Granda had a 'thing' about the church — he was excommunicated during the Irish War of Independence for carrying a gun, and that turned his head. Even though Bishop Harty took him back to the fold afterwards and blessed him and everything, Granda never went back spiritually. He just went through the motions. At Mass, I used watch his Einstein head from the choir gallery, his mind in another world, rising, kneeling and sitting with the flow of congregation. He came without prayer book or beads and sometimes fell asleep, even snored, during fire and brimstone sermons.

Granda seldom mentioned religion, which was kind of taboo in our house. If it did come up in conversation, he'd point to the picture of St. Patrick that hung above the radio in the kitchen and calmly say, “D'you see that man up there who’s staring down at you? Your own patron saint? Well it’s that man’s followers who dug Ireland's grave and put the stake in her heart to make sure she was dead and would never rise again.”

I saw grown men and women flee from our house in horror after hearing Granda's revisionist theories on our patron saint and the men in black who came in his wake. The picture of Saint Patrick was ever-present and I think it hung on the wall as a prop for Granda's theories, sort of like a wanted poster. Sitting, eating or doing homework at the table, you couldn't escape the Saint's gaze as he stood on the seashore in bad weather, rage in his eyes, crosier raised and vestments flapping. At his feet were scores of wriggling snakes, squirming from Erin with their lives. It was a nightmarish sight.

“But what about the snakes?” I asked Granda one day.

“There were no snakes,” he said. “All that snakes stuff is pure propaganda.”

Proper gander to my young ears, a polite way of saying total bullshit.

Saint Patrick came to the fore at school some months later when Brother Liston announced it was time to practise our Irish hymns, the National Holiday was coming round the bend. There was a big cheer in class, because we loved to sing. It was an easy way to pass the time and the noise we generated blocked the wind and rain and raised our tender young hearts. We could build up great steam with a hymn, belting out Latin words that meant nothing to us. When we got really cooking Brother Liston would light a few candles, put them in front of the statue of Our Lady, close his eyes and conduct the choir with a pencil. Sometimes we sang for hours, candles would expire and the smell of burning wax would bring Brother Liston back from Heaven. Then we'd finish with a rousing march that went—We stand for God, And for his Glory.

We had hymns for all season — requiems, High Mass, Benediction, Novenas, Rosaries, plain chant, hymns for the conversion of Russia, Easter specials, Christmas carols, but Saint Patrick's melodies were the oddest. Unlike the others, they were mostly in Irish and so we understood the words. But that in turn opened another can of maggots when I deduced that one of the hymns was a plea to Saint Patrick to give us hope. I didn't realize we were hopeless until then. It seemed something was going on that I knew nothing about. There was no point in discussing my anxiety with Brother Liston so I mentioned it to Granda one Lenten evening over a supper of kippered herrings and brown bread. He asked me to sing a snatch of the hymn, which I did:

                                              Give us hope, Glorious Saint Patrick,

                                              Great Liberator of Ireland,

                                              Soul of brightness and joy,

                                              You who vanquished the druids,

                                              Dark hearted pagans of no good.

The song freaked Granda. He reeled from the table like he was shot. It was all wrong, he flared, it was propaganda. And what's all this tripe about the druids, he asked, the druids were fine people, very learned and wise. And what was all this about the liberation of Ireland, he cried, sure it's the Church that oppressed us. Jesus Christ, he moaned that's the worst piece of propaganda I've heard in years. And worser still, it's being drummed into the heads of children. My mother told him to shut up. His eyes glazed and he shook his wild head of wild white hair and muttered, “That song is heresy. Pure, unadulterated heresy. If the druids were around today, we'd be a lot better off.”

I didn't know what heresy was, but I knew it was serious and after that I held back on the song at choir practice. Brother Liston twigged by reluctance to sing and stood beside me, his ear a foot from my mouth. Louder, he muttered. I obliged. Louder, he growled giving me a pinch on the ear. I skidded out of key and he hit me a fierce clatter across the head and knocked me out of my desk.

That yea­r, a new curate called Father Malachy organized the first ever Saint Patrick’s Day parade in our parish. It was a small affair that started outside the church after last Mass and trailed through the street, ending at the Protestant Church on the other end of town. The parade was led by a fife and drum band from a place called Bunwanny, a bedraggled lot in kilts and black tunics, they were famous for the amount they drank and they made an awful sound. Behind them marched a company of soldiers without guns, followed by our civil defense corp—the men from the fire brigade, then Bogie Molloy leading a pack of greyhounds. Next came a couple of floats—coal and sand trucks decked with green ribbons, carrying dancers, footballers and local characters.

