The Parish

A
parish is a tangle of all human life. Threads of tension and trust, kindness and begrudgery, generosity and meanness, harmony and jealousy, laughter and tears, all intermingle to create a patchwork of parish living. On marrying during the early 1960s into the village shop and post office, I became part of that patchwork. Parish-pump politics predominated and we all knew each other’s business. Newcomers were scrutinised and researched and sometimes we found out more about them than they knew about themselves.

Some of the householders had farmyards behind their back doors where they kept poultry and pigs, and outside the village they had farms from which, morning and evening, the cows ambled into the backyards of the village to be milked. Farmers met daily at the local creamery, and after Sunday mass rows of men arranged themselves around the village corner to discuss parish affairs. A forge at the end of the village made shoes for donkeys, farm horses and racehorses; the harness maker looked after their working wear and their fancy Sunday harness. The blacksmith also made the bands for large timber wheels, put mend-its on metal pots and made the long-legged iron tongs for the open fire. On wet days and at night the forge became
a social club where farmers met and exchanged farming and horse knowledge.

The local dressmaker catered for the ladies, and the tailor fitted out the men. Both of them turned and remodelled suits and coats, and many a good navy-blue serge got a second lease of life. Often grandfather’s retired suit reappeared in the well-presented row of First Holy Communion attire. A carpentry shop was kept busy putting handles on pikes and shovels, repairing and making furniture, constructing coffins and the large timber wheels for farm carts. Young lads played hurling and football up and down the main street using their ganseys as goalposts, and in the event of a burst sliotar or football the local cobbler did the stitching. The barracks at the end of the street housed a sergeant and three gardaí at a time when the biggest offence in the parish was a bike without a light or a bull without a licence. The parish priest, wearing a long black skirt and a little bit of nonsense on his head, took care of other parish misdemeanours. His restrictive glance could sometimes be as effective as any garda baton.

There were four small shops in the village where people chatted across the high counters and kept up with the parish news; these shops catered for the entire needs of the parish from rosary beads to chamber pots. In them you could buy elastic for your knickers, corn plasters for aching feet, methylated spirits for the primus, Fynnon salts for lazy bowel movements and Bob Martin’s powders if your greyhound shared your problem. In them also all your grocery needs were met—even tea towels with a recipe for Gaelic Coffee. The know-how to make my first Gaelic Coffee was gleaned from one of these tea towels when a smart chef in Shannon Airport dreamed up this wonderful concoction to welcome
travel-weary Americans and soothe their hearts with a warm Irish welcome.

We had four family-owned pubs from which the male regulars ran the world and sometimes went home only to turn. In one pub the woman of the house chopped her cabbage for the dinner on the counter as she doled out frothy pints. Cash-strapped customers would often instruct her to put their merry-making on the slate, and she was the mother confessor and counsellor to the distressed and inebriated.

Our shop, as part of the post office, manned the local telephone exchange. In there was an eight-day clock that Uncle Jacky, on the occasion of his marriage in 1932, had received from the local hurling and football club, and this provided a time check for the entire village. Children going to school put their heads in the door to see if they had a few spare minutes for the kick of a ball before school, and people on their way to mass or waiting for a funeral or bus checked the time on the post-office clock. The regulars who formed a perpetual guard of honour around the village corner could on request provide an instant and precise location for almost everyone in the parish. They observed who got on and off the bus and who walked and cycled through the village. They were the original community alert.

As part of the extended local telephone service we were supposed to know and keep the parish informed about the times of deaths, wakes and funerals. The farmers dropped in their AI calls for an Aberdeen Angus, Short-horn or Friesian and later these were collected by the man from the station, so we became familiar with the breeding patterns of the local cows. When the doctor or priest was missing, we took their calls, so we also knew who was arriving or departing from
the parish. On arrival new babies were named after their grandparents, which could lead to a Johnny Jim Pat hanging off the family tree. The era of television names was yet to dawn. You were called after your ancestors and rooted into your own place. Crèches were unheard of and the extended family rocked the cradle. If the family name such as Murphy, O’Sullivan or McCarthy was too common in the parish, you had the Tommy Jim Pads and the Mary Jack Kates to distinguish between the different clans. Farmers had stay-at-home wives who double-jobbed between the house and the farmyard. They were the first working wives, who sold eggs weekly at the farm gate or to the village shop, and fattened geese and turkeys for the Christmas market.

