Love consists not in looking at one another but in looking together in the same direction.
Khalil Gibran
Photo taken in The Gap of Dunloe by Chris Grayson
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Eamon Kelly Remembers Christmas Long Ago
…..Then we’d be
praying for night to fall. for you couldn’t see the right effect until the
candles were lit. The honour would fall to the youngest in the house. The
father would lift the child up saying “In the name of The Father, The Son….”
And when the child had blessed himself, he would put the lighting spill to the
candle, and from that candle the other candles would be lit, and he’s be half
daft with excitement, enjoying the blaze of light, and running fro the rooms
into the kitchen and out into the yard to see what the effect was like from the
outside. When we’d get tired of looking at the candles in our own windows, we’d
turn and try to name the neighbours’ houses as the bunches of lights came on,
two windows here and three windows there, across the dark countryside and away
up to the foot of the hills. And sure as anything, someone would be late and
we’d rush in to my mother saying, ”Faith then there’s no light on yet in
Rossacrew!”
“Go n ye’re
knees,” my mother would say. The time she’d pick for the rosary, just when the
salt ling was ready and the white onion sauce and the potatoes steaming over
the fire. But I suppose there’d be no religion in the world only for the women.
The rosary in our house did not end at five decades. Not at all, after the Hail
Holy Queen our mother would start into the trimmings
“Come Holy Ghost,
send down those beams,
Which sweetly flow
in silver streams.”
She’d pray for
everyone in sickness and in need and the poor souls and the sinful souls who at
that very moment was trembling before the judgment seat above. She’d pray for
the sailor on the seas. “Protect him from the tempest, O Lord, and bring him
safely home.” And the lone traveller on the highway, and, of course, our
emigrants, and, last of all, the members of our own family
God bless and save
us all
St. Patrick,
Bridget and Colmcille
Guard each wall.
May the queen of
Heaven
And the angels
bright
Keep us and our
home
From harm this
night.
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A Christmas Poem
Twinkle Twinkle by Jane Taylor
Twinkle twinkle
little star.
How I wonder what
you are.
Up above the world
so high,
Like a diamond in
the sky.
When the blazing
sun is gone,
And he nothing
shines upon,
Then you show your
little light.
Twinkle, twinklw
through the night.
Then the traveller
in the dark
Thanks you for
your tiny spark.
He would not see
which way to go,
If you did not
twinkle so.
In the dark blue
sky you keep,
And often through
my curtains peep,
Forr you never
shut your eye
Til the sun is in
the sky.
As your bright and
tiny spark,
Lights the
traveller in the dark.
Though I know not
what you are
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
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A Welcome Return
Jackie McGillicuddy made a welcome return to his old spot behind the counter at Corbett and Fitzgibbon’s. The shop now names McGillicuddy’s Toys is run by his son Seán who is with him in the photo which they posted on Twitter.
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Thought for the Season from Dr. Suess
