Culture

In a Word: Immaculate

Two boys lose their bearings in a vast new home in Ballaghaderreen on December 8th

“Our mother arrived back to find every light in the house on, every tap running, the younger ones running up and down the stairs, and Seán and I missing.”

Patsy McGarry's face
Patsy McGarry
Sat Dec 8 2018 - 06:00

I will never forget our first of December 8th in Ballaghaderreen when our mother went to Mass at Frenchpark times.

We moved the day before from the townland of Mullen near Frenchpark, seven miles and several centuries from Ballaghaderreen.

In Mullen we lived in a traditional thatched, whitewashed, three-roomed (one divided) country cottage built by my great-grandfather Patrick in the 1850s.

The family had lived there since. It had no electricity or running water but with our mother we needed neither. A well at the back to the house supplied water for washing and one up the road was for drinking, except when Kate Callaghan fell in on Fridays (pension day).

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For most of the time in Mullen our mother cooked on an open fire. Then we got a gas cooker. Not that it was funny, just a cooker.

My father bought this huge, three-storey house on the Square in Ballaghaderreen where you could get lost, and we did. Myself and my brother Seán, that is.

That was when our mother went to Mass at Frenchpark times and we had the house to ourselves for two hours.

Though it was a holy day of obligation, our father was so exhausted after the move he was out for the count, though supposed to be minding us.

It was a glorious opportunity for Seán and myself, who like Adam and Eve had been forbidden from certain action by higher authority. In our case it was from going into rooms which were being rewired.

So, as with Adam and Even, we had to.

Up and up we went until we got to the top floor, from where we could see fields across houses on the other side of the street... and our mother coming from Mass. Panic. We ran downstairs and lost our way when eventually, and as though by the waters of Babylon, we lay down and wept. Loudly.

Our mother arrived back to find every light in the house on, every tap running, the younger ones running up and down the stairs, and Seán and I missing. She searched frantically and then found us, like the lost sheep. She was so relieved she said nothing.

We two, who had already abandoned hope, were very glad to be found on that Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Immaculate, from Latin immaculatus, meaning unstained.

inaword@irishtimes.com