You spun out your last days in your own home where you died in the comfort of your own bed. Many a man or woman was born and died in the same bed, four foot of black iron, bedecked with brass knobs top and bottom. No king or queen size, as the royals had not yet moved into the bedroom; all bedroom action was confined to four feet. Funeral parlours had yet to come in from America. The parlour was where you entertained visitors, and had nothing to do with your funeral. You certainly had no intention of being carted into one to lie in state when you were dead. Money was scarce and life was quite predictable and often boring.

Then the economy took off and the Celtic Tiger roared into the parish. He threw a switch that shot us all into fast-forward. Money poured into empty pockets. We wanted bigger and better houses. The tide of emigration turned and our young people were able to stay at home; as our economy soared, working Europe looked in our direction. They saw jobs and good wages. New houses were needed. Farming income alone
slid down the financial ladder, so agricultural land became more valuable for building than for farming. Housing estates bearing titles with no connection to townland or landscape flooded out over green fields. People left the land, farm wives went out to work, and the farmyard became a silent place. For the first time, apartments replaced stables and cow houses on the rural landscape. As giant supermarket chains sprung up around the country, family businesses died in village and town centres.

Our parish, like many others, sprouted houses in remote corners. Young couples clipped heavy mortgages around their necks. Their parents might have been reared with a po under the bed but now their children had a bathroom at the end of every bed. Kitchens with state-of-the-art cooking facilities became the norm, but there was no time to cook. Stay-at-home mothers turned into working wives and needed cars. To reduce his stress, father took two holidays in the sun. There was no time to relax in his own home, but he bought another in foreign parts. The family car became a four-wheel-drive. Teenagers abandoned their bikes and became boy racers. Rural barracks closed and an automatic green plastic man on the barracks door replaced the local guard. Village homes became too valuable for living in and were turned into commercial units while the previous occupants built houses on approach roads. Thus we created the doughnut village. Traffic accelerated. Roads choked.

Today, we are all in the fast lane. No time for conversation. We exchange word bites: “too busy”; “no time”. Two problems have sprouted. Who will hold the baby? Who will mind Nana? Life has turned into a marathon. We are all caught in the speed trap, but parish life still goes on. It moves around the church,
the school, the parish hall and the GAA pitch. The church may not be as central to life as before but it is still needed for christenings, weddings and funerals. Some priests could be forgiven for thinking that they are now running a photography studio.

The school is vital for mushrooming parishes with young families. Putting on extensions requires huge local involvement. A mother who had previously been part of such an effort looked on one morning as still newer mothers lined up and was heard to comment caustically: “They are going in there now thinking that that school fell from the sky and they have no memory of the blood, sweat and tears that we put into getting all those extensions and facilities.” A voluntary committee runs the parish hall; without it there would be no venue for indoor games and meetings, and as in every parish there are dozens of GAA stalwarts who put hours of unpaid effort into the young.

As parishes balloon, it requires a marriage of the new and the old to maintain community facilities. The newcomers and the parish permanents are slowly getting to know each other and finding out what makes the other tick. It is a challenging time. When a parish project needs attention, it’s a case of “round up the usual suspects”. Some deep-rooted parishioners believe in their divine right to do nothing. It would be easier to inject bounce into lead balls than get them to move. Some newcomers are reluctant to get involved and steer clear of anything that smacks of commitment. They consider themselves far too busy. But in both groups there are still enough movers and shakers who work to keep the show on the road.

Every parish has a story, and this is the story of our parish and our efforts to cope with the problems that are part of every
parish in the first decade of the twenty-first century. We have the doers who get on with the job; the experts who feel too well informed to participate; the advisers whose function is to tell everyone how it should be done; and, of course, the hurlers on the ditch. But we are all part of the pot pourri that makes up life in the parish. We irritate each other, we help each other, we comfort each other and annoy the living daylights out of each other. But no matter how we all get along together, we still live in the shelter of each other.