sins.Willie Harold is whispering about his big sin, that he looked at his sister’s naked body. Paddy Hartigan says he stole ten shillings from his aunt’s purse and made himself sick with ice cream and chips. Question Quigley says he ran away from home and spent half the night in a ditch with four goats. I try to tell them about Cuchulain and Emer but the master catches me talking and gives me a thump on the head. We kneel in the pews by the confession box and I wonder if my Emer sin is as bad as looking at your sister’s naked body because I know now that some things in the world are worse than others.That’s why they have different sins, the sacrilege, the mortal sin, the venial sin.Then the masters and grown-up people in general talk about the unforgiv- able sin, which is a great mystery. No one knows what it is and you wonder how you can know if you’ve committed it if you don’t know what it is. If I tell a priest about Great Bladdered Emer and the pissing contest he might say that’s the unforgivable sin and kick me out of the confession box and I’ll be disgraced all over Limerick and doomed to hell tormented forever by devils who have nothing else to do but stab me with hot pitchforks till I’m worn out. I try to listen to Willie’s confession when he goes in but all I can hear is a hissing from the priest and when Willie comes out he’s crying. It’s my turn. The confession box is dark and there’s a big crucifix hanging over my head. I can hear a boy mumbling his confession on the other side. I wonder if there’s any use trying to talk to the Angel on the Seventh Step. I know he’s not supposed to be hanging around confession boxes but I feel the light in my head and the voice is telling me, Fear not. The panel slides back before my face and the priest says,Yes, my child? Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.This is my First Confession. Yes, my child, and what sins have you committed? I told a lie. I hit my brother. I took a penny from my mother’s purse. I said a curse. Yes, my child.Anything else? I, I listened to a story about Cuchulain and Emer. Surely that’s not a sin, my child. After all we are assured by certain writers that Cuchulain turned Catholic in his last moments as did his King, Conor MacNessa. ’Tis about Emer, Father, and how she married him. How was that, my child? She won him in a pissing contest. 126