’Ah this brings me back’. When I saw that Christian Brother’s brandy wasn’t reviewed yet I said to myself in quite prayer, ’I must spread the news’. I remember it well, back in the early 50’s when the Irish people had just freed ourselves from 200 years of oppression by the English. The gentry were few and far between and the frost was thick on the ground. My father brought me in to the bedroom and told me it was time I became a man and that’s when he hit me with it ’you’re going down the road to the Christian brothers..’ My heart filled with joy, as I knew since I was knee-high to a postman’s sack that I was destined for the priesthood. And it was the winter of 52’ when I began my journey.
What brought this minor reminiscence to mind was the time I was given a damn good thrashing one evening by the Christian brothers. Looking back it was all in good sport but at the time you would be in fear of your life if you wrong-sided a senior. What happened was this. The Chaplain at the time Brother Billy McCarthy had a special bottle of Brandy that he kept under lock and key in the vestry of the school chapel. This was his pride and joy and only on special occassions would he take a sip from the the most divine source. Some of the more disobedient pupils and I got together and decided it would be jolly fine sport to break in and have a drop of the sacred liquor. So one evening whilst everyone was in the school field having a game of ‘burn the atheist’ a posse of four young priests were quitely sneaking in the open window of the school chapel. Two hours later Brother McCarthy found us three sheets to the wind on our backs in the vestry with a half empty bottle of the Christian Brothers Brandy laying idle on the marble floor.. How brazen we were back then.. I still enjoy a glass of Brady to this day however its just not the same without the after taste of the sting of a length of ash on you’re bare backside. Even now you will hear me preach to the village elders, ’Do not covet thy Brothers Brandy for you will surely be punished for eternity and scorned for such out right gluttony..’ It puts the fear of God in their poor souls.