Mysterious world of statues in the land of saints and sinners

WITH all these cheap air flights to European capital cities, I’m a bit surprised that the Child of Prague hasn’t made a big comeback.

After all, back in the days when air travel was so expensive and so infrequent that the entire family, when one of their number was going on a plane, accompanied them to the airport in a gesture of solidarity and support, he was huge. Back at the time of the Iron Curtain when no Irish person could set foot in Prague, every second home in this country nevertheless had a little statue of the Infant, prominently displayed.

It was one of the first indications of the striations of social class I recognised as a kid. The more pretensions a family had, the more likely it was that they would refer to the statue with the big crown as “The Infant of Prague,” rather than “The Child of Prague.” As kids, we noticed that subtle difference, not least because of the information vacuum surrounding the little statue. Nobody seemed to know why he figured in Irish households. Nobody ever explained how the Baby Jesus in the crib, with nothing on him but a cloth thrown over where he should have had a nappy, got so posh by the age of about seven that he had a big angular crown on him and was solemnly blessing us.