An Irish Christmas Feast (31 page)

Never pass an acquaintance, or indeed any man or woman, without conferring upon them that most inexpensive of all gifts – the common-or-garden salute. This applies especially at Christmas when people of all ages wish each other happy Christmases, holy Christmases and merry Christmases. Sometimes those with generous dispositions or with time on their hands also wish all and sundry a happy new year. I believe this to be a commendable practice and I am glad that I find the opportunity in this collection of yuletide tales to indulge in my favourite eccentricity as my beloved wife sometimes calls it.

When we salute people, no matter how enlightened or well intentioned the sentiments, we must always be prepared for rebuff. When we wish other people happy Christmases we should try to realise that some are incapable of being happy because they enjoy being unhappy. Some enjoy being morose while others like to be churlish. I once had a distant cousin, now even more distant, God rest him since he expired in a fit of pique a few Christmases ago. He saw a group of people laughing hysterically on his way home from church and was overcome by disgust. Promptly he fell down and died poor fellow.

Another relation of mine, still with us, would faint upon beholding a radiant face and then there was a friend who never returned a salute. He would respond with grimaces and rude sounds. In case you are asking yourself why the preamble to this tale, if tale it can be called, I will not keep you waiting any longer. I am simply trying to ready the gentle reader for the unexpected.

On the most recent Christmas Eve at precisely twenty-five minutes past eleven I decided to go for a stroll through the streets of my native town. Before I left the house I underwent a wifely inspection. She approved of my shoes and my socks, rearranged my scarf so that no part of my throat was left uncovered. She removed my cap and replaced it with a heavier specimen as well as feeling the texture of my gloves and the quality of my overcoat. She already had a more than nodding acquaintance with the texture of the garment but habit dies hard and I would have to admit that nobody has my welfare more at heart than that gracious, glorious, lifelong companion.

‘Try not to indulge in liquor until tonight,' she said, ‘and then we can all have a few together.' I agreed or maybe it was the accumulated wisdom of three score and ten that made me fulfil the obligation without a second thought. Outside the air was crisp. There was a frosty nip and the sky overhead was blue. What more could a man wish for at the beginning of his daily peregrinations unless it was the occasional flurry of snow to emphasise the season. No sleet thank you for the good reason that sleet can't make up its mind whether its snow, rain or good round hailstone – hailstone, blessed ambassador from the court of winter. I will now proceed with my tale and won't be waylaid again.

The streets were bright and festive with the trappings of Christmas and everywhere could be heard the joyful exchanges of the season. On a personal basis I was greeted on countless occasions and was quick to return the compliments. When I had exhausted the main streets I briefly visited the town's two squares where further seasonal exchanges were the order of the morning.

Then I took myself to the side streets and thence to the back-ways, almost always favoured by the middle-aged and the elderly because of the absence of bustle. It was here I encountered a doughty middle-aged damsel who held the centre of the back-way against all comers. She also moved at an alarming pace despite being burdened with two large bags of groceries. She had, on her flushed face, a look of intense determination. In an earlier age with a sword in her hand she would have put to flight any foe foolhardy enough to challenge her. My sixth sense, which I always keep handy, warned me that I might be better advised to forego the normal Christmas wishes and continue on my way as though she did not exist.

My sixth sense is rarely wrong but I am a man who has always cherished the belief that passers-by are there to be saluted or greeted or whatever.

‘A happy Christmas!' I ventured.

There was no verbal response but she threw me a look which suggested that she had little time for frivolities. She barged by, her sturdy steps a challenge to anyone who might dispute her right to the middle of the back-way. All the other people I saluted on that resplendent morning returned the greeting with interest.

It was around that time that I began to feel peckish so I decided upon a short-cut home. There is truly no place like home when the pangs of hunger announce their arrival so I set off with a cheerful heart to the pork chops and mashed parsnips which awaited me.

I have often thought, since that eventful morning, how we fail to take account of the possibility of disaster when we find ourselves on the crest of a wave. How beautifully Robbie Burns put it when he ploughed the mouse's nest:

The best laid schemes of mice and men

Gang aft a-gley

And leave as nought but grief and pain

For promised joy.

A flight of starlings, dipping and soaring, chirping and chatting, flew by overhead while sturdy sparrows fed on motes and grains, impervious to the passing human.

