MICHAEL HARDING
DISPLACED IN MULLINGAR: THERE WAS A priest in my childhood who abused children. He was a fat, lardy gent, from a religious order, who lived close by, and had short hair, which reminded me of the bristles on a yard brush. He played golf, and he had a keen handicap, and lost his temper if his balls ever went into the rough. There was so much blubber on him that he reminded me of a rhinoceros I once saw in Dublin Zoo; and when he lost his temper he became even more like the rhinoceros – fast, and furious.
His body quivered with rage as he cursed, and watched golfballs fly across the ditch.
Twenty years ago I wrote a play called Una Pooka , about a priest who, on the outside, appeared to be as cuddly as Barry Fitzgerald in a cassock, but who on the inside was a destructive and demonic pooka, or phantom.
The heroine in the play was haunted by this mythic creature, who tyrannised her. He was ever-present to her, chastising her, undermining her; the Grand Inquisitor of her fragile mind, her tormentor and ultimately the orchestrator of her death.
The play also carried a simple and comic implication; that the papal visit of 1979 might hopefully be the funeral of clerical Ireland, rather than a fresh opportunity to paralyse and asphyxiate another generation of young people with the morbid legalities of religious orthodoxy. And while most people saw the play as funny, there were some astute critics who noted its darker side.
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