These photos show 1. Castle/William St area: 2. Back of the Dam with Cathedral 3. Church Street area 4. Abbey/Courtenay Hill area 5. High Street area and 6. Hill Street areas some fifty years ago. These areas may show least change over the half-century!
John McCullagh
Missioners
Clare Barker writes on behalf of her father Arthur McGuigan of Derrybeg Drive. Arthur recalls the Missions of old, where the first week was for women alone, the second for men. Arthur and his mates ‘bunked’ the service and kept warm by sitting in the empty buses on The Mall! A religious mate would be waylaid on his way home so that all could report on what the Missioner was on about that evening!
All went well until his father Raymes caught them. To the last man, they were frog-marched to the Church and supervised for the duration of the service.
I must admit I rather enjoyed the Missions. All that ‘fire and brimstone’ taught me a love of horror movies!
Then there was the Confraternity. Again, one night for men, one for women. You sat under a Shield naming your area. A clever device that, for ‘absent’ colleagues could quickly be identified and followed up! Seriously though, the Cathedral was always packed. I miss that level of community faith.
Agnes: Terrorists Incensed!
Dear Agnes,
I think I’ve finally got your measure and that’s the reason I’m seeking your support and advice.
Don’t you just wholeheartedly agree with the Government Report of last week that our people are much too self-indulgent? Our nation is frankly obese with over-eating; spaced-out on banned drugs; permanently drunk with bingeing on alcohol; rampant with sexually-transmitted diseases; and determined to infect us innocents with their carcinogenic secondary smoke from their endless chain-smoking in public arenas.
It is good that H.M. Government has finally woken up. But we would like your aid too.
I am the Secretary of the newly-formed CHASTE group (Catholic Heroines Against Sex, Tippling and Excess). We hold our weekly meeting in our local Church Hall, where we light candles for the depraved and burn incense to exorcise evil spirits.
Then we pray for all lost souls. Wouldn’t you like to join us?
Yours truly,
Winifred Snow.
………..
Dear Winnie,
B——- Off, you whining, whinnying weasel.
Come anywhere near Newry Journal again, and you will be CHASTE!
Woman’s Work
She was a formidable character, the farm woman of old.
‘Don’t work for a woman,’ the old labourers would advise. ‘They never know what’s in a day’s work.’
In truth, she was more energetic and capable and expected no less from the men. She came to the head-rig with ‘dinner for the field’ and after the meal – amid compliments satirical and genuine, the teasing and earthy, adult repartee in traditional phrases about love and marriage and children or the lack of them, she stayed to help.
In between the preparation and the hectic scamper of setting or sowing she found time to ‘cut the seed’. This time she found – ‘idle time’ – was to get to a barn where she squatted on a creepie stool, bent over a heap of potatoes which she was slitting expertly to make seed with just enough eyes or buds and no more (or she gouged those out) and so make ordinary white potatoes go further.
Sometimes she was giving a hand there, to an old woman who had come to do the task for wages. When we saw these waifs – most of them ‘going the roads’ in spring, their dark shawls about them – we knew they were off to ‘cut seed’ for someone and glad to get the money. Many of them subsisted on ‘poor relief’ doled out in the local dispensary each week.
‘They have the back for it’, the men sometimes said wryly, evasively, but it was a belief then. When a man had his drills ready for planting, he might say wishfully,
‘Man, if only two or three tight, strappin’ lumps o’ weemen would slip a braskin about them and drop me seed, I’d have that field in, in junk time!’
Meadow: Blackberry Season
‘To everything, there is a season
And a time to every purpose under heaven.’
Why ducks can swim!
D’ye know how ducks came to swim? Ye don’t? Ah, the sarrah be aff you for a scholar! Well I’ll tell ye.
When Our Lord was on earth, He was hidin’ from His enemies one day under a heap of flax-shoughs. An’ doesn’t a wastrel of a hin come up an’ start to tear with her feet. Bad scran to the same hins an’ their tearin’. She stripped the shoughs aff Him, indeed. But doesn’t the ducks come up then, an’ thim cacklin’ like mad, an’ they flew at the hin an’ scarred her aff. Then they covered Him agin with their beaks, an’ sat on Him, cackli’ away.
The sojers came an’ saw the cacklin’ ducks an’ passed it by.
The ducks couldn’t swim then, ye know. But doesn’t a big flood come over the country, an’ He gave the ducks the power to swim. The hins were drowned but the ducks were saved.
An’ THAT’S why ducks can swim now.
More ‘Rose’ Cures
I told you one tale of the cure for The Rose, or erysiphelas to give it its medical name – an ailment no doctor could cure! But that’s doesn’t stop me telling you another.