Suddenly, for a second time, I braced myself as the doughty damsel bearing the grocery bags hove into view once more. It was obvious from her demeanour that things had not been going her way all morning. Ever a believer in the power and goodness of salutation I tendered the compliments of the season again. This time she stopped and looked me up and down without reply. Then she placed her bags on the ground and looked me in the eye.

‘Bad cess to you,' she spat, ‘with your happy Christmas. How could I be happy and my husband drunk in some dive and me with no way of getting home?'

I was about to say something but could think of nothing appropriate. She then sent me about my business with a four-letter word followed by one of three.

For all that, the sun still shone down and the white frost faded on the roof-tops. None the worse for my encounter I stopped and bestowed the compliments of the season on a trio of people I thought I knew.

‘You have some gall to salute us after what you and your crowd did to this poor girl here.'

The rebuke came from the woman probably in her late thirties, obviously the mother of the girl allegedly wronged by myself and my crowd. But who were my crowd and what had we done to the innocent who stood before me? Her husband stood idly by and made no attempt to speak and why should he with a spouse as articulate as the woman beside him. As I recall, although no word escaped his lips, he had adopted a supporting attitude.

‘How did I wrong this girl?' I asked.

‘The poem,' came back the prompt reply.

‘What poem?' I asked.

‘The poem she entered for your competition,' she answered.

‘What competition?' I asked patiently.

Suddenly the words burst forth, one forcing the one before forward until a great spate of language told me that the competition had been organised by a food manufacturing company with a head office in London and that her daughter had managed to qualify for the final stages but had been deprived of her just rights by myself and my evil cronies. She went on to say that we would never have an hour's luck and that we would never die in our beds after which we would rot in hell and be damned forever without hope of redemption.

I explained that I did not belong to the organisation she had mentioned and had never, in fact, any dealings good, bad or indifferent with the food group in question, at which she spewed verbal fire in all directions so that even her husband's face began to register alarm.

The victim, a shy creature on the verge of her teens, seemed as if she was going to burst into tears. I pointed out that I had once been a judge in a poetry competition sponsored by Listowel Writers' Week but had never been involved with any other.

It was as though I had slapped her face. She rounded on me once more and berated me as if I was the scum of the earth. When she had exhausted herself I extended my hands and apologised profusely for the perfidy of dishonest judges everywhere. I infused the last dregs of my drained compassion into my tone but she was having none of it. Suddenly I altered my course as it were. I remarked on the singular beauty of the morning and how it was a shame that the fine weather had not come sooner. I then veered in the direction of their Christmas dinner and enquired if they had invested in a hen or a cock turkey or maybe like myself they had opted for a goose. She replied by swinging her umbrella at me. I was, of course, totally innocent of the charge laid at my door and begged her to take note of the facts. It was only then I deduced that the creature was intoxicated. At that moment a countryman passed and asked what was wrong. I had seen him before. His face was always belligerent.

‘This girl,' my tormentor pointed out, ‘sent a poem to this man's competition and they sent the poem back saying it was too late for entry.'

So the charge had taken a new twist and it was possible that on this occasion she was telling the truth, except that it wasn't my competition.

‘Well,' I explained, ‘the rules are there and when an entry is late it is returned to the owner.'

‘Scandalous isn't the word for it,' said the new arrival, the hostility rampant in his attitude.

‘And suppose,' said the mother of the victimised poetess, ‘that it was Shakespeare sent it would you return it? Indeed you would not for if you did you'd have no Shakespeares and you'd have no omelettes.'

At least it sounded like omelettes but of course she meant
Hamlet
but had dropped her haitch having spent a period working in London before returning to Ireland. The gentleman who had stopped to ask what was wrong had passed a disparaging remark about poetry and was now at the receiving end of the umbrella. He crumbled like a gangly puppet and rolled to safety without a whimper. My time had come too. I felt I had suffered enough but how's that Shakespeare puts it:

When sorrows come, they come not single spies

But in battalions.

