My mother always wanted to have the stations in our house but it was not to be. The station Mass was said in the farmers’ houses. The powers-that-be decided that the occupant of an artisan’s dwelling would be unable to meet the expense of catering for a big crowd the morning of the stations. The men around my father’s fire did not know the origin of the stations unless they were necessary in the penal times when there were no churches in which to say Mass. They did say that the priests in those days travelled long distances and were put up in the station house the night before. There were at least seven obligations the owner had to meet in connection with the priest’s stay: a room, a bed and a fire, food, polish for the priest’s boots, oats for his horse and an offering. The men heard tell of the days when the priest was hunted and of the time when there was no presbytery in our parish and only a shack for a church. The parish priest and his curate lived in a one-roomed hovel. The curate was an exceedingly holy man. He’d give the shirt off his back to the poor. One day a beggar asked him for help. The curate told him he had no money, that he had given his last ha’penny to a poor man the evening before. The beggar persisted in his plea for help and asked the curate in the name of the Virgin to give him something. ‘Look!’ says the curate, turning out his trouser pockets. Half a crown fell on to the road. He gave the money to the beggar and nothing would convince the holy man but that the Blessed Virgin had put the money in his pocket.
At mealtime he told the parish priest about it. ‘I am sure and certain,’ he said, ‘I had no money. It was a miracle!’
‘Ah, miracle my hat,’ the parish priest replied. ‘You’d want to watch whose trousers you are putting on in the morning!’
Twice a year, in the springtime and in the autumn, the station came to our area. There were three small townlands with not many more than a dozen houses in the station district. The station Mass went in rotation and when a man’s turn came there was feverish activity in that house to have the place ready for the morning of the big event. The walls were whitewashed inside and out, the roof freshly thatched and the furniture varnished. Varnish put on too late and in a smoky kitchen didn’t always dry, and many is the person stuck to the chair he sat on the morning of the stations. Two brothers put their backs to a sticky dresser and when they went to go on their knees before confession, they brought the dresser down on top of them. Such a clatter of broken delf! The parish priest in the room thought it was the end of the world. In the old days we are told, green rushes were cut and spread under the feet of a visiting king, and the muddy approaches to a farmer’s door were covered in a similar way under the feet of a priest the morning of the stations.
When the stations came to a neighbour’s house my mother would let me and my brother go on before her. I was always there in plenty of time to see the people arrive. The women went straight into the house. Their husbands lingered in the yard in their Sunday suits and polished boots, talking. No pipes – they wouldn’t smoke until they had received holy communion. When the parish priest arrived, driven by the parish clerk in a horse and sidecar, the men took off their hats and caps and greeted him. He exchanged a few pleasantries with them and went into the house.
The curate came a little later. He had his own horse and every year a collection was made for the support of the priests’ horses. It was called the oats money. After a few words in the kitchen the parish priest went into the parlour where there was a blazing fire, and began to hear confessions. He sat sideways in the chair with his head turned away from the penitent as he heard his sins. The curate heard confessions in the other room, and the parish clerk made the kitchen table into an altar on which to say Mass. The table was raised almost to elbow height by putting two chairs under the cross rails.
The parish clerk had a very large and battered suitcase from which he took the consecrated altar stone and placed it centre-ways and a little to the back of the table. This stone is said to contain a relic. The altar cloth was put over it and let fall down over the sides of the table. The Mass book, two large candlesticks and a chalice were set in their proper places. There were three cards, each with a large ornamented capital letter, from which the priest read during Mass. One was placed at each end and one in the middle with the words of consecration. Over the chalice the clerk put a smaller card and on this was draped a square of cloth of the same material as the priest’s vestments. The two sides of the cloth were pulled out at the bottom to give the draped piece the shape of a pyramid without a top, and the letters IHS were at the front.
The parish clerk put a ciborium on the altar and took out a handbell which he put on the floor near him to ring when the chalice and the sacred host were raised at the consecration. I wondered how he fitted everything into that old suitcase. There seemed to be no end to what it revealed, and the last things to come out were the priest’s vestments. They were neatly folded and placed at the end of the altar in the order in which they would go on the priest. I followed the parish clerk’s work with a keen eye and my hands itched to help him. Most of all the vestments caught my attention and for a moment I wished I were big enough to put them on. I tried to remember the different names of the pieces. When we were studying for confirmation the master had put pictures of the vestments on the board and told us their names several times.
The parish priest came from the parlour, leaving whoever was remaining for confession to go to the curate. In the crowded kitchen and in the small space in front of the altar he vested himself. First the amice, a square piece of white cloth which he wore like a cape; the two strings which hung from the corners he tied around his middle. He stooped and the parish clerk put the folded alb over his head, he put his hands through the sleeves and the long white garment fell to the floor. He was now handed the cincture, a long white rope-like cord which he doubled and tied it around his waist, leaving the tasselled ends fall down his right side. One tassel almost reached the floor and the other swung a bit above it. The priest pulled up the alb at the front and back inside the cincture so that now I could barely see his boots. Next he put the stole around his neck and crossed it over his breast, tucking the two ends inside his waistband to keep it in position. Then he took the maniple, a piece of vestment material like a short stole, doubled and sewn in such a way that it ran over his left sleeve and rested between his wrist and elbow. The last thing to go on was the chasuble, a sleeveless, open-at-the-sides garment. The parish clerk had rolled its two sides up and when the priest showed him his stooped head the clerk put the opening down over it and the chasuble rolled down his front and down his back like two maps rolling down a wall.
