It is often quiet easy to look back on the past with rose tinted glasses and forget the lows of the period or at least brush them aside as one reminisces on happy days long gone..
This is not the case regarding what I am about to relate to you.
The time was back in the late sixties, the place was the beautiful church of St. Catherine in Glengoura.

Here on top of this hill stands St. Catherine's church overlooking the valleys and villages of four parishes. One can see the cross on Corrin Hill erected in the early thirties on a clear day.
I was a young boy of fourteen years in 1968 enjoying the long summer holidays from school and looking forward in trepidation to a life which was then to me very uncertain.
Vietnam dominated the news, great numbers of American GIs losing their lives daily in a war that could not, and would never be won.
Career opportunities in those years were at best limited. For young boys there was little or no guidance on any aspect of life. Just take a chance and hope that every thing would be ok.

I was working with three men during the holidays, they were removing the old earthen tiles from the floor of the church and replacing them with concrete on which vinyl tiles would later be laid. The men were, Bill O'Mahony my father, Paddy O'Brien, Billy O'Brien, and Kevin Caplice.
All of the men liked working in the church very much, you could tell by them, they were happy and the time just went by very quickly. For Kevin it was a labour of love as the church was very near to where he lived and he went to mass there.

There is something special about this church, most churches are very peaceful places and nice to work in. But Glengoura has something else, something in that year and many times in my adult life gave me the confidence and direction to make choices that were often difficult but were usually for the best. Maybe it is the spirit of the people who built it in extremely difficult times and whose labour for God permeates through time to us humble folk who seek the wisdom of direction in life, or a solution to ones cares and woes.
It is difficult of course to understand things of the spirit, they just are.
Laying out on the grass at lunchtime hearing the grasshoppers and myriad of insets demanding the most from a beautiful summers day and the birds chirping merrily as they soaked in the sun and sang their little hearts out at a sky so blue. The sense of nearness to things of another dimension was pervasive. And to drift between waves of consciousness and the sleep of tranquillity under natures aura of warmth in a place where heaven so softly touched earth during those never to be forgotten days of 1968 is forever, and will remain, a wonder to a man now in his fifties.

Around three-thirty each day Mrs. Burke and some of her children would bring tea in a gallon and thick heavily buttered brown bread or scones. This she did out of sheer kindness and generosity of spirit. She worked locally and still had time to come over and have a chat while the refreshments were being gladly eaten by all of us.
Mrs Burke was kindness itself, she and her husband Jimmy worked tirelessly to rear a great family. She was a warm hearted woman and made a huge impression on a young boy all of those years ago. When she died I believe the church became a lonelier place.
As decades went by and life went on I never forgot Glengoura and the
the happy days that I was privileged to have spent there. It is a lovely place to visit; there is a great community spirit there amongst its people. It once boasted the famous Kilcronath hurling team and they were no joke to deal with.
Like so many town-lands since the Great Famine of 1845 - 47 the population had been declining. Glengoura has of course lost many people to emigration over the years. Well now new houses have and are being built and many more families will live there and more children will grow up in this lovely place again.

Paddy O'Brien, Bill O'Mahony, Mrs Burke and Jimmy have gone to their eternal home. Mrs. Condon and Mrs. Ronayne amongst other people used to call regularly to pray, they too have gone. The people of Glengoura were then and are to this day very proud of their beautiful church. It is a place apart, a step aside from a busy lifestyle that seems to have engulfed so many of us in a never ending spiral of man versus time. Time will always be, man will not. So if you wish to take time to reflect, or to let your thoughts roam a while, come here to this place and let its spirit invade you. There is a real palatable sense of peace and goodness about.
I thread softly on its grounds lest I disturb the spirit that abides within. It is there in the wind, the sun and all about this place where many years ago men of no notable standing in society built this church from local rock and wood to adore God and thank him for their lives which were even then, at best frugal, more often at subsistence level.

There is no candy store there, but a visit to the chapel on the hill offers a sweetening of the spirit. All of those years ago a boy of fourteen was touched by its warmth, the glow has not dissipated with the years. As the later decades of life approach the spirit of those happy times remain and is as warm as those summer days all of those years ago.

---

Glengoura Notes

Sympathy:

We would like to extend our sympathy to the family, relatives and friends of Mrs. Ellen Long, Glenacroughery, who died recently. Mrs Long was the oldest person in the parish and in her 98th year was a friend to both young and old people in the area. She was very interested in all sports and in particular horse racing, and kept up-to-date with the various sporting achievements of those in the parish. She was a devout mass-goer who very much enjoyed Sunday morning mass in Glengoura. Her death leaves a void in the community and she will be sadly missed by all who knew her