When I arrived home I was informed that my beloved wife had accepted a lift to the funeral of a distant relative in an equally distant village. As always she had left my dinner in a covered plate on a saucepan of hot water but on this occasion there was nothing in the nature of a dinner to be seen. Apparently a handyman had called to sweep out the back-yard and he presumed that the dinner was for him and why would he presume otherwise when, on so many times in the past, he had found his dinner waiting as mine had been waiting, until he came along. According to a friend of my wife's who had called to deliver a religious magazine to which we unfailingly subscribed and unfailingly never read, the handyman had bolted my dinner in jig time and declared it to be the best so far.

I settled for a snack as I recall and, not for the first time, decided to rediscover the fine flavour of a lightly-mustarded ham sandwich. The ham was totally rotten so I decided upon a cheese sandwich but there was no cheese. At this stage I was about to fume but instead I sat down and composed myself. Slowly but surely I began to realise what a fortunate fellow I was. here I was, unscathed after wading through a sea of troubles. I began to rejoice and when I went out into the back-yard still brightly lit by the winter sun and showing the sickle of distant Ramadan materialising in the heavens, I raised my hands aloft and thanked God for my happy lot and for allowing me to share Christmas with the less fortunate. The trials I had experienced were merely joys in disguise and the people I met were surely angels in our midst for they reminded me of my happy lot and is this not the brief of angels! For the moment farewell dear friends and a merry Christmas and a happy new year to all of us.

The widows of the deceased footballers blessed themselves and rose as one from the Marian shrine where they had offered an open-air Rosary for the success of the living footballers who would represent the townland of Ballybee on the following Sunday. On their coats, blouses and frocks they proudly wore the black and yellow colours of the Ballybee Gaelic football team. For the first time in twenty-four years Ballybee found themselves in the final of the junior championship.

None was more surprised than the players themselves. Rank outsiders at the beginning, they had played their hearts out in pulsating game after pulsating game until they reached the ultimate stage of the Canon Coodle Cup. Nonie Regan, mother of the team's youthful captain Shamus, prophesied from the beginning that the cup would come back to Ballybee.

‘They have the youth,' she pointed out solemnly, ‘and you won't beat youth at the end of the day.'

Before the first round of the championship she found few to agree with her but how different it was now! The team had grown in wisdom and experience and her son Shamus was being mentioned for the county team. It was widely believed by experienced non-partisans that the up-and-coming midfielder had the beating of his opposite number on the Ballybo fifteen, the redoubtable Badger Loran, a veteran of seven finals, five of which had been annexed by Ballybo. Despite the rise and rise of the opposition they were still money-on favourites to hold on to the crown.

Canon Cornelius Coodle after whom the cup was named had been a formidable footballer in his day and although extremely cautious in his footballing prognostications was inclined to favour Ballybee, ‘but,' he cautioned his two curates, one from Ballybee and the other from Ballybo, ‘there will be very little in it in the end and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turned out to be a draw.'

On the morning of the game he gave one of his more memorable sermons, recalling his own footballing days and emphasising the need for sportsmanship when tempers flared and caution was likely to be thrown to the winds. He recalled sporting encounters from the past and congratulated the six other teams representing six townlands who failed to make it to the final.

‘In many ways,' he explained, ‘you are just as important as the finalists and with luck there might have been a different outcome in many of the games. You played like men and you behaved like men when the final whistle was blown. You shook hands with the victors and you withdrew gracefully from the scene to ready yourselves for future encounters when the day may be yours.'

The canon then addressed himself to the finalists in particular, pointing out that the children of the parish would be watching on that very afternoon and it behoved the players from both sides to set an example of sportsmanship and discipline. ‘Moderate your language at all times,' he urged, ‘and take into account the feelings of the referee when you feel like upbraiding him. He is only flesh and blood like all of us and he has a wife and children like many of you so be sure to take his delicate position into account before you threaten him with fist or boot. Remember that there will be songs about this great event, songs which will be sung rousingly in years to come when the combatants have passed on. What matters most is the game so see to it that you abide by the rules and in so doing you'll bring glory to your townlands and to your parish. It is my duty also to warn blackguards and thugs that the football field is for football and I shall be keeping a close eye on the goings-on at all times.'

Canon Coodle went on about excessive drinking and displays of drunkenness on the streets which scandalised young folk in particular. ‘To me has fallen the honour of throwing in the ball and I hope the players from both sides will shake hands as gracefully at the close as they did at the beginning.'

