And they laugh and drink their tea and smoke their Woodbines and
tell one another the fag is the only comfort they have.
Tis.
Question Quigley tells me I have to go to the Redemptorist church
on Friday and join the boys division of the Arch Confraternity.
You have to join.You cant say no. All the boys in the lanes and back
streets that have fathers on the dole or working in laboring jobs have
to join.
Question says,Your father is a foreigner from the North and he
dont matter but you still have to join.
Everyone knows Limerick is the holiest city in Ireland because it
has the Arch Confraternity of the Holy Family, the biggest sodality in
the world. Any city can have a Confraternity, only Limerick has the
Arch.
Our Confraternity fills the Redemptorist church five nights a
week, three for the men, one for the women, one for the boys.There is
Benediction and hymn singing in English, Irish and Latin and best of all
the big powerful sermon Redemptorist priests are famous for. Its the
sermon that saves millions of Chinese and other heathens from wind-
ing up in hell with the Protestants.
The Question says you have to join the Confraternity so that your
mother can tell the St.Vincent de Paul Society and theyll know youre
a good Catholic. He says his father is a loyal member and thats how
he got a good pensionable job cleaning lavatories at the railway station
and when he grows up himself hell get a good job too unless he
runs away and joins the Royal Canadian Mounted Police so that he
can sing Ill Be Calling You Ooo Ooo Ooo, like Nelson Eddy singing
to Jeanette MacDonald expiring with consumption there on the sofa.
If he brings me to the Confraternity the man in the office will write his
name in a big book and some day he might be promoted to prefect
of a section, which is all he wants in life next to wearing the Mountie
uniform.
The prefect is head of a section which is thirty boys from the same
lanes and streets. Every section has the name of a saint whose picture is
painted on a shield stuck on top of a pole by the prefects seat.The pre-
fect and his assistant take the attendance and keep an eye on us so that
they can give us a thump on the head in case we laugh during Bene-
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