Читать книгу Barefoot in Mullyneeny: A Boy’s Journey Towards Belonging - Bryan Gallagher - Страница 6

The sacrament of Confirmation is for ever associated in my mind with the town of Ballyhooley in County Cork. Not that I’m from Ballyhooley. I’m not from anywhere else on the south coast either. But I just cannot think, Bishop, Confirmation, without seeing the bottom half of that old school map—Carrantuohill and Dingle, Cahirciveen, the Blaskets and Courtmacsherry.

This has all to do with my primary school teacher many years ago. One of her methods of punishment was to put me standing out on the floor facing the wall where hung a map of Ireland. I often spent the best part of the day there. I can still remember the colours of the counties; Cork was pink, Tipperary was yellow, Queen’s County was green and King’s County was brown. I didn’t know so much about the North, because you were supposed to look straight in front of you, and I was only a wee boy. But I occasionally stole a glimpse at my own beloved Lough Erne or Cushendall in the green glens of Antrim, far away, almost at the ceiling.

The year before my own confirmation, I was an altar boy at the ceremony. The bishop intoned the names of all the candidates.

‘Con McManus.’

‘Present.’

‘John Maguire.’

‘Present.’

And then on and on, until he came by mistake to my name. How my name came to be there I don’t know, but it brought everything to a halt. There was a flurry of white clerical robes, great whisperings in the episcopal ear. And then canonical fingers pointing from all directions at me. I knelt in a state of trepidation akin to what the cat often felt on wet evenings before my mother gave it a boot out the door.

And then he called me over.

Over I went.

And he smiled. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘it is not the want of knowledge, it is the want of years.’ He shook hands with me, and that was it.

Next day I breezed into school with the air of one who has acquired some degree of greatness. But she was waiting for me.

‘How many of you were at Confirmation yesterday?’ she asked. All hands went up. ‘Anybody notice anything wrong?’ Nobody had. ‘On the altar?’ she prompted. Still nothing.

‘What should you do,’ she said slowly, ‘when you shake hands with the bishop?’

‘Kiss his ring,’ we replied. And then a strange and awful feeling came on me.

‘How many children saw a boy from this class shaking hands with the bishop yesterday?’

Everybody had.

‘And did he kiss his lordship’s ring?’

‘No Miss.’

‘No indeed,’ she said venomously, ‘no. Disgracing me opposite the whole parish.’

It was back to the corner. Face the wall. Ah well…Waterford is green…Ballyhooley is in Cork…Another long morning.