Auntie Biddie and parish priests

Jean's Journal with Jean Farrell

This is a photograph of my lovely Auntie Biddy. She is the last surviving member of my mother’s family, the Keatings, from Carrick-on-Suir. Biddy celebrated her 95th birthday last week. Cousins galore, from all over Ireland, came to celebrate this event, in Carrick.

My tiny aunt is in wonderful health. She is also in the enviable position of living at home with her daughter. Biddy has no problem going up her stairs and she remembered all our names, as well as the doings of our children and grandchildren.

I was going to zoom in on her face and just show it to you. However, the background is so very important to her life that I feel I must show the whole picture. It was taken after a special Mass she requested for her birthday. Biddy has great devotion to The Sacred Heart and has been following the word of The Lord all her life. She’s had family problems, like everyone. However, she told me that she just accepted what she had to put up with and got on with it. (She didn’t actually use the term ‘accepts God’s will,’ but is that what she was referring to, I wondered.) She said that her great faith has helped her cope always, and it is still doing so.

Biddy was born in 1928. Can you imagine all the changes she has seen in her lifetime? When she was nine years old the following is an example of the attitudes of the time and the power of the clergy.

In 1937, at twelve o’clock Mass in Dunmanway Co Cork, the parish priest Reverend C. Creed said that he noticed young girls wearing shorts when cycling through the town. He told his congregation that, “If they appear again in such scandalous attire they deserve to be kicked off the streets.” That’s not unlike what The Taliban might say nowadays!

Here’s another example of how life has changed. When Biddy was young the strongest, most powerful woman, in Carrick-on-Suir was the priest’s housekeeper, whom I’ll call Maisie. Maisie looked after her canon and her priests very well. Every day, they had a three course dinner with the best of meat and freshest of nourishing vegetables. Woe betide any parishioner who called to the door and dared disturb her priests during their midday dinner.

One night, a few years ago, my Auntie Biddy was driving home from her twice weekly game of bridge. There was a slight traffic jam outside the local chip-shop. Much to Biddy’s astonishment, she saw their old parish priest coming out of the chipper with a bag of take-away food in his hand. Well, her first thought was that Maisie would turn in her grave if she saw this. And her second thought was, the poor old man!

All during our lives my mother kept in great touch with her three sisters in Youghal, Dublin and Carrick. We visited their houses often and therefore knew our first cousins well. It was wonderful to meet them last week. Now in our sixties and seventies we have weathered well. Genes will out, no doubt. We all felt that there was something very comforting, at a very basic level, to be with our own kith and kin.

My Granny Keating was a liberated woman and a career woman - before the terms were invented. She ran a busy shop on the main street of Carrick, in which she and her young family worked.

I watched a programme about Feargal Quinn on television recently. It was he who started the very successful Superquinn supermarket chain. He said that children who are reared in a shop get a great start in life. Dealing daily with customers gives them excellent people-skills and high self-esteem. I agree.

This formidable woman was a mighty role model for her four daughters. As adults, they also led busy lives, inside and outside their homes, as they raised many children. The eldest was a teacher and the others, including my mother helped in their family businesses.

And, as the saying goes, ‘What you teach your children you teach your grandchildren.’ (I’ve quoted this here previously.)

I sat with twelve female cousins, my age, last week. All of us are strong capable women, leading active lives. We can thank our granny’s good example for this.

My four brothers met all their male cousins in Carrick too and had great chats together. Rugby and ‘our Robbie’ were much discussed.

We stayed talking in the hotel for a long time, last week, with much to catch up on. Towards midnight I walked Auntie Biddy to her daughter’s car. As we stood outside the hotel, waited for my cousin’s car to arrive, crowds of very young girls were queueing for a local disco beside us. My old aunt and I studied their attire. They were all wearing impossibly short shorts and tiny tops. The shorts were so short that they were not completely covering their bottoms. The ‘tops’ they wore were skimpy bras. Many of them were quite drunk.

I never thought that I’d use the same words as a parish priest did in 1937, but I too would describe what they were wearing as ‘scandalous attire.’

Biddy whispered, “Don’t worry about them. When I’m saying my night prayers I’ll ask The Sacred Heart to make sure that they get home safely. And they will.” Such is her great faith. jeanfarrell@live.ie