Read Online Country Girl: A Memoir by Edna O’Brien - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Edna O’Brien
Tags: Biography, Non-Fiction, Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography / Literary
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nothing in our minds excite
Vain dreams and phantoms of the night;
Keep off our enemies, that so
Our bodies no uncleanness know.
There were morning prayers, evening prayers, vespers, supplications, contritions, psalms, and versicals. There were exhortations about pride, vanity, filthy pleasures, the deformity of our sins being so very great they could not be fully comprehended by human understanding. The flames of Hell seemed as real as the turf burning in the fire. Sometimes, if a sod fell out, my mother would catch it with her bare hand to test her strength for the future and possible flames of eternity. Hell was far more real to us than Heaven. Heaven was golden and vaporish.
I would go alone to the chapel and “contritely say twenty Paters, Aves, and Glorias and contritely kiss the Crucifix.” Next it was a meditation, preceding the Stations of the Cross, the dwelling on the Five Holy Wounds, the wound of the left foot, the right foot, the left hand, the right hand, and the sacred side which the Roman soldiers had pierced with their swords, causing blood and water to gush forth. Everything about it was so immediate, as if the image on each gory Station had come alive, and I could almost touch the Crown of Thorns, or the purple garment that was rent, or the towel with which Veronica wiped the face of Jesus, and hear the taunts the soldiers threw at him as they spat in his face. I could almost taste the vinegar and gall that was on the sponge from which he was made to drink.
For home reading we had the Irish
Messenger,
an organ of the Apostleship of Prayer that came once a month and cost threepence.
On the rich, matte, dark red cover there was a picture of the Sacred Heart, arms outstretched, for sinners to crawl under the folds of the copious, dipping sleeves. Years later, my friend Luke Dodd told me that his mother and his aunts availed of this rich matte cover by wetting it with their fingers, as effective as any rouge.
The avowed aim of the magazine was to promote happiness in the home, repel the influx of “hot rhythm dance bands,” and avert the advance of communism, which had enslaved Russia, a country forty times the size of Ireland lost to “that red ruin.”
There were also tips on how to make a baby’s matinee coat with picot edging and how to cast on stitches on numbers nine, ten, and eleven knitting needles for that beautiful Fair Isle cardigan. In one column called “Your Question Answered” all sorts of worries were aired. One reader in great perplexity asked whether the frying of bread in dripping on a Friday constituted a sin, since meat was forbidden, and another wondered if it was indulgent to kiss too frequently the cross that she wore around her neck. The “thanksgiving” columns brimmed with gratitude:
Bleeding from nose stopped, Success of school in needlework examination, Removal of dangerous trees near house, Gangrene averted, Safe delivery of parcel, Good weather for hockey match, Father takes pledge, Money won in sweepstake.
One could read of the adventures of Irish nuns and priests who roamed the world to reach unfortunate heathens desirous of baptism. There were pictures of nuns on rickshaws being ferried across the Han River in Hanyang and walking along a gangplank, with a skyline of Shanghai in the background. These were daughters of Erin, because “wherever a human need had declared itself, an Irish nun was there to meet it.”Priests, like Christ to the centurions, traveled in blizzards or simmering heat to breach the backwoods of America, the Australian bush, the African veldt, the leper asylums, the cities of China, the Kachin Hills of Burma, the pottery village of Bhamo—places where natives had never seen a white man before, let alone a bearded priest arriving on a donkey or a bullock cart.
The preparations to celebrate Mass in these mission stations had the thrall and improvisation of traveling theater. A portable confessional would have been set up for penitents
Vain dreams and phantoms of the night;
Keep off our enemies, that so
Our bodies no uncleanness know.
There were morning prayers, evening prayers, vespers, supplications, contritions, psalms, and versicals. There were exhortations about pride, vanity, filthy pleasures, the deformity of our sins being so very great they could not be fully comprehended by human understanding. The flames of Hell seemed as real as the turf burning in the fire. Sometimes, if a sod fell out, my mother would catch it with her bare hand to test her strength for the future and possible flames of eternity. Hell was far more real to us than Heaven. Heaven was golden and vaporish.
I would go alone to the chapel and “contritely say twenty Paters, Aves, and Glorias and contritely kiss the Crucifix.” Next it was a meditation, preceding the Stations of the Cross, the dwelling on the Five Holy Wounds, the wound of the left foot, the right foot, the left hand, the right hand, and the sacred side which the Roman soldiers had pierced with their swords, causing blood and water to gush forth. Everything about it was so immediate, as if the image on each gory Station had come alive, and I could almost touch the Crown of Thorns, or the purple garment that was rent, or the towel with which Veronica wiped the face of Jesus, and hear the taunts the soldiers threw at him as they spat in his face. I could almost taste the vinegar and gall that was on the sponge from which he was made to drink.
For home reading we had the Irish
Messenger,
an organ of the Apostleship of Prayer that came once a month and cost threepence.
On the rich, matte, dark red cover there was a picture of the Sacred Heart, arms outstretched, for sinners to crawl under the folds of the copious, dipping sleeves. Years later, my friend Luke Dodd told me that his mother and his aunts availed of this rich matte cover by wetting it with their fingers, as effective as any rouge.
The avowed aim of the magazine was to promote happiness in the home, repel the influx of “hot rhythm dance bands,” and avert the advance of communism, which had enslaved Russia, a country forty times the size of Ireland lost to “that red ruin.”
There were also tips on how to make a baby’s matinee coat with picot edging and how to cast on stitches on numbers nine, ten, and eleven knitting needles for that beautiful Fair Isle cardigan. In one column called “Your Question Answered” all sorts of worries were aired. One reader in great perplexity asked whether the frying of bread in dripping on a Friday constituted a sin, since meat was forbidden, and another wondered if it was indulgent to kiss too frequently the cross that she wore around her neck. The “thanksgiving” columns brimmed with gratitude:
Bleeding from nose stopped, Success of school in needlework examination, Removal of dangerous trees near house, Gangrene averted, Safe delivery of parcel, Good weather for hockey match, Father takes pledge, Money won in sweepstake.
One could read of the adventures of Irish nuns and priests who roamed the world to reach unfortunate heathens desirous of baptism. There were pictures of nuns on rickshaws being ferried across the Han River in Hanyang and walking along a gangplank, with a skyline of Shanghai in the background. These were daughters of Erin, because “wherever a human need had declared itself, an Irish nun was there to meet it.”Priests, like Christ to the centurions, traveled in blizzards or simmering heat to breach the backwoods of America, the Australian bush, the African veldt, the leper asylums, the cities of China, the Kachin Hills of Burma, the pottery village of Bhamo—places where natives had never seen a white man before, let alone a bearded priest arriving on a donkey or a bullock cart.
The preparations to celebrate Mass in these mission stations had the thrall and improvisation of traveling theater. A portable confessional would have been set up for penitents
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