BACK HOME: The village of his childhood, with its competitive piety, its servants, its poverty and emigration, has gone, but its community spirit is still strong and, for Vincent Browne, Broadford remains home

Tomorrow in Hyde Park, Roscommon, three of Broadford's finest will be on display against Armagh: Jason Stokes, Micheal Reidy and Tommy Stack.

Three 2005 All Stars. They come from a small west Co Limerick village that knew no football until a few years ago. Hurling, handball, pitch and toss and a bit of tennis. No football of any variety. Now three fellas from a small village in west Co Limerick are on a promising county team that could go places in the next few years.

I went to national school with parents of two of them and lived a few doors away from the mother of another. I served as an altar boy with a relative of one of them and there was more competition at the altar steps than at a the Munster football or hurling final. We used to compete for reverence. Who would remain bent in adoration the longest after the consecration? Who would carry the thurible and walk backwards through the village at the Corpus Christi procession? Who would accompany the priest at communion? The priest used to give out communion then by placing the host on the tongues of the faithful. Some tongues. The full monty - mouth opened wide, a massive tongue stretched out, eyes wide open. Tiny tongues from tiny mouths. Scrunched-up tongues, scrunched-up faces, scrunched-up eyes. Red tongues, yellow tongues, brown tongues, black tongues, pink tongues. Perfumed breath. Bad breath.

There was a woman from Mount Plummer who had the lot. Huge mouth, massive rolled-out tongue. You could fry eggs on it. Bad teeth, filled teeth, gold teeth and a cavern at the rear. Tongue out immediately she hit the railings.

One Sunday morning I was carrying the paten and I saw her coming. The tongue rolled out at the other end of the rails. I composed myself.

There was giggling at the altar steps. I tried very hard. Stomach muscles pulled tight. Thinking of confession, the Last Day, the Stations of the Cross, the Primary Cert. There she was, the tongue now stretched out like an apron. I began to shake.

The paten trembled in my hand. I couldn't see with the water in my eyes.

I gave way. Laughed, laughed helplessly, laughed uncontrollably. The priest raging. The altar boys rocking.

My earliest recollection of the village is of two young lads going through the village one morning saying their goodbyes before taking the liner from Cobh to go to America forever. They thought we would never see Broadford again. They were crying openly and many in the village were in tears with them that morning.

There must have been many more tears in those days. Tears of young servant boys and young girls exploited and humiliated by farmers and the petit bourgeoisie. There were hiring fairs in Newcastle West every January and the servant boys and girls (many of them into their late middle age) would be taken on for a year at rates of £110 (€140) per year. This was in the mid-1950s. Usually, they slept in outhouses, had their meals at tables separate from the family,worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, 11 months of the year. They hung around the corners in the village at night unable to afford a drink or go to a dance.

Jack Maloney worked with us. He dined separately and lived across the road in a hovel - mud floor, leaking thatched roof, damp walls, no running water, no sanitation. He had been a champion Irish dancer and, I'd say, in his day, he was a bit of a goer. But by the time he became part of our lives, whatever gaiety he had once had was gone. He got drunk occasionally and hilariously (for us) fell in love with a young woman who just teased him, and died alone on the floor of his hovel, where his body was not found for several days.

Every one of the other 11 boys in my class in national school, bar one, emigrated to England in their mid-teens, having worked as servant boys on farms for a few years. A few have since returned, and with a few others I have remained in distant contact.

One of them has had a miserable life in Birmingham, because of drink. Another has had a good life. He was by far the brightest in the class and two of his sons have been in Riverdance.

There was relative opulence in those days among the bigger farmers and a few shopkeepers, including ourselves. There was also a lot of poverty, right in the village under our noses and among the smaller farmers and, of course, the labourers. And there was a lot of denial of that poverty.

Paradoxically, there seems to have been a lively community spirit in Muintir na Tíre, Macra na Feirme, the Legion of Mary. My father was in Muintir and my mother in the Legion. I longed to be old enough to go to meetings like they did.

It would have been nice to have had something to do during the long summers we spent in Broadford, home from boarding school. Everyone I had been with at primary school had gone. I hated those summers and began to hate the sense of dislocation that leaving Broadford and going to boarding-school caused. Although I was from Broadford, increasingly I was not of Broadford. Later on, that sense of dislocation eased.

