FORUM: Illtyd Harrington: ‘As I Please’ - Death and the Maiden with Sybil and the Banshees

Published: 29 September, 2011

THE baying call of the Banshee during the dark reaches of the night in our Irish community was capable of chilling the blood of the gullible. For it was an omen of death.

In vain did I attempt to convince my relatives that it was probably a lovesick dog pining for sexual fulfilment. Only provoking my scornful grandmother into snapping  at me: “You are too bloody good for your own good.”

Which brings us to Sybil.

Sybil is 92, more upstairs than down, and she describes herself as a tough old bat. But in my eyes she’s more of a basking shark.

The other day I went with her to the cancer clinic at the hospital.

A kindly Libyan oncologist told her firmly that she was a terminal case.

Within a few days, her palliative care was in place.

This was Rolls Royce NHS. Or as she put it, echoing the old BR slogan, “Let the train take the strain.”

The shock troops of Macmillan nurses arrived unflappable and devilishly professional while their patient – a voracious reader – was engrossed in a new book on Copernicus, along with Kepler and Galileo, who sent accepted theology and geography crashing to the ground.

The Pope stood aghast: the Earth went round the Sun.

So where the hell was Heaven? This was the world turned upside down.

All belief was challenged and it took a brave heart to abandon the belief that Our Lady, with the aid of two angelic persons, ascended vertically into the stratosphere from her home in Ephesus.

Yet now, 500 years later, another scientific claim challenging our received wisdom of the basic law of physics on time and the speed of light.

The Opera project in Gran Sasso says that there are objects that move faster than light.

So that seems to put paid to the seven-day creation of the world and the terrifying paintings by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.

Like little lambs who have gone astray we are lost in the cosmos with no direction.

As Sybil concluded, theology is in a hell of a state. Bishops are buying new telescopes and they will have to find another explanation for the miracle of Fatima in Portugal when the Sun reversed in the heavens in 1917.

William Wordsworth had no problems. He said: “Heaven lies about us in our infancy.”

Where I come from the Grim Reaper was more a patron of music and witchcraft and confused thinking.

Rufus Rhys Rhys was a man who could transform a quiet wake into a religious riot.
The viewing of a loved one laid out drew Rufus like a moth to a flame.

When he found the corpse he began to heap all sorts of attributes and honours over every available cadaver.

Seized by a bardic passion his wife Rose exercised the old Welsh art of Hwyl, so what had been a placid evening was hushed for a moment and then there arose cries of intolerable grief and self-denunciation.

Secret sinners denounced themselves. The local doctor and his cousin the chemist were rumoured to have a supply of nerve pills (this was before Valium).

To them death was a diversion – a theatre of the macabre and an emotional showcase, like American Indians dancing around a bonfire.

Back in the modern world Sybil has now an intelligent support system backed by her friends. As she acidly pointed out: Socrates was forced to drink hemlock for corrupting the young. The corrupted young sat with him.

She has a simple tube which contains morphine to still the pain if it arrives. And an array of drink large enough to satisfy the House of Commons.

This serenity was shaken when she flung an empty Cyprus sherry bottle after a retreating ghoul who offered – for a price – to make an inventory of her belongings.
This dying, haughty, patron the Brighton racecourse observed: “Christ it’s like Zorba the Greek. They’re in before my arse is cold.”

She cackled to me: “Half of this lot will turn up on the Antiques Roadshow.”

I attempted to comfort her with the words of Christ, the Buddha and Saints Anthony and Francis: “Put not your trust in earthly possessions for they will rust.

To which she shouted: “Bullshit. The middle class do not lightly abandon their wealth. I’m no socialist.”

Francis Bacon, that wonderful 17th-century writer says: “It is as natural to die as it is to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.”

Sybil’s indignation, fuelled by vodka, provoked her into addressing the visiting parson as a sky pilot.

His humiliation was lessened when she poured him a large glass of fine sherry.
It was been puzzling in this pre- rather than post-mortem exercise to find common accord on the location of Heaven.

Are there wings on angels’ smiles on cherubs and music in the spheres? Sybil is, I’m afraid, not persuaded.

One thing Sybil and I agree on is that the politicians have contrived to destroy the world while scholars and space agents want to open up a panorama of infinity.

As the philosopher said and Brendan Behan put more aptly:
The Bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling
For you but not for me.
Oh Death where is thy
sting-a-ling-a-ling?
Oh Grave, thy victory?"
Death must continue to be an impatient visitor for Sybil.