Canon Coodle sighed happily. It was Christmas. He had just finished hearing confessions and to clear his head from the fog of sin, or what his parishioners believed to be sin, he had decided upon a walk around the church grounds which were as extensive as any you’d find in the country. His thoughts turned heavenward as they always did after a session in the confessional. He would have liked a glass of vintage port but it was still bright. He looked at his watch and came to the conclusion that darkness was imminent. Perhaps when the dusk surrendered its diminishing claims to daylight he would indulge, just one glass, no more. Before retiring that night he would consume two final glasses and then graciously surrender himself to the arms of Morpheus. Canon Coodle had spent eighty-two Christmases in the world but had never really felt the burden of his years. ‘I’ll die in harness,’ he informed his physician, ‘because I would hate to end up as a problem for someone.’
‘Oh you’ll die in harness all right,’ Dr Matt Coumer had assured him a few weeks earlier when the canon had called to the surgery for his bi-annual overhaul.
‘Is there something wrong?’ the canon asked matter-of-factly as though it did not concern him.
‘Your blood pressure’s up and your heart is tricky. I can think of no other word for that particular heart of yours. Apart from the fact that you should have been dead years ago there’s little else the matter.’ Dr Coumer put aside his stethoscope and indicated to his parish priest that they should both be seated. ‘You have only one problem canon.’ The doctor leaned back in his chair and looked his elderly patient in the eye.
‘And pray what would that be?’
‘Two days hence on St Stephen’s day you will have bands of wrenboys calling to the presbytery as they have been doing since you first came here. Your predecessors cleared them from the presbytery door for all the wrong reasons. You changed all that and we admire you for it but in one way you might be better off if the wrenboys stayed away from your door too.’
‘Never!’ Canon Coodle rose from his chair.
‘Please sit down,’ Matt Coumer spoke in the gentlest of tones as if he were reproving a wayward child. The canon sat and listened.
‘In the past you have been known to dance jigs and hornpipes with each of the bands on the steps leading up to the presbytery door. All I’m asking you to do my dear friend is to dance with only one band on this occasion. If you do as I ask there’s a good chance you’ll see one more Christmas at least. If you persist in dancing with all the bands you’ll be in danger of a seizure. Promise me now like a good man,’ Dr Coumer reverted to the gentle tones he had used earlier, ‘that all you’ll dance on St Stephen’s day is one hornpipe and one reel. Promise.’
‘I promise,’ Canon Coodle forced out the words against his will. He rose and shook hands with his physician who, in turn, placed a protective arm around the old man’s shoulder.
As the canon recalled his visit he regretted the promise he had made. Round and round the church grounds he walked as if he were competing in a race. ‘Promises were made to be broken,’ he recalled the saying and then he smashed the fist of his right hand into the palm of his left, ‘but not by Canon Cornelius Coodle,’ he concluded in triumph with the voice of a man who had never broken a promise.
He decided to return to the warmth of the presbytery sitting-room and therein to partake of his ration of port as he termed the measure. Later there would be the Christmas Eve masses and later still there would be a Christmas drink or two with his curates and two of the most amiable chaps imaginable he considered them to be. They would tease him of course about the flawed full forward line of the Ballybo Gaelic football team. The canon had first seen the light in Ballybo ‘and is he proud of it!’ the curates would tell their families when asked what sort of priest was Canon Coodle.
When they finished with Ballybo they would start about Celtic and their run in the Scottish League. The canon’s first curacy had been in Glasgow. He would be a Celtic fan till the man above blew the whistle and called him from the field of play. He always favoured a melodramatic turn of phrase when arguing football with curates. it was what they expected of him and he would never let them down.
As the trio savoured their drinks in the brightly lit sitting-room they were joined by Mrs Hanlon, the housekeeper, who drank not at all but who, the curates suspected, would play her customary role of timekeeper as the clock ticked merrily on towards twelve. On Christmas night and New Year’s eve, of all the nights of the year, she would stand benignly by, as Canon Coodle put it, and suffer silently the yearly massacres of ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ as the canon also put it, by himself and his specially invited colleagues from parishes near and far.
She sat now silently and most reposefully while the sacred hour approached. It was her favourite time, a time to savour, above all other times, for the birth of Christ was at hand and downstairs in the kitchen her turkey was ready for the morning oven with bread stuffing and potato stuffing close by, with ham cooked and glazed, with giblet stock prepared for soup and gravy, with the primed fortified special trifle at the ready and the plum pudding waiting to be steamed. It could be said that her cup was running over. Her drowsy eyes blinked but barely when the glasses of her three charges clinked.
