Easter Sunday – Back In The Day
My sister asked me,” What are you doing on Easter Sunday?” It got me thinking about Easter ‘back in the day” when Fran and I were first married and lived with his mother Rosanne, his Aunt Mary and Noreen and Gerard in Fountain Part, in Strabane Co Tyrone.
After the six weeks of Lent and going without the sweets or whatever we agreed to go off FOR Lent from when the blessed ashes were put on our forehead on Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, when all the services of Holy Week were over , we looked forward to the treats that were to come on Easter Sunday..
I don’t remember boxed Easter eggs lined up on top of the cabinet from aunts and family members like they are today. I remember the soft squishy one wrapped in coloured tinsel. Roseann, on the week before, Easter when she was ordering her weekly ‘messages’ from Tadgh Boyle’s wee shop – opposite the Grotto in Townsend Street where the old chapel once stood – would add to her list – despite money being tight a few extra’s like a cream cake and biscuits. She’d already have ‘golden meal’ flour in the pantry ready to bake a scone. She always cut the shape of a ‘cross’ into the dough just before she place it in the Old World blue grey gas oven to bake. When it had risen the scone had the shape of 4 individual scone ‘farrells’ in one scone much like you see on unsliced scone bread today.
Easter Sunday was usually a day for family and old friends from the townland of ‘‘Bernie’ who Roseann and Mary hadn’t seen for a while to call. They’d send word with somebody going to the Holy Week services in, what Mary, called the ‘Big Chapel” that, God willing, they’d come and see them on Easter Sunday.
Very often if they had a few laying hens, they’d bring half a dozen of eggs with them and maybe a pot of homemade jam and a sweets in a white paper bag for the weans, Gerard and Noreen.
If, we were in the humour we, might be persuaded to walk up the road past – I think it was a farm called Crumleys, to meet the visitors who were– at least in our eyes, old folk.
A “cup of tae in their hand’ was the first thing they got after their long walk. Then, the fire was given a poke in the middle to let the flame escape and let the heat out around their feet. The initial warm welcome , of “How are ye “over, everybody settled down for a smoke and to hear all the news since the last time they had been down visiting. This was usually family gossip; whose sons had gone to work in Scotland or England, whose daughter had got married, who her ‘man’ was – who his relations were what he worked at and was there any sign of any family?
Memories were recalled of the days they all worked in the Mill at Herdsman’s in Sion Mills and the ‘oul’ divil of a slave driver of a foreman and the walk there in the early morning and the tramp back at night.
Mary, may she rest in peace, used to laugh and tell the story of the neighbour woman in the Head of the Town ,who used to ‘knock’ her up every morning by rapping loudly on the window and calling – “Get up Mary, you’ll be late for yer warm work. “ I hated working in the Mill,” Mary used to say,” but she never let me miss a day.”
The small TV with a blurry reception would be on in the background and Fran would be trying to listen to something. After a while he’d give it up as a bad job because he couldn’t hear a word of the programme for the women all chatting around him.
(No Recording or Catch Up then)
The fire in the living room we were all gathered around on the sofa and armchairs (and the chairs brought in from the kitchen) was the only heating in the house despite it being a relatively new council house. The only option Fran had was to fold his arms on the arm of the chair and have a wee sleep. I often wondered how he could do that with all the people talking around him.
About four o’clock, a light would be put to ring on the gas cooker and the eggs the visitors had brought would be put on to boil for the weans’ Roseann would tell Mary to put a match to the gas under the kettle and a sit down tea at the kitchen table would be prepared – ham, egg lettuce and scallions and maybe tomatoes if there was any. The freshly baked scone made earlier with the golden meal mixed with flour, ,propped up at the back of the wooden draining board would be unwrapped from the clean dishcloth it had been put in after it cooled to keep the crust soft, and sliced into thick pieces ,buttered and spread with jam for those that wanted it.
The kitchen was small just big enough to hold a blue and cream kitchen cabinet with a drop/leaf door in the middle that acted as a shelf, a white Belfast sink, a larder that housed the gas meter for the cooker with its slot on the top where Rosanne put in the shilling and a small Formica table. I was trying to remember if the table had a drop down leaf that could be pulled up at dinner time to give more space to eat. It had a wooden chair at each end and above it, two long open shelves that held the cups and plates and two John Bull jugs that help buttons and other bits and pieces.
(No fitted kitchens in those days)
The ‘sit down tea, “was eaten in relays with the visitors getting theirs first. When everybody had got plenty, the cigarettes would be pulled out again, Rosanne always gave Noreen and Gerard a warning look that said ‘Don’t you dare laugh’ at the way one of the visitors – a woman help her cigarettes. They’d go into fits of giggles – they thought the smoke from her Woodbine made funny smoke signals.
The fire in the Devan grate would be replenished with more coal and the conversation would turn to those who were away from home. Mary would get Tommy’s letters from the drawer in the sideboard and share what he’d written about what he was working at in London and when he hoped to be able to get back home for a holiday.
The visitors, old family friends for years,, would ask how Molly, who had joined the ATS and had moved to England, married and had a son, followed by twin, was getting on. Roseann loved to relate how one of Molly’s boys was a ‘great wee footballer.” And now that Tommy had got his three-wheel disabled car he often drove down to Basingstoke to see Molly and the family because Molly’s husband, Willy Cummins who had a, ’bad chest’ and wasn’t keeping well.
As the day drew in and the ‘Big Chapel’ bell rang out for evening Devotions it was time to have a final smoke and time for the visitors to get on their coats and get themselves ‘happed ’ up for the long walk home.
Mary, and sometimes Gerard, would walk them up the Spout Road, as far as where the footpad ended and the grassy verge began. They’d be the last few minutes of conversation before they parted with wishes for a safe journey home and promises of not leaving it so long until they met again.
So, there you have it – Easter Sunday –‘back in the day’.
Gemma Hill 2022©
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