Vikings and moving statues in chapels

By the time ye are reading this I will be cruising upon the high seas off the coast of Scandinavia. I will be upon the very waters where the fierce Vikings of our history crafted the original Berserkers on their way to raid the rich Irish monasteries.

They slaughtered a lot of monks and peasants that time, and escaped with many chests of gold.

In the wake of the Ryan report last month about the fearful abuse of vulnerable children in religious institutions up to only a decade ago, a lot of people here are expressing the view it is a pity the Vikings did not slaughter a helluva lot more of them, but we will not go there now except to remark that the Vikings were able to extract a lot more gold from the monasteries than our government is able to extract today from them in compensation to their victims.

It is an obscene truth that the taxpayer is bearing the huge majority of that burden and the victims, of course, are now taxpayers. It scarcely bears thinking about. Maybe our government needs a few Berserkers urgently too!

Do ye know how the Vikings created that ferocious class of citizen?  What they did, before they departed on their Irish raids, was scour their districts to find large men who, putting it delicately, were not the sharpest tools in the box. Who were maybe two sandwiches short of the full picnic.

They got them drunk on the night before departure,  and when the poor divils awoke with sore heads the next morning they were down in the bilges of the boats trussed up like chickens.

And from that hour onwards, for the rest of the journey, blindfolded, they were teased and tortured and tormented by the rest of the crew. They got the minimum of food and water, just enough to keep them alive. 

They were pricked with the points of the swords and daggers aboard, abused and humiliated at every turn. No crewman passed  them without kicking them or spitting upon them, or worse. They were driven demented.

And when the Viking longship at last landed beside a monastery they were brought ashore, given a cowhorn full of strong drink, provided with a sword for each hand. The blindfolds were whipped off, and somebody shouted in their ears from behind that it was the monks they could see in the distance that had been abusing them all the way.

As I said, they were not the sharpest tools in the box, and so off they charged roaring like wolves. The rest of the crew had merely to amble along behind them at their leisure to collect the spoils.

It would not be PC at all to even mildly suggest our government could do with one or two of them today. Anyway, that very government itself is being so tormented on all sides, so abused and humiliated and tortured, that it is more akin to the poor beaten bodies in the bilges than the ruling class.

There is even a growing body of evidence  suggesting that it is our government, in its handling of all its crises, both domestic and global, which is betraying signs of not being the sharpest tool in the box.

The local and European elections last week saw it being gutted just as bloodily as if  the original Berserkers had burst into the cabinet room where the gold is. Or was. 

But the good news for the rest of us, as I mentioned here before, is that we had all the high feverish excitement and craic of a good, full-blooded Irish election as compensation and insulation against the realities of these recessionary times internationally. 

And there is more excitement to divert our minds. Fianna Fail was so decimated at the polls that there is certain to be a heave-ho against Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen.

Cute Bertie Ahern skipped away at the right time and passed him a poisoned chalice. He has not handled it well enough. His troops have been restless for months now.

Mark my words that internal strife stories will drive economic matters off the front pages for the whole summer. If Cowen survives that will be a great yarn.

If he does not survive then we will have such an interesting succession battle afterwards that the September leaves will be falling before we become interested in the business news again. And by then cute Bertie will be well on his way to being elected Dublin's first ever full-time, professional, well-rewarded lord mayor.

These are merry times indeed. We might even have a snap general election before the year is out.

And we have a Plan B too, intuitively, if all else fails to banish the economic realities now troubling the rest of the globe.

The weather is good now, and a good bright summer is promised by the weather experts and that always puts us in the best of form.

But if they are wrong and the summer is as foully wet and grey as the last two have been, it is then that Plan B will emerge out of the mists, as it always has in the harsh periods of our history. It is infallible and compelling and always works a treat.

Ironically, it brings us back to those monasteries and the tottering wider church. The statues will begin to move again! They always do.

If the summer is wet and miserable and all else fails to banish the gloom, than the statues will begin to move both inside chapels and monasteries and in grottos on hillsides above villages in which the only factory closed down in August.

They will move slightly and those slightest of moves will cause a huge current of fervor and electric excitement across the land. Usually it is the Blessed Lady, in her goodness, who moves first, and then many of the other saints that we love in their time, geography and season.

Hundreds will stand out in the rain and not feel it. Old prints of St. Jude, patron of Hopeless Cases, are likely to visibly weep in little side altars in old chapels. Some saints will even be seen; some will swear to bleed.

It will be a welcome side effect that local economies will benefit hugely. Folk who have not gone to church for 30 years will get religion again and feel great. Yes indeed, the statues are bound to move.

And Plan B will carry us safely through to Christmas.

Mark my words.