicotine intake felt so holistically healing.