We had no experience with parades and wondered what to do as it passed. Should we cheer like they did in America? Heckle like we did politicians? Or join in behind Willie Daly's pony troupe? We joined in. The whole street joined in: shouting and cheering like a crowd of jail breakers, we marched behind Daly's team of ponies. The town hadn't seen so such jubilation since the night Bogie's greyhound won a big race in Shelbourne Park.

Afterwards, Brother Liston corralled us into the parochial hall to sing hymns for the annual old folks party. We sang well, got sweets and green jelly for our efforts and were allowed to stay for the sing-song. Granda was there, a big sprig of shamrock in his cap. He had drink taken and no sooner were we finished with our hymns than he stood up, dragged Murt Hynes, (who sat beside him) to his feet and announced that they were going to sing.

They sang a rebel song, Down By The Glenside. They were old soldiers and never missed a chance to put things in perspective. Brother Liston smiled but didn't join in the chorus like everyone else. I sang like a lark,

                                             “Glory-oh, glory-oh, to the bold Fenian men.”

After that performance, when the clapping died down, Aggie Marrinan began to croon in a soft voice,

                                            “The night was dark and the fight was over,

                                            The moon shone down on O'Connell Street.”

Everyone sang and the mood had shifted from a religious one to a patriotic one. I was beginning to notice there were different layers to Saint Patrick's Day. Some had nothing to do with the saint, as far as I could see. It was an occasion to open the valve and let it all out. You could be as Irish as you liked and feel good about it. You could put away the Halloween costume for a day.

Granda was asked to sing again and he obliged with an emigration song which began “On the dock the ship is anchored...” and had a line in the chorus that went — “Three leaf Shamrock I adore thee.”

That started a spate of shamrock songs and then Brother Liston took the limelight and sang a quasi-religious ballad called  “Dear Little Shamrock.”

He had a quivering tenor voice, a trained voice, as Aggie Marrinan would say, and his performance was unsettling. Old timers shuffled their feet under the tables, cutlery fell on the floor,  and chairs creaked. He finished on a high-tension note that lasted for half a minute or more, but before anyone could applaud, Granda thumped the table, staggered to his feet and shouted, “Propaganda! Propaganda!” at the startled Christian Brother.

Cronies pulled at Granda and whispered, “Sit down Ned. Take it easy.”

John Gallery muttered to me, “Jesus, your grandfather will be arrested.”

Granda wagged his finger at the monk and shouted, “Don’t hijack the shamrock, ye did it once but ye won’t do it again!”

The party delved into confusion. People shouted, staggered, chairs overturned, Father Malachy appealed for calm. Aggie Marrinan seized the moment and thumped out “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” on the piano. But they weren't, they were just cockeyed with drink and anarchy.

Granda was taken home by Coyne the butcher and later that night Father Malachy came to the house to see how he was. In bed, my mother said, opening the door three inches. He didn’t rise for two days and when he did, mother ignored him.

Back at school Brother Liston looked at me strangely and didn't ask me anything for days, kept out of my space. My mother's intuition told her he was planning to give me a trouncing for Granda's indiscretions. She suggested that Granda write an apology to the monk and when he made no attempt to, she wrote one herself. I brought the note to school with me and planned to give it to Liston at the eleven o'clock break, as discreetly as possible.

The note gave me a sense of security, like a holy medal or a drop of Lourdes water is said to give. But then when I wasn't expecting it, Brother Liston pounced. It was Catechism class and he asked me to prove the existence of God. My proof didn't even convince me. It was curtains.

“Come up here you pagan,” squalled Brother Liston, beckoning me up to the front of the class for public execution.

“Put out your hand and take it like a man,” he ordered.

I did, and with every blow wanted to scream 'propaganda' at the panting monk. He belted me until I cried, not with hurt but with rage. Then he gave me two clips across the face for good measure and said,

“You better learn the Proof of the Existence of God by tomorrow or you’ll get twice the hiding. Pagans aren’t welcome in my class.”

Back at the desk I sat on my hands to ease the searing pain. My cheeks blazed as if they'd been branded with a red-hot cattle iron and I hung my head in shame as the Christian Brother ridiculed me in front of the class. I think that was the day I became totally disillusioned with God, St. Patrick, Rome, vocations, teachers and men in dark clothes.

Mid-morning break came, time to slip Liston the note. As I walked towards him, something older than me muttered inside my head, “don't bother”. I hurried past the sneering holy man and went straight to the toilet, locked myself into a stall, tore the note into tiny pieces and scattered them into the bowl. I pulled the chain and rang out the bells of hell again and again until a torrent of monastery water washed away my poor mother's plea was in a hundred pieces.  No apology, no surrender. That's the way Granda would have done it.