Mary Kenny
Dana Rosemary Scallon at the Eurovision 1970 For most of my lifetime, the material circumstances of our lives have steadily improved. The panic-buying of toilet paper – perhaps worse in Britain than in Ireland – illuminates just how spoiled, even decadent, we have become.
In my childhood, back in the 1950s, it wasn’t unusual to enter a loo and find squares cut from old newspapers hanging on a hook. The lavatory paper commercially available wasn’t particularly soft on the skin, either – it wouldn’t measure up to the comforting items normally available at our supermarkets today.
Deprivation
Progress in small comforts is often a good thing – I’m not disparaging it. But it’s a measure of how we have travelled from a time in which life wasn’t always comfortable, and wasn’t expected to be, either.
People put up with hardship and deprivation because that was the human condition, and fortitude in the face of life’s challenges was a virtue. This was embedded in Christianity, but the thread of stoicism had also come to us from the ancient world of the Greeks and Romans.
But enormous social and technological progress encouraged us to expect that life would get better, easier, richer and maybe fairer, too.
The introduction of vaccinations in the 1950s and 60s made globalisation possible – before that, those travelling far overseas had to risk malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, typhoid; the graves of young Irish missionaries in Africa attest to the early deaths they often faced.
Refrigeration, the deep freeze and the jet-engine changed food habits. Budget airlines put flying within the reach of most people, precision engineering and computer technology brought revolutions in convenience and medical care.
Capitalism, for all its faults, brought enterprise and innovation – the bright sparks of Silicon Valley were essentially entrepreneurs. Life, on many fronts, seemed to be consistently improving, and a generation grew up almost despising the limitations met by their predecessors.
But human nature always forgets the old lesson that you never know what is around the corner. You never know when the unexpected may come along and, in a trice, wipe out everything that we have taken for granted, and change, utterly, our way of life. Do not grow too pleased without yourself or too proud of what you possess, for it can all disappear in a trice.
Nobody would have predicted the shattering impact of the coronavirus, not only in terms of human loss, but in the virtual collapse, of the material world around us.
If we had heeded old wisdoms…anything we possess can be taken away from us.
We are facing no sport, no art galleries, no theatre, no cinema, no travelling, no trading, no ‘unnecessary’ commercial activity, no social gatherings and of course, no Church activities.
But if we had heeded old wisdoms, we might have been aware that anything we possess can be taken away from us. As the New Testament says: “You know not the day nor the hour.”
No show so nil points
It’s 50 years since a fresh-faced Dana [pictured in 1970] won the Eurovision Song Contest for Ireland with All Kinds of Everything, a sweet and harmless song; but I’m not sure Eurovision has produced much that is memorable in those five decades (although Mary Hopkin’s Those Were the Days My Friend has endured).
Maybe it’s no bad thing that the contest should take a pause, and a re-boot with less campy extravaganza, more sincere and melodious singing.
St Mochua – much travelled, long revered
For these exceptional times, it might be interesting to examine accounts of some of the early Irish saints (the information is mostly drawn on Pádraig Ó Riain’s scholarly Dictionary of Irish Saints).
They were often associated with one location in Ireland, although they seemed to travel around the whole island quite nimbly.
St Mochua of Balla is associated with the barony of Clanmorris in Co. Mayo, though it seems he originated in north-east Ulster, with links to Aghaboe in Co. Laois. His mother was named Cuman (or Cuimne) from a diocese in Co. Down and it is claimed he had three sisters named Bruiúinseach, Lugaid (Lucait) and Toidheall (Tuideall). He attended school in Bangor.
Powerful families
The saint’s life was recorded in a homily dating probably from the 14th or 15th Centuries. There may have been a political element to this text, favouring powerful families, since the O’Flahertys of Iarconnacht and the O’Haras of Co Sligo are “placed in the saint’s debt”.
Mochua journeyed from Bangor to Balla along a winding route via the Louth/Monaghan area, passing near Durrow before crossing the Shannon. He was first met with hostility at Balla, but was subsequently accepted there. He spent the remainder of his life there, dying aged 66.
Many of the places visited by Mochua between Bangor and Balla were connected with the canons of St Augustine, and Augustinian friaries. St Mochua was long revered as a local saint in the Crossmolina area, and his feast day is March 30.