An Irish Country Christmas

Great book suggestion by
Sara at Much Ado about Some-
thing ~~ I fell into another time
with this. Great longings come
when I read of little villages where
we are known. I only read a few pages
tonight so here goes. See if you want
to be this Irishman's friend in his
store:

" When they came to buy their cards,
he went through the selection with
them. He had red robins for Mrs. Casey,
who like her cards to be full of festive
cheer, and other ones with long
verses for my mother, because she
was very particular about the verses
in her cards. He consulted and deliberated
with them and sometimes consoled them
about the loss of a relative in foreign
parts who that year no longer had an
earthly address.

Every customer got a present. It was
a token of appreciation for their patronage
throughout the year. Big round barm
bracks and seed loaves were all sorted out
and allocated to different homes. He even
gave presents to people who owed him
money, because those were the days of
little red notebooks and people did not
always pay on the dot. But Ned was
kindhearted and maybe their grandmother
had been a customer in her day; perhaps this
generation was not as good to manage,
so they needed a bit of help; another family
might be going through a bad patch,
and anyways Christmas was not time to
be thinking of thrifty details."

Two loaves of barmbrack

Usually sold in flattened rounds, it is often served toasted with butter along with a cup of tea in the afternoon.