lungs into bacterial sponges.It provoked cures galore;to ease the catarrh you boiled onions in milk blackened with pepper; for the congested passages you made a paste of boiled flour and nettles, wrapped it in a rag, and slapped it, sizzling, on the chest. From October to April the walls of Limerick glistened with the damp.  Clothes  never  dried:  tweed  and  woolen  coats  housed  living things, sometimes sprouted mysterious vegetations. In pubs, steam rose from damp bodies and garments to be inhaled with cigarette and pipe smoke laced with the stale fumes of spilled stout and whiskey and tinged with the odor of piss wafting in from the outdoor jakes where many a man puked up his week’s wages. The rain drove us into the church—our refuge, our strength, our only  dry  place. At  Mass, Benediction, novenas, we  huddled  in  great damp clumps, dozing through priest drone, while steam rose again from our  clothes  to  mingle  with  the  sweetness  of  incense,  flowers  and candles. Limerick gained a reputation for piety, but we knew it was only the rain. My father, Malachy McCourt, was born on a farm in Toome, County Antrim. Like his father before, he grew up wild, in trouble with the English,or the Irish,or both.He fought with the Old IRA and for some desperate act he wound up a fugitive with a price on his head. When I was a child I would look at my father, the thinning hair, the collapsing teeth, and wonder why anyone would give money for a head like that.When I was thirteen my father’s mother told me a secret: as a wee lad your poor father was dropped on his head. It was an accident, he  was  never  the  same  after,  and  you  must  remember  that  people dropped on their heads can be a bit peculiar. Because of the price on the head he had been dropped on, he had to be spirited out of Ireland via cargo ship from Galway. In New York, with Prohibition in full swing, he thought he had died and gone to hell for his sins.Then he discovered speakeasies and he rejoiced. After wandering and drinking in America and England he yearned for peace in his declining years. He returned to Belfast, which erupted all around him. He said,A pox on all their houses, and chatted with the ladies  of  Andersontown. They  tempted  him  with  delicacies  but  he waved them away and drank his tea. He no longer smoked or touched 12