Aug 06 2019
‘The May Procession…’
‘This is Kathleen Cullivan on the left with Mary, Catherine and Anne Coffey, all from Killala Road in Cabra West. The photograph was taken just before they headed off to take part in the May Procession. Now, if my memory serves me right, I seem to remember the Ma’ made my sister’s veils from some of her good Net Curtains. The three of them would have been scrubbed with carbolic soap in our bath the night before, the three of them in the bath together of course. On the morning of the procession my older sister would have ironed their dresses, their cardigans and their little white ankle socks. The three of them would have to wait until they had their breakfast before getting dressed in case anything spilled on their clean white outfits.
There was always great excitement in our house on the morning of the May Procession or the Corpus Christi Procession. And of course everything in the house had to be spotless clean as well. Even our front bedroom windows and our parlour windows had to be cleaned with newspaper and paraffin oil and the window ledges had to be washed down because the Da’ would have to paint them white. Then the hall door had to be washed down, that was the older brother’s job because he was the biggest in the family. Sure even our gate and railings were all painted silver and even the little wall that the railings stood on was painted white. And for the Corpus Christi of course the Buntings had to be put up. The Ma’ and my older sister would spend hours each evening cutting and stitching and sewing bits of material together to make the Buntings.
The Da’ and my older brothers would be out painting everything silver, even the railings of the house next door because that woman’s husband had died years ago and she had no boys. My job was to sweep down our path from the hall door right down to our gate. And then I’d have to sweep the footpath outside of our house and outside of the house next door a well. I remember all the men on our road would be out painting railings and cleaning gardens and then cleaning up any rubbish off our road. They would all do this with a great sense of pride; nobody of course wanted the name of letting our road down, that wouldn’t do. The man on the other side of us used to cut his grass with a scissors, he was like a barber he was so particular. And when it was all done a group of the men would walk up and down the road inspecting each garden as they passed by. And when they passed your gate you could stick out your chest with pride for passing the inspection. “Ave Ave, Ave Mareee he aw…’