‘It’s the sort of night,’ she reminded herself, ‘when a drunk is bound to show up at the front door looking for the canon or one of the curates to drive him home. Only six miles. Couldn’t get a taxi. Wife and kids at home with no one to fill the role of Santa. On the other hand it might be an even more drunken wretch looking for a priest to give the last rites to a mother who was far healthier than he was.’
As ill-luck would have it the presbytery’s inmates would not be left in peace until the sacristan rang the warning bell well in advance of first mass on the morning of Christmas day. A surprise lay in store.
‘Now lads!’
Mrs Hanlon raised first her head from near her lap to where it had drooped with the weight of drowsiness and secondly her body from the chair which was ever so narrowly withdrawn outside the priestly triangle round the fire.
Canon Coodle was reminding his listeners of the time his uncle, a country schoolmaster, had shared a public house counter for a short period with Hilaire Belloc while the latter had been visiting Dublin.
‘The poor man,’ the canon continued with a chuckle, ‘never spoke about anything else for the rest of his life.’ The canon suddenly rose, extended his right hand and quoted from his uncle’s acquaintance:
Dons admirable! Dons of might!
Uprising on my inward sight
Compact of ancient tales and port
And sleep and learning of a sort.
As the trio rose the housekeeper faded into the darkest corner of the room from where she would emerge to see to the fire and lights after the priests’ departure to their upstairs rooms. The canon led his curates to the foot of the stairs, both hands extended now as he quoted once more from Belloc:
I will hold my house in the high wood
Within a walk of the sea
And the men who were boys when I was a boy
Will sit and drink with me.
Before they exchanged goodnights the trio said that it was the gentlest night of Christmas ever spent by any of the three. They had, they felt, effortlessly introduced the real spirit of Christmas into their midst and prepared themselves for the feast day that was to come.
No sooner had Canon Coodle eased himself into his bed than the housekeeper appeared at the bedside after first knocking on the bedroom door. On a tray she bore his nightcap, a small measure of whiskey topped up with boiling water and flavoured with cloves and lemon. She waited till the very last drop was swallowed, after which she drew the curtains and waited for the first low-key snore of the night.
As the canon slumbered so did he dream of his mother. She had passed on to her eternal reward shortly after his ordination. He was still young enough at the time to shed abundant tears for many months after her burial. Then with the passage of time as the grief melted into fond recall he could recall their times together without sorrow. She had once asked him, not long before his ordination, if there was a girl. He had shaken his head but of course there had been a girl. Hadn’t that been the case always and wasn’t it the case for many years thereafter but these were merely girls of the mind and with these phantom creatures all men must contend before sleep dulls the senses. Always the canon would spend his last waking moments thinking of his mother. Other nights he would dream of Gaelic football when he saw himself soaring above the heads of his opponents, reaching into the heavens where only the doughtiest and most agile of footballers soared in search of the pig-skin as it was known in country places in the days when Corny Coodle could out-field any man in the seven parishes. He was denied a place on the county team but only because his alma mater, Maynooth College, frowned upon high level commitment on the grounds that the sweet taste of physical glory might out-weigh the spiritual and the mystical. It happened all too often and it was believed by many that those who surrendered the spiritual to the physical turned their backs on the Roman collar and would always be deficient in outlook and aspiration.
‘Hogwash!’ was the only comment Canon Coodle would offer when such opinions were aired.
He would remember a classmate in his final year, one Tommy Henley, who withdrew from the race within weeks of his ordination because of pressure to stay away from county football. He had played under a variety of assumed names but when the college authorities discovered this duplicity they determined that he would abide by the rules or withdraw. He had opted for the latter.
Canon Coodle fondly remembered Tommy’s marriage to MaryAnne Fogarty. It had been a joyous wedding and were there not now twelve Henleys from that glorious union, all doing well in the world and was not one of them ordained. Canon Coodle stirred in his sleep. He found himself tussling for a ball with a Corkman named Tyers. The ball eluded both at their first attempt but Coodle got a hand to it to stop it from going over the line and wide. it fell to Tyers to raise the ball into his grasp with his right foot and so it went on until blows were very nearly exchanged. It was precisely at that moment that the canon opened his eyes to find himself being manhandled by his junior curate.
