Welcome

Welcome to Rialto. This is a blog where I hope you will find something of interest to you. I work in Further Education and my hope is to supplement my work in the classroom with extras and advice. I also like to dabble in creative writing and you will find bits and pieces along the way. Feel free to subscribe or pass by again and you may find something of interest.
John.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Opium of the Masses

I loved being an altar boy. I thought it gave me power. I think it gave me status. It definitely kept my mother happy. I just loved it. It was, believe it or not some of the happiest years of my life. It coincided with my primary school years so it was largely uninterrupted by teenage angst, albeit punctuated with an impetuous spirit for doing the first mad thing that came into my mind.  
I was assigned, so to speak, to the Franciscan Friary  in Carrickbeg, the Waterford half of Carrick-on-Suir. These were the halcyon days of Catholic Ireland; copious masses hugely attended and a battery of priests, brothers and altar boys keeping the show on the road. The priests and brothers treated us extremely well. We all got on well with them and appreciated their commitment as much as we ignored their eccentricities and most of their sermons. There was a certain regimented and institutional feel to the job of an altar boy and it suited me more or less just fine. I loved the uniform. Rich brown soutans that had the same shade as the Franciscan monk's garb with about fifty buttons that you would tie right up to the top. You could wear a pyjamas underneath; this thing covered a multitude. For those of you unfamiliar with liturgical vestments it is    also known as a cassock. Google it and you'll get the picture. However, in case you're thinking, that's a bit plain, over the soutane/cassock we wore a surplice, which is a white tunic kind of fellow with wide sleeves and went down to the knees. When they were fresh back from the Friary wash department they were something to behold. The song could have gone..."the surplice's so white I gotta wear shades". Put it this way, you stand out from the crowd in that get-up.
The next highlight was the roster which tended to cover a month or so. The way it worked was: one Sunday you covered the eight o'clock morning mass, the following Sunday you oversaw the later nine-thirty mass and then a week later you were assigned to the eleven-thirty mass and weekly duties. Weekly duties meant you covered the Sunday teatime benediction and then for the week ahead you held the fort for the daily eight o'clock morning masses. This was a kind of graveyard shift but I revelled in it.
I'd always be there first in the mornings, about half an hour before mass would start and of course Brother Agnelis would have the church and sacristy open already. That man surfaced at a un-Godly hour. I'd say he never slept it out, never mind  had a lie-in. So, essentially you had  the place to yourself. We had a room which housed all the accoutrements, including  incense and charcoal and the thurible. What's the thurible I hear you ask? It's an ornate metal kind of pot and cover suspended by chains that's used to burn the incense at different ceremonies, especially at Benediction. It went into overdrive at Easter.
From our room an open door led into the celebrant's quarters which was right beside the church. There, the priest would have all his stuff. Suitable vestments, the various missals, the chalice etc. All the really important stuff. Just off that room the altar wine and the communion hosts were stored. Bottles of the stuff and hosts that lay in boxes lined with a lovely crisp paper. There were hundreds upon hundreds to a box. Of a winter's morning when I had cycled over I have to be honest and admit I did the odd time partake in a few hosts- unconsecrated I hasten to add- washed down with with a good slug of wine. I'll tell you it fortified the soul on a frosty morning and readied me for the fray. I told you I was impetuous!
Normally three or four of us would serve the mass. We would have to light the candles, place the chalice on the altar, ready the water and the wine into their little crucibles and put the patens out. The patens were the brass plates that were placed under the chin of the person receiving communion. Why, I'll never know, I mean there was nothing going to drip. Not from our side anyway. I'd say I've seen the roofs of half the mouths in Carrick with that job. You had to be very careful that you didn't clout someone on the chin with one of them. They could be quite fine and the last thing you wanted was someone reverently receiving communion and returning to their seat with a split lip.
I loved training in new altar boys. I was a right show-off. Teaching them how to genuflect was my specialty. Keep the back straight and whatever you do, don't slouch. Ringing the bell at various times in the mass was important. If you forgot there'd be dagger looks; and that's just from me. When mass was over, you quenched candles and brought back in all the implements that were used. We'd have to help the priest if it was needed. Generally, just tidy up to try and leave the place as you got it and off you go. All in a day's work.
Easter was a great time for an ambitious altar server. Especially if you didn't mess up on thurible duties. You had to light the little two inch diameter circles of charcoal and  place them in the cup of the thurible and sprinkle with incense. I can smell it as I write. Opium of the masses. Then there were processions at Easter and not forgetting the sojourn around the parish at Corpus Christi where you rubbed shoulders or surplices to be precise with our comrades from St. Molleran's. We in the Friary tended to look down at that lot. They had the privilege of serving at funerals and weddings; the Friary didn't do those. And their palms were duly crossed with silver. Greedy guts. However, we had the annual trip to Multifarnham in Co. Westmeath, home of the Franciscan training college. Over three or four days we were treated like princes. Access to sporting facilities and  generally just shooting the breeze. God we got up to some crack. And we got away with it. That's for another day. 
So, there you have that much, an overview of life as a Franciscan altar boy. And you might agree a good one I was too. I had my flaws but then who's perfect? It's an altar-ego after all.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Savage Loves His Native Shore