My father used to take us to the graveyard at Springfield, a mile from the village, marvelling at the view from there, with the hills of Mullagharadairc as a backdrop. We walked among the graves, talking about dead neighbours. Almost every time I have returned to the village in the last 30 years, both before my father died in 1992 and since, I have gone back to the graveyard at Springfield - and I went there last Friday morning in the glorious sunshine. He is there now with my mother, his parents and ancestors, and Aunt Julia, who reared him and us. Phil Jones, my first and best teacher and his childhood friend, is buried nearby.

Donie O'Brien is there too. Donie, the postmaster and the telephone operator. When we phoned Broadford 5 from Dublin, Donie's was the first familiar and reassuring voice we heard. He would recognise our voices too and could tell us whether our parents were in or out and, if they were out, where they had gone.

Peg Clarson is there, first wife of John Clarson, who was one of our closest friends in the village. He was a farmer and came to the house every morning after creamery,full of humour, wisdom and, at times, whiskey. Three of the lads I was at school with are there: Henry Bucke, Jack Clarson and Michael Boyce.

Mrs Buckley is buried there as well. Actually her name is Mrs Fitzpatrick, but she and her family, the Fitzpatricks, were always known as Buckleys. They lived just across the road from us beside the forge and I spent a large part of my childhood in their kitchen. Kathleen and Tess from that family are my closest links with the village, apart from my own family.

The day we shouldered my father's coffin around that graveyard via the longest route, an old schoolfriend from Dublin, who had never met my father, insisted on carrying the coffin for a while and then wouldn't get out for the final stretch, when, traditionally, the family take over again. We had to halt the proceedings until he could be persuaded to let go and I took up my father for that last time, again in laughter, a laughter he would have shared.

The forge and the creamery were the centrepieces of Broadford. Forty or 50 horse-drawn carts would come to the creamery from 7 a.m. and many of the farmers would come to our shop for the paper and groceries, with the horses idling outside. They would argue with my father and among themselves about politics, hurling, gossip and neighbours. Sometimes in loud voices, more usually with merriment and mischief.

Murty and Johnny Duggan ran the forge. Murty shod the horses, blasting and cursing. Johnny, the quiet one, did wonders with iron, fire, anvil and hammer. Murty knew more about politics than most TDs and was more argumentative than all of them. He died several years ago. Johnny is retired now. His brother, Billy, told me last Friday that every day Johnny comes down to his house in the morning whistling and again last thing at night whistling.

Their father, Paddy Duggan, was the sacristan, punctilious and punctual, except when on the beer. Then he might ring the angelus bell at any time of day, advertising his sabbatical to the parish. His wife, a stern, no-nonsense woman, would eventually lock him in the front room of their house in the village and, from there, he would command any passing altar-boy to ferry him pints, hidden in a bucket and delivered through the bedroom window.

My mother kept me back from national school for an extra year to allow me more days with the Duggans - Murty, Johnny, Dick, Billy and Julie - and their horse and cart, their mowing machine, their cow-shed, their hay-barn, their kitchen, where the tea was always being wetted.

Dan Lenihan had a small farm up the road at the base of the hill behind Broadford and was the best whistler I ever heard. He could whistle The Lake Isle of Inisfree better than James Galway. He was a big, gentle, vulnerable man, intelligent and odd. He used to take me hunting for rabbits and hares during my early childhood. He had a ferret and greyhounds, but never caught anything. Bit by bit, the oddness got the better of him and he wouldn't come out from where he lived on his own because of his hopelessness and depression.

There were five pubs, which operated their own opening hours because there was no Garda presence ever in Broadford.

Dromcollogher, the sister village of the parish, had the parish priest and the Garda station and were welcome to both. The parish priest was Canon O'Connor, a stern, forbidding figure. I was terrified one Sunday morning when he sermonised on pishogues (superstitions).

One priest we had was much given to extravagance. When Pope Pius XII had a gastrectomy, he invited prayers for the Pontiff who, he said, had had a hysterectomy.

The creamery is gone now as, I think, are the pishogues. The forge still thrives even in the absence of horses, and there is a vitality and youthfulness about Broadford now that there was never in my own youth. A new terrace of houses near the creamery, two delightful housing schemes for the aged, imposing new homes on the fringes of the village. Still five pubs, still no gardaí. And football.

The closeness is still there too. Neighbours looked after my father and mother in their last years. There is warmth and affection, even for someone who has been out of the village for as long as I have. It remains home.