Later in the day he would throw in the ball after the referee had called him on from the side-line and then he would withdraw to his cushioned chair where he would maintain a dutiful silence until the game ended.

Let us now look at the captains, firstly the Badger Loran, a forty-year-old midfielder, gnarled and bony and tough as wax, reputed to have broken more bones than a butcher and closed more eyes than any sleeping potion. A strong farmer unmarried and independent with a shock of grey hair which is why he was nicknamed the Badger in the first place. He entertained romantic feelings for the Widow Regan especially since her husband died but had never made his notions known for fear of rebuff. He played with distinction for the county team in his twenties but was still a force to be reckoned with at this level despite his age.

‘He's no thoroughbred,' his supporters would tell anyone who cared to listen, ‘but the Badger will still be in the running when the thoroughbreds are spent.'

Shamus Regan the Ballybee captain was of average height but physically he was gloriously realised and the fleetest of the thirty players who would contest the leather that day. He could go higher for the ball than any mortal in the eight townlands that made up the ancient parish. Barely gone eighteen he would need a little more weight and a little more muscle if he was to advance to county honours.

‘When he's nineteen or twenty,' Canon Coodle informed his curate, ‘he'll be a far tougher proposition.'

Shamus because of his blonde, curling locks was instantly recognisable wherever he went and was often a target for the scoundrels mentioned in Canon Coodle's sermon.

‘They'll never nail him.' The canon wagged a finger at his assistants. ‘He's too elusive, too speedy and built to ride the hardest tackle.'

‘Wait till the Badger's done with him,' the curates cautioned humorously.

‘He'll annihilate him,' said one hoping to draw the canon's fire.

‘He'll pulverise him,' said the second hoping to do the same.

‘And I'll pulverise you two,' the canon countered with a laugh, ‘if you don't get out of here this very minute and start hearing confessions.'

In truth the widow's blond-haired son could do with an extra year but he was well compensated with speed and skill.

From an early hour the supporters began to arrive in town. Most made straight for the pubs which had early openings and extended openings for the occasion. Restaurants and sweetshops did a roaring trade and the contrasting colours were quickly sold out, the black and yellow of Ballybee and the red and white of Ballybo.

Mental Nossery the poet had been in the throes of competition for several days. ‘Mental isn't his right name at all', the canon would explain to visitors but the locals like to nickname those they don't fully understand. Mental, a still-gangly chap of middle age, stood on a barrel in Crutley's pub and read an appropriate verse from the epic he had started as soon as the finalists were made known.

‘No talking now,' Fred Crutley ordered as he smote upon the bar counter with a large wooden mallet. Mental Nossery might be mental and he might be an odd-ball but the part of him that was a poet was sacred and must therefore be respected.

‘Order now please,' Blossom O'Moone, barmaid for the day, called. Slowly an uncertain silence began to make itself felt. It was neither the time nor the place for poetry but Blossom would agree that a poet was a poet and might not be available the day after or the day after that or for indeed many a day especially this poet for he had received the annual rent for his leased farm only the day before. That was part of the agreement which both parties had signed, payment on the day or the nearest working day prior to the final of the football championship.

Fortified with three freshly consumed whiskeys and one pint of stout the poet raised a hand and prepared himself to read from the leaflet which fluttered in his shaking hand. He first explained to the somewhat disinterested clientele that he would be omitting most of the verses from the fourth book of the epic on account of the introductory nature of the contents, ‘as for instance,' he explained to his restless listeners, ‘the many verses necessary to depict the arrival of the aficionados and the names by which they are recognised locally.'

‘Get on with it,' a loud voice called. It came from a whiskered elder who happened to be sporting the black and yellow colours of Ballybee. He was immediately shouted down by several raucous young gentleman who wore the red and white ribbons of Ballybo.

Without further preamble Mental Nossery started. Dramatically he extended a long lean hand to encompass his listeners as it were and with the other hand held the pages closer to his eyes: ‘They came in coracle, punt and raft,' he intoned:

And every make of outrageous craft

The drunk, the doting, the damned, the daft

The lewd and the low and the lofty

On mule and jennet, on horse and ass

On pony and cob through ford and pass.

Pensioner, puler, laddie and lass

And the crass and crude and crafty.

