The dead crowd all around Drumcree's Church of the Ascension. The Todds, the Joneses, the Flemings, Kings, McCrackens, Mitchells, Montgomerys, Hunnifords and so many more ascend the hill each side to its walls at the top.
The dead matter a lot at Drumcree Church. A Union flag hangs solitary over a marble plaque on a the wall near the door. It names 24 young men from the parish killed in the first World War. Ninety-five went to fight for king and country, 71 came back. All are on the plaque, their names a repetition of some in the graveyard outside.
The Union flag above covered in turn the bodies of such young men before they were buried in the fields of Flanders, or wherever they died, along the edge of the European mainland during that cataclysmic war of 1914-18. None was afforded the dignity of a coffin, unlike a probable descendant relative now awaiting burial. Many of them died at the Somme on July 1st, 1916. It is said that 300 sons of Ulster from rural parishes in Armagh and Monaghan, such as Drumcree, were killed that day, most by a single machine-gun mounted on a turret at the opening of a mine shaft. It had survived a bombardment by British fire before the Royal Irish Fusiliers mounted their offensive.
"Dozens of young lads of 17 and 18, dozens of them. Just think of it," urges the rector of Drumcree, the Rev John Pickering, remembering all those young dead and how so many were from such a small area.
The memory of those dead is etched deep in the soul of unionist people in Armagh and Monaghan, not least in Drumcree, and its neighbour Portadown. Since 1916 they have been remembered every year in the Orange parade. After that war, they built a British Legion hall in Portadown to the memory of such young men.
On August 5th, 1981, Breandan Mac Cionnaith was involved with a group of other young men who tried to blow it up and all those inside. No one was killed. In May 1982, he was sentenced to five years for false imprisonment, in connection with the crime. He was convicted of holding a family hostage while their car was used in the bombing. He was also given six years for firearms offences and two for hijacking, all to run concurrently. He served four years.
Orangemen and members of the wider unionist community in Portadown believe he and the others with him had tried to murder them and their memories. As far as they are concerned, it is difficult to decide which was the most serious.
They believe that coming from the area, he and those involved knew exactly what they were doing in trying to destroy the symbol of their greatest tragedy and those within. They were trying to inflict grief upon grief, to hurt them in the hardest way possible at the deepest level they knew how. What Breandan Mac Cionnaith did, in the Orange view, showed such a depth of hatred for them and what was most sacred to them, they cannot forget it.
So how could they be expected to talk to such a man, they ask, one who seems so apparently unrepentant, as they read him; a man who they believe questions their right to existence at all in Portadown or in Ireland?
Mr Pickering does not speak about such matters at all or of Breandan Mac Cionnaith, except in a passing reference to him as spokesman for the Garvaghy residents. Nor does his wife Olive.
He is not a member of the Orange Order. He has so much to do, he really needs a curate to assist him, he says. He does believe God sent him to Drumcree. "I believe God intended me to be in this parish, and I believe it is right for me to be here," he says. "I get great strength from that."
He has needed such strength. Every year since 1995 his church has been at the centre of a major crisis on the Sunday nearest the anniversary of the Somme and nearest the Twelfth.
What was once a local row has so far this year involved the US President, the British Prime Minister, the Taoiseach, the first acts of the First and Deputy First Ministers of the North's Assembly, the Catholic and Church of Ireland primates, and the world media observing from the wings. Two years ago it almost split a church.
"It's a bit like a marriage," suggests Mr Pickering, trying to explain. "One word is said, then another, and on and on until you have something huge."
But you would hardly think this rural parish of 1,000 souls was at the centre of so much attention yesterday. It could be anywhere in rural Ireland. There is a local poem, Drumcree Parish Church.
What beauty there adorns the scene
As in a robe of glorious green
'Tis decked by nature's bounteous hand
Our admiration to command.
Both God and man that scene have planned.
It is a place of pastoral ease and peace, where memories linger long and nature is content. This is echoed in the rectory, where a large Constable-style landscape of great trees, cattle and a wending river dominates the drawing room.
"It could have happened anywhere in Northern Ireland," Mr Pickering says of the upheaval which has arisen. "It was going to happen somewhere, it just happened to be here." He is convinced there is significance in that it should have happened where the church is involved.
"If it hadn't taken place here, the outside calming influence of the church would have been absent, however little we can do. God's intention is that people should be told to be calm, be restrained, have cool heads and just to wait . . . to stop speculating . . . the town [Portadown] is full of speculation." Drumcree is an old parish. It is believed there has been a church on the spot since shortly after St Patrick, and that druids used the site before that. The parish itself was formed in 1111 and clergymen have been recorded there since 1212. Townlands in the parish are even referred to in papal documents from 1296 and 1302.
The Orange Order was formed in the next parish in 1795, and the first recorded Orange parade to a service at Drumcree was in 1807. Mr Pickering has served there since 1983. From Omagh and ordained in 1966, he has served in Keady, Co Armagh, Dublin, Cootehill, Co Cavan, and Ballina more, Co Leitrim. He admits to exhaustion, anxiety and tension.
"I wish the whole dispute would end and a pattern could be established whereby we could look forward to peaceful days." he says. "We can't have this going on every year." As of now, he, Olive and their daughter Sarah (22) live "from July to December, reflecting on what has taken place, and from December to July considering what will happen."
He does not feel in a position to cancel the service. There is duty to parishioners and the fact that it is "just the usual Sunday morning service", the same as takes place on the other 51 Sundays of the year. And, as at those services, everyone is welcome to attend. Exclusion is not within the Church of Ireland tradition.
Olive Pickering (nee Young) is from Limerick but was working in Dublin when she met her husband. He served three years there with the National Bible Society and was part of the inter-church initiative which saw St Luke's Gospel distributed to every home in Ireland. "St Luke has so much to say about peace," he says.
Both said the attitude of the Church of Ireland in the Republic after Drumcree 1996 was of great concern to them. Members of the church, in the South particularly, were outraged at the worldwide association of one of its churches with the scenes at Drumcree that year. It was feared the church might split over the issue.
Mr Pickering reflects on the anxiety he experienced at the time and his sorrow that people should even have suggested a split. People were not aware at the time of the issues involved at Drumcree, he says.
HE IS very grateful for the visits of the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Empey, Bishop Clarke of Meath, and Bishop Neill of Cashel (then of Tuam) at the time.
They left with a greater understanding of the situation, he feels. He found them sympathetic and they promised the support of their prayers, which he very much appreciated. He believes people have been more understanding of the situation since. "At the time, when they [members of the church] were disturbed, they didn't realise they too could have been here in my situation and wondering what to do, as I was." Reflecting on nearby Portadown, he said he had never lived in such a divided town. People might socialise and do business across the divide individually, but not collectively. It was the same with the Protestant and Catholic churches, informal individual contact but little organised contact. People "live separately", he says. That was the way it was. He lived likewise. So although he knew all the priests on the Garvaghy Road informally, that was as far as it went on both sides.
That is how it seems destined to continue in Portadown, on the Garvaghy Road and at Drumcree - from the old Irish, meaning "the ridge of the branchy tree" - at least for the foreseeable future and regardless of tomorrow's events, because it is a world where memory imprisons the living as firmly as its earth holds the dead.