An Irish Country Church at Easter

WELL, we are in time, after all ! How sweet the Church smells with all these flowers. Spring flowers have such a wistful scent, it makes me think of the night before a funeral when someone dear lies so still on a white bed among white tulips and narcissi, with lilies of the valley and violets and Harrisii lilies. Yet flowers, death, resurrection, Easter—they are all part of something hopeful, springlike.

One almost forgets how ugly the Church is now that it wears this Easter garb ; it is like a plain girl made lovely by her confirmation dress. What a cult of ugliness there was a century or so ago when people built these churches, and yet I find something homely, stolid, almost reassuring in its ugliness. The same people come here Sunday by Sunday. Of course, very many have been driven away by " the Troubles." They have gone to the South of England . . . I wonder if they like it there. Do they ever miss the solid, ugly church where they yawned through long services ? We who remain seem drawn together by our endurance of hard days. The children are home for the holidays, such solid, pleasant Anglo-Irish girls and boys ! They come tramping in, booking so clean and healthy. They stand for the future. That comforts one.

How can we bear such hideous stained glass ? I almost wish I were a Moslem, then there would be no terrible figures to gaze at, only patterns. I don't mind the old kaleidoscope windows. I loved them as a child when I could not read the Psalms and instead gazed and gazed at the bright pattern of those windows. The sun makes them lovely and throws such pretty colours on the stone.

But the East window, what could be worse ? St.

John in red carpet slippers, writing notes in his Gospel.

His eagle is the dejected Zoological Garden sort. His garments belong to the Striiwwel Peter fashion. Yet if one were exiled in a strange land and thought of this Saint he might have comfort in him.

Those two very modern windows only make matters worse. They shout at the sentimental windows. Angels with criminal heads may be artistic, but I think I'd almost rather have the tender family scene of the raising of Jairus's daughter. If we might have only heraldic windows it would be a relief to the eye.

Oh the organ is beginning. Miss MacLoughlin, the school-mistress, is our organist. She is wearing her Easter hat and she has learnt a new voluntary. The choir children are coming now. We think a surpliced choir ritualistic and prefer a mixed pitter patter up the aisle to any sort of procession. The choir girls have new hats too and pink stockings. , Mary Ledwidge is to sing the solo in the anthem. She has put on lizard-skin shoes to help her. Here comes Johnnie Heany clattering up the aisle. Johnnie's father belongs to an Orange Lodge and Johnnie feels very strong in his Protestantism, reinforced by his new squeaky boots.

The Canon is late. But one must remember that he has to take a service at 10 a.m. in a church eight miles further off. His car may have played him false.

It is rather fun to be shut into one's pew by Mrs. Leahy, the sextoness. These old pews give one a sort of enclosed d aristocratic feeling. At the end of ours we have a mur tablet that enthrals me. A novel of high life is hinted in its dignified words. It is erected to Mrs. Gorman O'Mahoney of Raheen Liss in this county. It commends her virtues and concludes with the fact that her three daughters, a Marchioness, a Baroness, and an Honourable Mrs., have erected it.

Was Mrs. Gorman O'Mahoney's last breath a sigh of satisfaction ?

On the other wall two brasses record in proud sorrow the loss of two only sons in the War. Beyond them a marble angel watches over an urn and points with a wand to the overwhelming list of domestic virtues possessed by the beloved wife of Hercules Maxwell. They did these things more decently in the days, when the brass said humbly :— " On whose soul Jesus have Mercy."

Ah ! here comes Colonel Pim. He is a Christmas and, Easter Christian and so is Mr. O'Regan. They both prefer to worship God on the golf links or in easy chairs in their studies. But some uneasy urge of habit sends them forth in selfconscious rectitude on Easter morning.

And now comes the Canon. The congregation does not accord him the courtesy we give out of church of rising at his entrance. This courtesy would, for some mysterious reason, be Papistical. It would link us up with the Conference at Malines and the Vatican, so we sit very solidly while the Canon walks up to his place.

What a benign face he has as he looks down at us. Not all the Orange Lodges can prevent his being of the true priestly type which produces a Saint Francis de Sales, a Fenelon, a General Booth, a Bishop Wilkinson. His eyes bless the congregation.

Miss MacLoughlin, the organist, is quite at home in the good chant " Mornington," work of an Irish peer and happily symbolic of our worship. Johnnie Heany bellows it. I seem to see processions of Irish Protestants marching to the Heavenly City, shouting a psalm to the chant of " Mornington." They will meet other processions singing plainsong. How strange it will be ! "Many roads lead to the top of the hill, but the same moon shines at the top "—so say the Japanese, but Ireland finds that a hard saying. The Canon is reading the Gospel now. It is to him so true, so joyful, that we know he has come straight from the open tomb to tell us of new hope, new life, of the glory that is Easter.

Everywhere the Easter fire is lighted. It leaps from East to West, it shines in every church, on altar or holy table—whichever you call it. It glows in the heart of every priest. The Canon has caught its splendour. He holds up the blazing torch : " There is no death." `"Christ is risen ! Christ is risen ! "

W. M. LETTS.