Carrick-on-Suir is the town I was born in. Greystone Street, Carrick  is the street that I took my first steps, plodding down the shiny grey tiled steps while hanging onto my mother's arm. My mother-not a Carrick woman- would probably have been taking me to my paternal Grandmother's house in William Street. To get there one could go through the West Gate and along the Main Street. Then, under the arch at Chapel Street that leads to St. Nicholas' Church adorning the top of William Street, a church resplendent in its Catholic majesty,  replete  with the echoes of Carrick prayers that anxiously float like ghosts in the candle scented air. Or one could saunter along Town Wall or the more modern equivalent Pearse Square with its proud place in the heart of Carrick under the gaze of the Church steeple. The Protestant Church over the road  is sombre and dignified  and now houses a heritage centre. The Protestant fraternity that lie at rest in hallowed soil have the half-prayers of many a wayfarer.
I  loved William Street then and I love it today. My footprints are somewhere there along its three score and ten feet. There was along that small street three thriving shops. Tom O' Keeffe and Sons were merchants of paints and hardware and fine goods. Up the street Lizzy O' Connor ran a grocery store with weighing scales and drawers and glass jars of bulls eyes and bags of flour. Directly across Paulie Stewart and his mother Maggie ran something similar albeit with less attention to detail with the bonus of Barney the flat-backed dog that chased Volkswagens. Once that 'chugga-chugga-chugga' could be heard Barney was out of his slumber snapping at the car for 30 feet or so only to return defeated by his noisy quarry. The famous Clancy brothers were born and reared on that street. Surely when they got to heaven they insisted on a William Street replica and all the old residents would pass them by daily and join them for a drink or a song or a prayer or even  a final breath.
William Street is part of the so-called Tipperary side of Carrick;in the Gaelic: CarraigMor. When I was seven we moved to the so-called Waterford side- Carrickbeg. Only the steadfast Sister river separates them but they are different. The spirit is wilder in Carrickbeg. It is where I reside today, where I lay my head at night and it is where my bones will return to the fecund ground, guarded over by Sliabh na Mban while my ghost will wander o'er the Waterford coast seeking my final destiny in another time and place.
Sometimes I like to walk around Carrickbeg. Down the Yellow Road onto the Co-op Hill and then passing the parish and the famine wall, I traipse up past the Friary. The Friary tabernacle lies bare now after 800 years. The Franciscans finally gave way to the secular impulse and had to move on. The convent once home to so many priests and brothers is now a Respond apartment complex; social housing for senior citizens. They are blessed to reside on hallowed ground and the Christian call while stilled, whispers ceaselessly in the communal setting of Carrickbeg.
My hometown is small; a provincial market town that sprang like rushes beside the river. It nestles among the claims of Tipperary and Waterford while the tiny river Lingaun keeps Leinster at bay. It has a heart like any human being, is hurt and broken, joyous and alive. But just like a beautiful love it holds you and pulls you back into its arms and you are finally at peace. At peace on your  native shore.