SOCIAL DISTANCING AND “CASTLEISLAND MEN” By Mattie Lennon THE Republic of Ireland IS in virtual lockdown. Theatres, pubs and many stores closed. Since I was born in the first half of the last century I am cocooned. It is a scary time but we haven’t lost our sense of humour. Róisín Meaney wrote; I ate my way through last week, As I waited for covid to peak I must try harder To bypass the larder, Or I’ll never regain my physique. DESPITE the darkness, inter-county rivalry hasn’t died a death. The following dialogue between two Meath men was overheard at a wake in Nobber. “I hear a Cavan man is after getting’ the virus.” “Well there’s one thing certain, he won’t give it to anyone. I heard of a couple in Mullahoran, during the lockdown an’ they were watching Mass on the television. When it came to the collection they turned it off.” THE late Niall Toibin told a story of the Castleisland woman who went to visit her son in Hartford, Connecticut. Her luck was in when she saw a name that she recognised in the “deaths” column in the local paper, because in brackets it said “late of Castleisland.” Off she went to the funeral parlours, unfamiliar terrain to her. She blundered into the first parlour where some lonely Greek exile was laid out under the bored gaze of a blacksuited attendant. The poor woman burst into tears, and the Kerry mourners on their way past to the correct parlour, heard her keening bitterly: “Oh 70 | FuneralTimes
Mosheen, if ‘twas back in Castleisland you were, it’s more than one little maneen you’d have guarding your casket.” From then on, Greeks in Hartford were known, among the Irish as “Castleislandmen.” Q: What do accountants use for contraception? A; Their personalities. That’s a horrible joke and I wouldn’t dream of telling it in polite company. But it reminds me of the time that the old accountant was on his death-bed in Newbridge. He has summoned all his family to his bedside. The room was full to capacity. In a weak voice he asked his wife, “Are all our children here?” When she assured him that they were he asked, “Are my brothers and sisters and all my cousins in the room?” Once again she answered in the affirmative but he had a further question. “If everyone is here why are the lights still on in the kitchen?” IT would appear that some young people are not taking the advice of experts seriously. I’m doing my best to stay alive anyway. Because, in the words of the late John B. Keane, “A dead man is no good to anyone except undertakers and propagandists.” And in this time of trauma when it is necessary to live a day at a time we should pay attention to Robert H. Smith’s “The Clock of Life.” The clock of life is wound but once, And no man has the power To tell just when the hands will stop At late or early hour. To lose one’s wealth is sad indeed, To lose one’s health is more, To lose one’s soul is such a loss That no man can restore. The present only is our own, So live, love, toil with a will, Place no faith in “Tomorrow,” For the Clock may then be still.
