A time for purgatory and penance – well maybe not

So the clock has changed and we’re back into the long nights and the start of Winter, even if all the meteorologists steadfastly refuse to acknowledge this time of year as the beginning of our least forgiving season.

The change of the clocks always seemed to bring clear definition to the start of Winter, although our very mild conditions of recent weeks have meant that the growing season looks set to meander on for another few weeks at least.

November is always a month that carried a sack of morbidity on its back as years back we were marched off to Mass on the first day of the month – All Saints Day – although it did bring with it the bonus of a day off school, thanks to the ‘old reliable’ of the Holy Day of Obligation.

In the local village of Abbeyknockmoy it was the big Fair Day for the second half of the year when all classes of sheep were offered for sale from scoury lambs to old ewes without a tooth in their mouths, and in fairness some decent ones in between as well.

There was excitement though with the Fair Day in that there was a wickedly early start to the morning with the sheep safely penned at least an hour before dawn broke.

The young lads were generally given the job of ‘policing’ the boundary walls along the roadside, a task that involved being able to ‘clear’ maring stone walls with all the jumping skills of an Arkle. Thankfully in those days, barbed wire was a rarity.

Somewhere along the way, Mass would be taken in to meet our obligations and we’d often say a prayer for a good price to be had for the lambs, as this transaction could often determine the ‘level of luxury’ – or lack of it – to be experienced that Christmas.

A return to school on the following morn – All Souls Day – saw little let-up in the religious fervour with the Franciscans reminding us, among other things, to pray with greater intensity in order to free our deceased family members from purgatory.

Indeed purgatory and November always seemed to go hand-in-hand, although it always baffled me how my favourite granny, with not a bad bone in her body who had passed away a few years previously, might have had to endure a five year sentence in a temporary ‘hot spot’ filling the middle ground between heaven and hell.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.