Mental judged from the humour of the crowd that he might be best advised to move on to the names of those who would be present on the side-lines: ‘Mottled McMahons and fair McEntees,' he raised his tone:

Black McAlackys and hairy McMees,

Bald-headed Bradys and brindled O'Deas

Committed to common obstruction

In bevvies and levies and staggering skeins

Black-toothed Bradys and buck-toothed Maines

Foxy-haired Finnertys, bow-legged Kanes

Fermenting to foster destruction.

‘And now the ladies' – Mental Nossery was always mindful of the opposite sex. He often boasted that they would never be neglected while he drew breath.

‘What do you think of it?' Blossom O'Moone asked of Toben the schoolmaster.

‘Well,' said he, ‘considering that we're landlocked here and only a small river for water, the punts and rafts and coracles show how mental the poet is.'

The clientele, those who could fully hear him, were impressed but they were not entertained. Nevertheless like any poet worthy of the name he referred to the female breeds likely to be in attendance. His rendering became pacier now as he reeled off:

Delia Dan Donies and Tessie Tom Ned's

Minnie Matt Minnie's and Freda Mick Fred's

Delectable damsels for marital beds

But presently prey to confusion

Julie Jack Josie's and Josie Jack Jim's

Katie Tom Katie's and Tessie Tom Tim's

Malignantly whetted by virginal whims

And curdled for want of collusion.

This verse, alas, proved too much for a hot-headed male member of the Freda Mick Fred family who denied that his breed were ever prey to confusion. He retaliated by knocking Mental from his barrel and would have throttled him had not Blossom spirited him out of doors and sent him on his way to a safer hostelry.

As match time drew near the pubs began to disgorge their crowds and soon there was a steady stream heading towards the sports' ground where the local brass band was playing. Then suddenly there was silence as the band struck up the national anthem. After the anthem a loudspeaker was placed in the now-steady hand of Mental whose true Christian name was Indigo.

‘Now, now now!' the canon raised his hands aloft for silence, ‘our Laureate will regale us with a verse or two.'

The canon withdrew a step leaving the stage to the poet. For his part Mental Nossery held forth with what he believed was the kernel of the poem.

‘I see Mars in the sky or to be more exact in those black clouds that have gathered to the west of us. I now formally invoke the aid of the Holy Spirit and call for ten seconds' silence after which, by the grace of God, I will commence to versify:

Up above Mars waits for the bloody fare

The lightning brightening his burnished hair

As he madly treads on the trembling air

And prises the heavens asunder.

Now he raises his hands than the welkin higher

His nostrils belching and billowing fire

As his voice rolls over the land entire

With its terrible tones of thunder.

Harken now to the words I say

Let the lines be drawn for the coming fray

Let there be no quarter this glorious day

Let each wound another nourish.

Let the game flow fast, let the blood flow free

Let the ball know elbow, boot and knee

Let knuckles white set the molars free

Let the warrior spirit flourish.'

The canon applauded loudly but there was to be no more, for the referee's whistle had sounded and the game was on. The play flowed freely, then savagely, then wickedly, then beautifully and gracefully as Shamus Regan sent over the opening point for Ballybee. Ballybo responded quickly when the Badger fielded high and sent a long pass to his forward-in-chief who split the posts for the equalising point. There followed for the hour similar exchanges while the crowd roared their approval. Never had they seen such a final. Never had so many passionate tempers flared and died and flared again. Never were there so many accurate points and never before in the history of the competition were dynamic goals scored, one for either side by the captains of either team. The Badger lost his head and flayed his opponents but Shamus kept his and won a free kick which was to be the final one of the game the referee warned.

The sides were level as the Ballybee captain placed the ball, sixty full yards from the Ballybo goal. A tricky wind had crept into the proceedings towards the end of the game which made free-taking extremely difficult. Add to this the acute angle of the space between ball and posts. A mortifying silence descended. The day would belong to Ballybee should the ball go over the bar. Shamus bent his head and looked not at the far-off posts. He would estimate with closed eyes before he opened them to kick the ball. Over it went and the crowd went wild. Then a scuffle broke out and when Shamus tried to intervene he was felled and kicked in the head. The Badger threw his great body across the youth to save him from further kicks.