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WHITETHORN WOODSHere is an excerpt from my latest book, Whitethorn Woods, published in 2006.
Father Brian Flynn, the curate in St Augustine’s, Rossmore, hated the Feast Day of St Ann with a passion that was unusual for a Catholic priest. But then as far as he knew he was the only priest in the world who had a thriving St Ann’s Well in his parish, a holy shrine of dubious origin. A place where parishioners gathered to ask the mother of the Virgin Mary to intercede for them in a variety of issues, mainly matters intimate and personal. Areas where a clodhopping priest wouldn’t be able to tread. Like finding them a fiancé, or a husband, and then blessing that union with a child. Rome was as usual unhelpfully silent about the well. Rome was probably hedging its bets, Father Flynn thought grimly, over there they must be pleased that there was any pious practice left in an increasingly secular Ireland and not wishing to discourage it. Yet had not Rome been swift to say that pagan rituals and superstitions had no place in the Body of Faith? It was a puzzlement as Jimmy, that nice young doctor from Doon village, a few miles out, used to say. He said it was exactly the same in medicine: you never got a ruling when you wanted one, only when you didn’t need one at all. There used to be a ceremony on 26 July every year where people came from far and near to pray and to dress the well with garlands and flowers. Father Flynn was invariably asked to say a few words, and every year he agonised over it. He could not say to these people that it was very near to idolatry to have hundreds of people battling their way towards a chipped statue in the back of a cave beside an old well in the middle of the Whitethorn Woods. From what he had read and studied, St Ann and her husband St Joachim were shadowy figures, quite possibly confused in stories with Hannah in the Old Testament who was thought to be forever childless but eventually bore Samuel. Whatever else St Ann may have done in her lifetime, two thousand years ago, she certainly had not visited Rossmore in Ireland, found a place in the woods and established a holy well that had never run dry. That much was fairly definite. But try telling it to some of the people in Rossmore and you were in trouble. So he stood there every year mumbling a decade of the rosary, which couldn’t offend anyone, and preaching a little homily about goodwill and tolerance and kindness to neighbours, which fell on mainly deaf ears. Father Flynn often felt he had quite enough worries of his own without having to add St Ann and her credibility to the list. His mother’s health had been an increasing worry to them all, and the day was rapidly approaching when she could no longer live alone. His sister Judy had written to say that although Brian might have chosen the single, celibate life, she certainly had not. Everyone at work was either married or gay. Dating agencies had proved to be full of psychopaths, evening classes were where you met depressive losers; she was going to come to the well near Rossmore and ask St Ann to get on her case. His brother Eddie had left his wife Kitty and their four children to find himself. Brian had gone to look for Eddie – who had now found himself nicely installed with Naomi, a girl twenty years younger than the abandoned wife – and had got little thanks for his concern… Brian Flynn was hanging in there, but only just. His mother had forgotten who he was, his brother despised him and now his sister Judy was making a trip from London to visit this cracked pagan well and wondering, would it work better if she came on the saint’s Feast Day… Father Flynn felt that the world was definitely tilting.
© Maeve Binchy 2006
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