We were all sitting round the fire one winter’s evening when the latch of the door was lifted and a head all wrapped in bandages appeared in the lamplight.
‘Come on on on in,’ we called, and a man came in.
‘I was looking for Harry McElroys’, he explained.
‘I was just thinking as much,’ me mother said. ‘On yer head ye have it. God bless it.’
‘On me head it is’, he agreed.
Any person named McElroy was said to be able to cure it but few were willing – it was said to be unlucky. Harry had a practice the envy of any doctor. Our present visitor had come a long way on foot and we bade him sit down.
‘No matter what they tell ye, no doctor can cure The Rose’.
‘Indeed, not’, all agreed.
‘I remember a fella once trying his hand out with the doctor’, one of our visitors said.
He was a journeyman shoemaker and working at the time. He dropped the boot. He could never work and talk at the same time.
‘An’ he got cured?’ said another with contempt.
‘Oh, he got cured in the right oul’ style’, he added.
‘By the time that doctor was finished with him,
he wore the suit of dale boards!’
That Tastes Like Cats’ ****
It was an innocent enough idea to begin with. Indeed it may have begun with an attempt on the part of Governor Jed Bush to distract from the Florida authorities’ continued disenfranchisement of blacks and Hispanic and any others who might be tempted to vote for Kerry in the upcoming Presidential elections.
‘Florida has been ravaged recently by hurricanes, infestation, poverty and crime. Why don’t the media consult their readership on the ideal adjective to describe Florida? I suggest ‘ravished’, he concluded.
As it happened, the top ten suggestions were unprintable! Most were preceded by an expletive, with qualifying adjectives suggesting widespread corruption. ‘Ravished’ did indeed come in at number eleven. A straw poll of those who agreed with Bush’s word indicated that this was how they felt as victims of rape, violent crime and disenfranchisement. Jeb soon dropped the hot potato!
Meanwhile the U.S. Secretary of Labor was praising the beneficial effect on the strained job market of the Iraq war.
‘More than 135,000 U.S. citizens are gainfully employed as military personnel in Iraq alone,’ she boasted. ‘The war there is keeping these young men and women out of the unemployment lines and also teaching them such valuable skills as operating radar equipment, driving battle tanks and filling body bags.
Most troops won’t need to seek new work for another four to seven years. Then there’s Afghanistan still, Iran, Syria, North Korea. An emergency draft might even return the country to full employment.’
Not the literal truth, but the underlying message was there.
On a lighter vein we learned this week of an Australian woman who allegedly suffered from ‘sleep sex’. Apparently she left her house at night and had sex with total strangers without waking up.
How, I wondered, did she learn this? How did she meet them, did they proposition her or vice versa? Was there no foreplay? Did neither feel anything? Will Peter at the Pearly Gates accept her story? Does any of this matter? What is her address?
Kopi luwak coffee, I learned this week, at
Walk on me back, there!
Many people are unaware of how prevalent still, especially in country areas, is the faith in those who ‘have the cure’ for many ailments. There are documented cases where conventional medicine failed but the faith healer succeeded. One woman had been suffering for a few years from a very bad rash on her neck and had received the best of treatment from doctors and consultants. She went to the man with the charm for skin ailments. He duly administered the cure by walking around her, spitting lightly and touching her neck with spittle while quietly reciting prayers. He asked the lady not to wash her neck for nine days, with which request she duly complied. After this time the rash was gone.
Another woman had a severely arthritic arm which she was unable to raise above shoulder level. The curer she visited touched her arm and prayed. Twenty minutes the lady was able to lift her arm freely and has continued to have this freedom of movement ever since. There is scarcely a person – certainly in rural Ireland – who cannot tell a similar tale.
THE CURE FOR THRUSH
A person born after his/her father has died, has the cure for thrush. This person would blow into the affected baby’s mouth. This would be done three times before the baby would be cured.
THE CURE FOR WHOOPING COUGH
A woman married to a man of the same surname had this cure. A child with whooping cough is given three things to eat by this woman, for example, a piece of bread, an apple and a biscuit. After the child had eaten these it would get better.
THE CURE FOR LUMBAGO OR BACKACHE
A person born feet first has the cure for backache. He/she would cure your backache by walking on your back – a solution guaranteed to ‘kill or cure’! A person born feet first was destined also to travel a lot.
THE CURE FOR WARTS
If you wash your hands with rainwater that has been sitting in a hallowed stone, the warts will soon disappear. Indeed some such stones (e.g. that near Kilnasaggart Standing Stone) became famous as Wart Stones. Another cure for warts is to pick as many rushes as you have warts. You touch each wart with a separate rush and then bury the rushes. Tell no one where you have buried them and, as the rushes rot, the warts will disappear. This can also be done using potatoes.
More….