Memories of Confession

These steps have been closed for many years.

Growing up, I passed them regularly on my way home. In receipt of religious instruction, I travelled down them.
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I cannot dance, or maybe don’t dance, but I clearly remember that there was a sense of rhythm in the moving down those steps – a sense of rhythm that was brought to mind when I walked past earlier this week, for the first time in a few years. It did allow a moment to look back.

Health & Safety affecting literary history

Looking down I was brought back to my introduction to Frank O’Connor in secondary school English book – then First Confession brought me back a short while to my time at St. Patrick’s B.N.S., the same school as Frank O’Connor, but a different location. It reminded of my own first confession, on a Friday, walking en masse down to St Patrick’s; and reminded of the rhythm of the steps that was then still available to experience.

This morning I spotted a tweet about First Confession, the event and the story.
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There were too many dots of information lining up not to go for my own mental ramble back in time in the form of this blog post.

​‘I remember thinking bitterly that she didn't know the half of what I had to tell-if I told it. I knew I couldn't tell it, and understood perfectly why the fellow in Mrs. Ryan's story made a bad confession; it seemed to me a great shame that people wouldn't stop criticising him. I remember that steep hill down to the church, and the sunlit hillsides beyond the valley of the river, which I saw in the gaps between the houses like Adam's last glimpse of Paradise.

Then, when she had manoeuvred me down the long flight of steps to the chapel yard, Nora suddenly changed her tone. She became the raging malicious devil she really was.

"There you are ! "she said with a yelp of triumph, hurling me through the church door. "And I hope he'll give you the penitential psalms, you dirty little caffler." ‘
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Frank O’Connor – First Confession