Sinners, by Seán Ó Faoláin

Biography

Seán Proinsias Ó Faoláin was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1900. He studied in a religious school and his primary school was in Gaelic. As he was born as John Francis Whelan, we have to suppose he changed his name into Gaelic. When he went to university in Dublin, he joined the Irish Volunteers, and he fought for the Irish independence. He got disappointed with the outcome of the Independence War and the Irish Civil War and he went  to study in Harvard, in the USA, and then he worked in some high schools and universities in England where he taught Gaelic. He only came back to Ireland in 1933 where he worked in his short stories, novels and in literary magazines.

His most famous book is Midsummer Night Madness, a collection of short stories about the Civil War.
For Irish people he’s a controversial figure, because some of his books were banned for indecency and because he wasn’t satisfied with the creation of the free Ireland as it was. He was very critical with some of conservative aspects of the Irish nationalism and the Catholic Church.
He died in Dublin at the age of 91.

Seán Ó Faoláin the Wikipedia

Plots of some of his stories

SINNERS

This is a story about a religious confession of an orphan girl. She was picked up at the orphanage by Mrs Higgins as a maid. Now she has to go on confession because her patron knows she has stolen her boots and wants to recover them by the way of her avowal to the canon confessor. Mrs Higgins has told the canon about the girl and her pair of boots and asked him to elicit the girl’s “sin” and then make her to give the boots back to her.

But the thing isn’t going to be so easy because there is the secret of confession, and, of course, it’s supposed the confessor cannot know the girl’s sins through another person; and also, because the girl is a simpleton and the canon has no patience with her. The canon is an old man and, after a life of confessions for no good, he is already fed up with the mean spirit of the people, his trivial problems and their failure in improving their morals. Will the girl confess her robbery? Will Mrs Higgins get back her pair of boots? Will the canon be in peace at the end?

QUESTIONS

Talk about the characters in the story:

The canon

Father Deeley

The girl

Mrs Higgins

What does the canon do to control his anger? Do you know other ways to calm you down? Which one do you use?

It seems that in Ireland there are (or were) a lot of orphanages: Why do you think there were so many? Have you seen “Song for a Raggy Boy” or “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee”?

What is a Freemason? What do you know about the Freemasonry?

Do you think is it possible not to commit a “sin” in 5 years? What is the limit between a small “sin” and a big “sin” for you? Can be there a general rule or does it depend of every person in particular?

Do you think confession can help people (like a kind of psychological therapy)?

And penance? Can penance help you when you feel you’ve made a mistake?

The canon is old and Deeley is young. What advantage has an old person to a young person, according he canon? Do you think he is right?

Ambrose Bierce said that a secret is something you tell only to one person. Do you think is it possible to keep a secret? Even for a priest?

What do you think of the confession in general?

VOCABULARY

grille, restiveness, sigillum, pettish, shade, prevarication, forestalled, gospel, lattice, shudder, slur, wisha, gasped, flaking, wan, prying, poking, prodding, picking at, lashings and leavings of, starved, immodest, blunty, whimper, urchins, spittle, gabble, cross, cosily, cokalorum, jade