The parish priest, taking a card from the altar, went on his knees and recited the acts of faith, hope and charity. Now the Mass proper started, answered by the parish clerk, and the Latin sounded strange in the small space of the crowded kitchen. At the consecration the priest whispered fervently the words which we had never heard in the chapel as he rested his elbows on the table and thrust his body back towards us. Soon he would raise the host and as the bell rang every head bowed down as we beat our breasts. In my way of looking at things I thought we bowed down because human eyes could not stand the blinding splendour of God coming on the altar. When I glanced up the chalice was rising in the priest’s hands towards the darkness of the interior of the thatched roof, and many women in a voice above a whisper said, ‘My Lord and my God!’
The parish clerk had counted the number of people who were to receive holy communion and that number of breads or small hosts had been put in the ciborium to be consecrated.
After the communion the priest put his back to the altar and the kitchen table, so unstable on the chairs, nearly capsized. The priest quickly put his weight back on his feet and the clerk, reaching out, caught the table and saved us all from a calamity. The priest didn’t raise his voice as he did in chapel. He gave the sermon in a conversational tone and it was about the truth. ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.’ He was very serious in his condemnation of the liar in everyday life and in the courtroom. Perjury was a reserved sin in our diocese. The priest in confession could not absolve the penitent; he had to go to the bishop. I thought of the day of my confirmation and about the doubts I had, but I had made a good confession since and I wasn’t going to worry any more about it. After the sermon the priest turned his back to us and faced the altar and it wasn’t long until he came to the last gospel. I followed it in my child’s prayer book, ‘In the beginning was the word and the word was with God …’ After the Mass proper there were three Hail Marys and the Hail, Holy Queen.
The priest, getting up from his knees, took off his vestments and gave them to the clerk, who folded them and put them back in the large suitcase. The priest spoke to the men about their work and about the weather. Men considered it an honour to be singled out and spoken to by the priest and a singular honour if he remembered their names. With the table back in its former position, the parish priest sat at the head and the clerk gave him a large account book from which the priest read the names of each householder in the station district. As each name was called out the man or the woman came forward and put the station offering on the table. Seven and six it was. It had gone up since last year. Each three half-crowns as they were put on the table sat there in a little stack, which made one woman remark to the priest, ‘You’re making hay, Father. Lots of meadowcocks in your field.’
When the dues were collected the parish priest and the curate, who had been talking to the young men in the yard, were invited into the parlour for breakfast. The owner of the house sat with the priests and one or two other men noted for being able to give a good account of themselves. Some parish priests preferred to eat alone, and it was said that one man used to bring his red setter which sat beside him and to which he talked and gave small morsels of food during the meal.
There was much excitement among the women to see that everything was right. These were the most important guests the woman of the house would ever have in her parlour. If the priest’s preference was for boiled eggs the timing of the cooking was vital so that the eggs didn’t end up too watery or in bullets. A priest who had been in the parish for a long time, his likes were known, but when a new priest took over the duties of the parish many enquiries were made as to what his preferences in food were. There was always toast: slices of shop bread browned on a long fork in front of the fire.
In the dim and distant past a new priest came and it was said that he liked tea for breakfast. That commodity was unknown in our community then. The woman of the house where the stations were coming was a know-all who had never seen tea in her life but sent to the city for a pound packet of it. She made no inquiries about its preparation but on the morning put the whole lot down in a large saucepan and stewed it well. Then she drained off the liquid, put the tea leaves in a dinner plate and said to the priest, ‘Is it a shake of salt or pepper you’ll have on it, Father?’
My mother and the other women sitting in the kitchen would give their eyes out for a mouthful of tea. It was a long fast since twelve o’clock the night before, and good enough, when the priests’ needs were seen to each woman got a cup in her hand. There would be a full breakfast for everyone when the priests were gone. That was the flurry of excitement when the parish priest got up from the table – getting his horse and the curate’s horse. After the goodbyes and when they were well out of sight the bottle of whiskey was produced. With a hint of ceremony the owner tilted the bottle upside down ever so slowly and back again so that the goodness was evenly distributed through the contents. There was more than a tint for all the men of the older generation. Some savoured the golden liquid, others gulped it down, and there was a drop too for the women if they fancied it. The breakfast was taken in relays. The women took over the priests’ place in the parlour and the older men were given the first sitting in the kitchen. There was tea, bread and butter and boiled eggs and red jam for those with a sweet tooth.
If the owner of the house could rise to it there was a bottle of stout for the men and wine for the ladies. Indeed it was not unknown for a man to have a half-tierce of porter, and our ramblers had the story of a house where the barrel of stout was put too near a blazing fire. While the priests were hearing confessions in the rooms the bung flew out of the barrel and a spout of Murphy’s stout shot up the chimney. Strong men were quick to the rescue and lifted the half-tierce out the door, one man holding his palm over the bung. They hid it in the cowhouse and nearly wept at the loss of such precious liquid. The kitchen was clean again and everything in its own place when the priest came to say Mass. Even though there was the unmistakable smell of stout he didn’t pretend to notice but the theme of his sermon was strong drink.
Friends of the family who couldn’t make it to morning Mass called during the day. There was an air of festivity in the townland, a kind of local holiday, and in the house that night there was a station dance. Michael and Brian Kelly brought their concertinas and the room where the consecration bell had rung some hours before now echoed to dancing feet.