By Pádraig Turley
When I was a child growing up on a farm in Clerhane, situate about two miles north of the village of Shannonbridge there were two occasions each year when the folk returning from Mass would carry a very important piece of information. This news was the name of the family nominated to have the Stations. This occurred once in spring and once at autumn time. There was clearly a roster, and the priest would call out the name of the next family during Mass on a Sunday. We were lumped in with the townland of Cloniff resulting in a combined number of households of ten between the two townlands. This meant that one would expect to host the stations once every five years. Notwithstanding this, people were always pretty shocked when their name was called out.
The particular holding of the stations that I wish to tell you about happened in 1951. It was Sunday 19th August 1951 when my mother arrived home from First Mass, jumped off her bicycle, rushed into the house and spluttered out ‘Guess what’s the news I have?’ ‘What?’ enquired my grandmother. ‘We’re to have the stations’. My grandmother had an expression to describe a person in bad form, she would say they had a face like a summons. Well on this Sunday morning she donned a face like a summons. ‘Bad cess to it, I thought it was the turn of the Mannions.’ (more…)
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