‘Wake, wake, for God’s sake canon!’ the curate cried out.
The canon sat upright in his bed wondering if he was playing host to an unwelcome dream.
‘It’s the crib canon!’ the curate threw both hands high in the air at the monstrosity of the entire business.
‘What about the crib!’ the canon asked calmly, ‘is it on fire or what?’
‘No, no, no!’ the curate was screaming now. ‘They are trying to wrest the boy scouts’ box from the wall beside it.’
‘But dang it!’ the canon exclaimed disbelievingly, ‘the boy scouts’ box is part of the chapel wall.’
‘Well they have a pick-axe and they have a hammer and chisel and they’re hacking away like hell and they’re drunk to boot.’
The canon had moved himself to the side of the bed where he sat momentarily.
‘And where is the senior curate?’ he asked.
‘Fr Sinnott is on sick call,’ he was informed by a now more composed junior curate.
‘Where is Mrs Hanlon?’ the canon asked fearfully.
‘She’s rung the civic guards,’ he was at once informed, ‘and now she’s keeping an eye on the robbers till help comes.’
‘Well help is at hand,’ the canon raised his great voice and demanded his dressing-gown.
‘Follow me!’ he called. The canon would have been happier had the junior curate’s role been reversed with that of his senior. He had seen Fr Sinnott on the football field, a tough customer who revelled in rough play and was not above planting the occasional consecrated wallop on the jaw of a would-be blackguard.
‘Ballybo forever!’ Canon Coodle shouted out the war cry of his native place as his six feet two inches, fifteen stones and eighty-two years bore down upon the sacrilegious wretches who dared tamper with his boy scouts’ box, a veritable treasure chest which was now held in the arms of an emaciated cut-throat on his way to the door which he had earlier broken in. He was followed by two henchmen armed with pickaxe, hammer and chisel.
‘My strength is as the strength of ten.’ Canon Coodle issued the warning before crashing headlong into the wielder of the pick-axe. The wielder fell, winded and semi-conscious. The bearer of the chisel and hammer was to suffer a worse fate for as soon as he intimated that he meant business he was struck to the floor and rendered unconscious by Fr Sinnott who had just entered via the sacristy. At that moment the canon challenged the gang’s ringleader.
‘Drop that box,’ he warned, ‘or suffer the consequences. By the double dang,’ the canon went on as he raised himself to his full height, ‘you’re for an early grave sir unless you yield.’
Yield the scoundrel did but it was not because of the canon’s command. Rather had his trusty housekeeper edged her way behind the ringleader and embedded her knitting needle in his unprotected posterior. He dropped the boy scouts’ box as though it were a box of adders and ran screaming into the night, leaving his henchmen to the tender mercies of an enraged Fr Sinnott. When the civic guards arrived as they did almost immediately after they had been summoned their main worry was the containment of the senior curate. It proved to be no easy task for Fr Sinnott was as strong as the proverbial horse. After a while, aided by the canon’s mollifying tones and the housekeeper’s tender words, they managed to seat him in a pew. Then and only then did the junior curate appear. He had taken up his position in the crib, next to St Joseph from where he had hurled sacred candles at the invaders.
It transpired that the box held several hundred pounds. The civic guards took the money with them for safe-keeping as they did the leaderless rogues who would have denied the boy scouts the summer holiday which the generous subscriptions of the parishioners had guaranteed them
‘Coodle is the truest boy scout of them all,’ the middle-aged sergeant of the civic guards announced to his two companions as they opened a bottle in the barracks to celebrate the capture. Later the ringleader would be happy to give himself up as the cold of the night proved itself to be the master of his mettle.
In the presbytery the triumphant foursome were content to re-occupy their warm beds and sleep the sleep of the blessed. Word of their exploits spread and would-be raiders gave the church and presbytery a wide berth from that sacred morning forward.
Christmas Day was a happy day as was the night that followed. The parishioners one and all commented over their Christmas dinners on the text of Canon Coodle’s sermon. In it he had praised exceedingly the closeness of the family and the power of the family when beset by the force of evil. He was referring, of course, to the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph but when he went on to suggest that all who shared the same roof were, in a sense, families too they knew that he was referring to the inmates of the presbytery and the role they had played in defending each other and their property when unity was needed.
