Your man as Jim impertinently described him then proceeded to tell me about the Catholic Association for the Suppression of Drunkenness, long defunct, and Father Theobald Mathew with one t the great temperance champion and also the reformed drunkard the Venerable Matthew Talbot, Matthew with two ts, who would have been anonymous if it hadn’t been for the cords and chains discovered on his body after he collapsed and died in a Dublin street in 1925.
“Self-mortification,” Bill explained. At several points during this latest discourse he eyed the mourners opposite with some irritation as all of them except for Willie Henry who was now asleep had become embroiled in a what seemed like a heated argument concerning a brother of Frank Murphy, Mick by name, who at one time had been the best high jumper in the northwest having won money at sports meetings for years from Muff to Malin Head and who after retiring from athletics became known in Buncrana as Mick the Taxi or possibly Mick the Ambulance.
It was this nickname that was the bone of contention, Seamus going with the first named moniker and Margie and Jim, especially Jim, with the second. I could have told them of course that Mick went by both names, the first when he drove a taxi for Buncrana Taxis and the second when he was employed by Carndonagh hospital as an ambulance driver during which time he sometimes still got Mick the Taxi even though he hadn’t driven a taxi for years.
I decided not to do this for two reasons, firstly because Bill was demanding my full attention in an effort obviously to keep his mind off the rabblement opposite and secondly because I wasn’t sure how my voice would come out.
On that particular matter I had some minutes before decided that I’d be making a beeline for the bottle again the minute Bill left because, although I wasn’t in favour of going back to Irish wakes and funerals of old where it was not unknown for mourners to drink all night and then be stretched out in a paralytic state sometimes next to the grave even while interment was taking place, I could see no good reason not to get slaughtered that night and then sleep it off. For this was a wake without bereaved, unique in that regard, and if you couldn’t get slaughtered at this one then what one could you get slaughtered at?
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The Wake - Table of contents
HumorTHE YEAR is 1968 and the Swinging Sixties are still swinging - though not in Ireland. But wait! An old woman dies in a northern Irish town and her wake becomes a rendezvous for lesbians, bisexuals and political revolutionaries. And in there among t...
