The Church That Was

THE MEMORIAL was opposite my right side, I had merely to swivel a fraction, lift an eyelid, and it was visible in all its glory. It accounted for the period when a ‘Father Michael McMahon, ruled as pastor for thirty three years, and died on the eve of his golden jubilee, aged eighty years’. He died in 1877.

The church was relatively new then and he had a hand in the building of it. So had my great grandfather. He started out at first light with his horse and cart bringing stones to the site. Very little of that time or of that building period has come down through the years.

My remembrance, perhaps from a dodgy memory, said that when a carter returned to the priests’ house after depositing the load, he was given a bowl of gruel for breakfast while the scent of frying bacon slid under the door from where the clergy dined.

That memory was never given time for further discussion. My father didn’t like it.

Someone had a perfect idea as to how the pews might be paid for. The congregation was offered an opportunity that most of them couldn’t pass over. Contribute to the cost and a seat would be allocated to you. Your name, in shining brass, would be fixed to the back rest of the pew. It silently declared that the name was sacrosanct and no others should kneel there.

There was no fixed amount of contribution. But it was patently obvious who paid the most. They were seated nearest to the altar rails, in the front aisle, and on both sides.

My father had a saying, ‘there are some for the straddle and some for the saddle’. A straddle was a piece of harness that sat on a workhorse’s back. The ‘straddlers’ were labouring people. They stood at the rear of the church or sat on the pews at the end of the main aisle that carried no names.

And yet, I never heard anyone complain about it. Sometimes a stranger might sit on a pew that had a brass plate but no one complained.

And I doubt if the community who built that church in the time of my grandfather, made any complaint about it either. Sin mar a bhí sé!

Some, a precious few, rode to hounds, the rest strapped on the straddle and went to work and gave thanks to their God for the day that was in it.

FROM THE angle of my father’s hatless head, and the framework below the memorial, I could see the movement of faces. Those faces belonged to a special group, comrades of the parish clerk.

The priest intoned the opening verse in Latin. ‘Et introibo ad altara Dei’, and was answered by the servers, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem me am: I will go to the altar of God, to the God that bringest joy to my youth’.

Before ‘juventutem me am’ was intoned the faces had passed by the window whose lower rail was just above the memorial to Fr McMahon.

Those faces were the cronies of the parish clerk. In winter he arrived early and had put on a coal fire that aired the priest’s vestments. It was so comfortable in the sacristy. Once, the priest sent me in for a ciborium and I was immediately taken by how comfortable and cosy it was. The moment I arrived in the clerk put a forefinger to his lips, found what I was looking for, and ushered me out again.

I had caused some minor consternation. The man who sat on the chair that was nearest to the outer door, a companion of the clerk’s, was primed for flight, and the standing party was following suit.

“You put the heart crossways in me,” a neighbour told me afterwards, “I thought I was done for,” he said.

It would have been ironic if he had been ‘found on’ in the sacristy. He was a very shy man and conversation or small talk lay heavily upon him. But it never seemed to dawn upon him that he would have to talk more in the sacristy than in a pew.

All of my brothers and sisters were baptised in that old church. My elder sisters were married there. It survived close to a century and a half. It was built within yesterday’s apoplectic memory of the great

Famine.

A major portion of the expense was funded by a local landlord, one Thomas Bateman of Altavilla, whose family had made a fortune in coalmining. I don’t know what religious persuasion Thomas Bateman had, but it matters not. It is enough to honour his generosity at a time when the population was on its knees.

Sometimes, coming home from school, I would slip into the gallery above the front door. It was seldom used as a choir. There was never enough singers in the school community for that, though a stalwart medley of hymns came about whenever the bishop came for Confirmations.

I used slip in there as we dallied coming home from school. The view through the little window looking north-west was glorious. I could see every field, every hedge, every copse that marked the limit of my knowledge.

Beyond that limit was another world, unknown but imagined. I could see the silver streak of the River Shannon as it meandered its way between hill and copse, separating us from county Clare, and further on, bringing us cheek by jowl with Kerry.

THE SPACe beneath the choir was a rite of passage. It had many devotees. This was the place where those who had no brass plates congregated. It was where the late-comers stayed. It took serious courage to walk up the main aisle when the priest was on the altar, knowing that every eye was fixed on the tardy ones.

It was where the young men declared their independence, for them the brass-plated inheritance was running out of time. Some of the devotees beneath the gallery stood erect and every now and then smirked and spoke slyly with whispering lips.

Nothing was ever so hilarious beneath the choir, those same observations outside the door were dull as dishwater. Beneath the gallery no one kneeled. Most stood erect but took a one kneed stance at the consecration of the Host.

Every now and then the priest would rail about the lack of devotion in the gallery. It would improve for a while but bit by bit would slide back to the pattern it began with.

The old church is long gone. It was replaced in 1972. In the old church I knew every person, knew the names of adults and children. I knew those who slinked into the sacristy as soon as the priest came on the altar. I knew those who had brass plates on their pews and those who had not.

I could tell you, with eighty percent accuracy, who stood or knelt on one knee beneath the gallery. I would hardly know a dozen people now who worship in the new church. Such is the passage of time, the way of life. ÷