Murlog: The Men’s Aisle

Murlog: The Men’s Aisle

photo appreciation Bill Killackey
Murlog National School was opened in 1909.When I got there in the 1950s it hadn’t changed much.
I hated school. Sandwiched three to a desk made for two make me itchy and irritable. Despite my lack of sight I was a quick learner. But I was also stubborn. My brother Tom, who was in the same class as me says my stubbornness came from being short sighted.
One day to get room to move my elbows I shoved a girl off the end of the desk. She hit the wooden floor with a squeal and a clatter and I found myself deposited amongst the musty coats three deep in the icy cloakroom.
Through the open door of the cloakroom I could see the sun shining on the puddle hole in the middle of the playground. I wondered if Joey, the priest’s dog was up the fields hunting with Father McKeague.
I liked Joey. He was a Dalmatian. I always wanted to count his spots. I decided I’d cross the road into the Chapel grounds and see if he was about. The school gate squeaked as I opened it. Halfway across the road I took fear. Joey usually lay beside the backdoor of the parochial house. If Theresa, the priest’s housekeep saw me – and she’d see me before I saw her – the teacher would give me six of the best and when I got home my mother would be waiting with the sally rod, plucked fresh from the hedge.
Undecided, I crunched behind Miss Marron’s Morris Minor parked in its usual place beside the chapel gates. From my hiding place I was looking at the Chapel Tower and the door to the men’s aisle.
I had never been in the men’s aisle.
Keeping close to the hedge that separated the chapel grounds from the Revenant Bewglass’s house I scurried past the collection boxes; their long poles leaning contently against the wall of the porch Daringly I lift the latch on the door into the inner sanctuary of the men’s aisle.
The inside of the chapel was cast in shadows and smelled of candle wax, incense and men’s sweaty feet. I looked about me curiously. Teacher had told us the old church had been built when Lord Erin saw the catholic people praying in the open. it had had been built in such a way that the women went in one door at the front of the chapel into the woman’s aisle where the stone christening font and the confessional boxes were with the purple blinds behind where the priest sat to hear your sins.. And the men went in the other side where the Tower was that held the big bell.
I genuflected and knelt to say a prayer. I daren’t stay there too long in case Miss Marron sent one of the other pupils out to bring me back into class.
I tiptoed through the rows and rows of wooden pews examining the names scratched into the prayer rails. In the quietness my feet knocking on the wooden kneelers sounded loud and echoey. Short-sightedly I peered up at the Gallery that curved in a u shape above me. If Mrs Fleming, the headmaster’s wife was praying in the Gallery she’d not only hear me she’d also see me.
Sometimes, she brought the Master two boiled eggs – which he put beside the pot-bellied stove in his classroom to keep warn until lunchtime. They’d smile at each other before she left and crossed over the road to go into the chapel to pray. I listen for her whispered ‘holy Mary Mother of God”, which was always audible and usually echoed in the stillness. If she wasn’t in the Gallery she might be tucked away in some dim corner and spot me.
I waited my breath coming out in short puffs. But the only thing that was moving was the flickering light of the Sacred Heart lamp on the altar.
A man’s flat cap lay abandoned on one of the seats. I sniffed it. It smelled of Brill cream hair lotion my father used. Why had he left it behind, I wondered There was a mission on in the parish. Had the man who owned the cap got scared of the visiting missionaries’ thumping the pulpit and roaring about the sins of drink and tobacco and playing a hand of cards? Should I take and give it to the priest’s housekeeper? Maybe I’d see Joey the dog.,,
Carrying the cap I stopped to examine two wooden walking sticks. They lay against the jutted out end of a pew as if it was Our lady’s Shrine at Knock or Lourdes Shrine and the men that had used them had gotten a cure from the missionary priests and didn’t need their walking sticks any more.
I placed the flat cap on top of the walking sticks. Maybe he’d come back for it.
Despite the fear of being discovered and hauled across the road to school and the wrath of my teacher, before I retraced my steps to go back out of the men’s side of the chapel, I stopped in front of the altar, knelt down and said my prayers
. It was a foolish thing to do.
A lone child praying during the day at the steps of the altar was enough to raise the suspicion of any parishioner who was in the chapel doing the Stations of the Cross or praying a novena begging God for a much needed healing or favour.
Worse still, the door to the side of the altar opened into the Sacristy? It could open at any second and I’d be discovered, I thought, and that would be the end of my freedom to wander the schoolyard.
But I never got caught and some days I continued my education outside the classroom until I moved to Master Fleming’s room.
I don’t remember wanting to be outside so much, then. The Master was a fair man who used to cane the boys but I only ever remember getting slapped by him once.
My days at school were for the most part turbulent ones for me. I left with a firm resolution that I would never set my foot inside a classroom again.
How then did I end up as a teacher? It’s still a mystery to me.
Maybe it was because I wanted to know more. I always wanted to know more. Still do.
Gemma C Hill ©

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