Shane Lehane
10 min read There s nothing good about Good Friday. But these long-forgotten Irish traditions might liven it up
My memory of Good Friday is that it was the most boring and uneventful day of the year. Growing up in the 1970s, I remember a foreboding about Easter, with obligatory guilt-ridden religious observations of confession and the Stations of the Cross. This was also a day when those fond of the secular retreat to their local tavern â I have my late father in mind â were instead condemned to a day of forced abstinence.
In short, there was nothing good about Good Friday. It was solemn, depressing and difficult to get through. But if we go back a generation or two, via the rich repositories of Irish folklore, we find a cluster of interesting observances and traditions that must have made Good Friday at least a little more exciting and
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