It fascinates me how many of my "Comrades of the Co-op" whose "working names" are all country, end up being named after saints. Just down the road from me is B.L., the manager of the next door bazillion acre cattle farm. If it ever occurred to BL to go to church of a Sunday it would be to the Babdiss Church. But he is actually Bernard Louis (sure of the Bernard, not of the Louis). Now that's as Catholic a name as ou could wish for.
In related news, a priest told me what some 35-40 years ago when he had a chapel in a pick-up and was sent out to the highways and byways, he was WAY up in the holler. And some snaggle toothed denizen of the hills went and produced a rosary and said to him, "Whut's this here?" So he told him and showed him what to do with it.
And the guy began to cry and said that it had been in his family since ever who knows when but at least one "great" was inserted before "granmaw" and that they had been told that one day a priest would come and show them what it was.
Now I have to insert the caution that I love this particular priest so much that in his praise I'd like to say that some of the stuff he remembers actually happened. But there it is. And when you put it with the high incidence of fine old Catholic names way up in the holler, I don't think it's so incredible.
"And when you put it with the high incidence of fine old Catholic names way up in the holler, I don't think it's so incredible."
Ah, well, you see, there is an explanation for that. These people are the descendants of the "Lost Tribe of County Kerry" which traveled to America with +Brendan and his monks in carraghs back in the early 7th century. Of course they took their rosaries with them and for many centuries used them for prayer. Eventually they only employed them by placing them on a windowsill the day before a wedding to assure a good, sunny day for Betty Sue's nuptials but even that practice died out.
This "Lost Tribe" was actually made up of ethnic Greeks who, many centuries before, had been blown off course on a trading mission to Britain and were cast up on Erin's fair shore. If you see that priest again, I suspect he'll confirm that that fellow he spoke to didn't actually say a "priest" would come, but rather that the arrival of the "pappas" was foretold! :)