LITERATURE
AND EMO COURT
The Singing-Masters
by John
O’Meara
Published by the Lilliput
Press Ltd 1990
Born in 1915, John O’Meara writes his
autobiography beginning with his youth in Eyrecourt
Co Galway and school at Rockwell College Co Tipperary. He spent two years as a novice
at Emo Court, which was at that time the
novitiate of St Mary’s of the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus. He
continued with classical studies at UCD and Oxford, eventually deciding to leave
the Society of Jesus. He became Professor of Latin in UCD in 1948.
Chapter
Three of The Singing-Masters deals in
depth with John O’Meara’s time in Emo from 1933 to 1935. He gives detail of the gardens –
“rich in rhododendrons and wild, heavily scented, yellow azaleas in the
spring”; the estate with its “impressive avenue of Wellingtonian
pines”; and the interior of the house – “good in parts” but “much the most
pleasant and elegant of all the houses I have lived in”. He describes the
routine and daily life of Jesuit novices at that time in St Mary’s, their
spiritual regime, their penances, his companion novices and their superiors,
and the good food that appeared at regular intervals.