In spite of this the younger curate was bestowed with a sobriquet which would stay with him even when he left the parish. He became known as the Fourth Wise Man. Nobody knew who was responsible for the nickname but almost everybody in the community was agreed that it was a wise move indeed to seek the sanctuary of the holy crib when confronted by hostile forces twice his size and armed to the teeth.
The achievements of the others guaranteed lasting veneration. The fourth wise man went on to become a parish priest in the course of time and Fr Sinnott the senior curate ended up a monsignor. The occasion would be remembered as the night of the Fourth Wise Man.
As Christmas drew to a close Canon Coodle sat in the presbytery sitting-room with his housekeeper. ‘If there is one sound,’ he told her after he had sipped from his glass of port, ‘that I love above all others it is the distant pulse of the bodhrán, the drum of drums, the native drum of Ireland. If tomorrow is as fine as the forecasters have promised we will be able to hear it from great distances.’
In the canon’s study a sensitive goat-skin drum, beloved of wrenboys and stepdancers, hung from the ceiling to remind him of the days when, as a youngster, and indeed as a young man, he roved the countryside with his companions of the Ballybo Wrenboys Band under their captain the Tipper Coodle. The Tipper, uncle to the young Corny Coodle, was so called because of his preference for the bare knuckle over the cipín or wooden drumstick with a knob at either end.
Every band of the time would have an equal number of drummers and tippers, the tippers favouring the knuckle, the drummers favouring the cipín. Often the tippers would play even when the blood began to show on the backs of their bare hands such was their zeal in the pursuance of perfection.
‘I tell you now with no word of a lie,’ the canon confided to his housekeeper, ‘those tippers could make the bodhráns talk and my dear uncle, God be good to him, could play and dance at the same time especially when he had a few whiskeys inside of him.’
‘You’re a fair dancer yourself canon,’ Mrs Hanlon spoke out of a sense of appreciation rather than from a sense of duty as she recalled the canon’s exploits at the front of the presbytery on previous St Stephen’s days.
‘He would dance with every group,’ she informed her sister Bridgie whenever she visited the family home in the hills at the southern end of the parish, ‘and out of his own pocket would come a ten-pound note for every band. I remember when it was a ten-shilling note but a ten -hilling note then was as good as a tenner now.’
The money, of course, would go towards the purchase of drink and edibles for the annual wren dances, several of which would be held all over the parish until the month of January expired. The previous canon would have nothing to do with wrenboys, labelling them drunkards and scoundrels and turning them away from the presbytery door. In the end they by-passed the presbytery altogether but all changed dramatically when canon Coodle was appointed as parish priest.
The canon’s face darkened a little when he recalled the terpsichorean restrictions imposed upon him by his physician. Never downcast for long he raised his great head and smiled at the prospect of the two dances which had been permitted to him. He resolved to invest more concentration and commitment into these than ever before and, please God, he would have his fill of the dance before the day was out.
As they sat, the canon reminiscing, the housekeeper deftly used her knitting needles to complete the cardigan which she had undertaken to knit for her sister. The bright needles moved like lightning in her practised fingers, one of them the same needle which had perforated the vile rear of the robbers’ ringleader. The wound inflicted needed medical attention and when Dr Coumer called to the barracks on the morning of St Stephen’s Day to re-examine the sore he was able to tell Sergeant Ruttle that it would take several days to heal.
‘You’ll have a drink before you leave,’ Sergeant Ruttle insisted.
‘I have a call to make,’ he said.
‘It can’t be that serious.’ The sergeant took a bottle of whiskey from his desk.
‘I assure you,’ said Matt Coumer at his most emphatic, ‘that it is likely to be the most important call I shall make this day.’ So saying he closed his black bag and made straight for the presbytery where he was immediately shown into the august presence of his parish priest.
‘You can leave your coat on canon,’ he announced warmly, ‘for I have not come to examine you.’
‘And why have you come my dear Matt?’ the canon asked solicitously.
‘I have come,’ Matt informed him, ‘to restore your licence.’
‘And pray what licence would that be?’ the canon asked, a look of anxiety appearing on his face.
‘Your dance licence of course my dear canon,’ Matt informed him, ‘you may dance as much as you please and if my ears don’t deceive me I believe I hear the sound of bodhráns so get your dancing shoes on. I’ll stay to watch and enjoy a drop of your whiskey while I do.’