The acronym of COP26, the UN’s latest climate change agreement, stands for “Conference of the Parties”. But attending a family wedding in Monaghan at the weekend, it struck me that the Child of Prague should be implicated in it too. The statue had been deployed in at least one local garden the night before and was widely credited as an influence on the sunny weather in which the event basked.
True, there was also a cool, easterly breeze to remind us it was still April. But the Child of Prague is a statue of limitations, apparently. Its responsibilities begin and end with blue skies. This was a two-day wedding, an increasingly common phenomenon in Ireland now, perhaps influenced by our many Polish immigrants. At the reception in Cabra Castle, the second day of ours overlapped with the first of a similarly extended event, on which the sun also blazed. No doubt the religious COP was involved there too.
Cabra Castle is an early-19th century resurrection of an older fortress, once owned by the O’Reilly clan until they fell foul of Oliver Cromwell, who confiscated the property in the mid-1600s and presented it to one of his loyalist officers.
This may explain why the building’s many antiques still include a large portrait of Cromwell overlooking the main staircase. In keeping with his puritan image, he is unsmiling. But historians insist that his reputation for dourness has been exaggerated.
Confounding Father - Frank McNally on the centenary of a radical Irish-American priest.
The Irish (and Redmondite) origins of the Augusta National Clubhouse
Dooley Dooby Doo - Frank McNally with more on the origins of a famous “Joycean” ballad
Child of Prague Spring – Frank McNally on a sun-soaked country wedding
When not committing massacres, apparently, he enjoyed an occasional glass of sherry or “small” (ie weak) beer. At the marriage of his youngest daughter, he even permitted dancing.
Cromwell would hardly have approved of two-day weddings, however. And the expression on his portrait suggested a man who had just heard the announcement that the bar would remain open until 6am.
During a temporary ceasefire in festivities on Saturday afternoon, I went for a drive up around the Cavan hills beyond Kingscourt, known in our family as “Auntie Mary country”.
Auntie Mary is long gone from us alas. But many years ago, when we were children, we used to be farmed out to her and Uncle Jamesie for Christmas and summer holidays.
And although they lived only three or four miles away – we could look down on our native Carrickmacross from up there – it felt like another world. We used to write letters home and give them to the postman.
In some ways, Auntie Mary was a puritan too. She and Cromwell would have got on well, I think – I can imagine them having a sherry together.
She was a woman of spartan work ethic and strong opinions, who dispensed many and often disapproving judgements on such issues as skirt-length, hairstyle, or behaviour that fell under the remit of “losing the run of yourself”.
But being childless herself, she was the classic indulgent aunt too. At home, it was always a seven-way fight for a thin slice of every cake or apple tart. Auntie Mary would think nothing of you eating a whole one, and baked accordingly.
There was a row of fir trees on the hill behind the house where she lived, through which the wind whistled on dark January nights.
I always think of her now as being like one of those firs: spare, angular, and upright.
The trees are still there, I noticed at the weekend. But beyond them, on another exposed ridge, there was now a row of wind turbines. Weirdly majestic, they harvested the stiff breeze that had survived the Child of Prague’s intervention.
Even more strangely, meanwhile, in a place we once considered so remote, was the big garden centre and café down the road from Auntie Mary’s old house.
It would have been unimaginable to us as children, exiled in East Cavan Siberia. But it was as busy as the windmills on Saturday, proving again the rule: build it and they will come.
The wedding, of my god-daughter Aisling and her fiancé Cahal, has resulted in a mixed marriage. Not of religion – that would be a minor complication in Monaghan these days – but of rival GAA clubs.
A burning issue of the speeches was which faith any children would be reared (or more accurately registered to play) in: “Carrick” or “Corduff”.
Country weddings can be highly competitive in general. The contests here extended to a dance-off in which two members from each family were invited to perform (while I checked the position of the nearest exits in case my name got called) for the honour of the parish.
Those chosen were all impressively game, but the performance of one of Corduff women took out (as they say in these parts).
She combined long-distance running with Riverdance via several high-kicking laps of the dining room, including the balcony stairs, weaving precariously between tables as she went, until the MC pleaded with someone to “take her batteries out”.
Carrick, as readers will know, is from the Irish for “rock”. Corduff derives from one of several ways to say “Black Hill”, all of them much needed in Monaghan. Future GAA-paying children of the marriage may feel they were caught between a rock and a hard place. But based on the steeliness with which my goddaughter had the last word in the speeches, I believe the rock will prevail.
