Pious Pirates and Swinging Thuribles

Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man

For some, the heady scent of frankincense is richly redolent of Christmas, evoking nostalgic memories of holy and ivy, of the Journey of the Magi and of carols sung before the Crib at midnight mass in richly bedecked churches. For others – well, OK, just me – the smell elicits quivers of embarrassment and of guilt, fears of hellfire and horrific memories of heavy black boots and of the terrible swinging thurible.

No parents in their right minds and certainly no sensible Catholic parents would ever dream of sending their male offspring to a convent school. Mine did. The result was that by the age of eight I had become a child of absolutely revolting piety with two main ambitions. One of these was to become a pirate. We are not talking here of the conventional blood and guts type, but rather of the ‘shiver my timbers’ type who doesn’t steal or curse, maraud or plunder, drink or kill but who still manages to have a rollicking good old time by regularly reciting the ‘Hail Mary’, saying his rosary and dedicating the lives of himself and of his swarthy swashbuckling crew to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. You may not have encountered this particular sort of pirate but the Junior Catholic Truth Society Adventure Comic for Boys assured me the Caribbean was absolutely infested with them.

My other ambition was to become an altar boy. Lest this admission raise homophobic eyebrows, it should be added that was not for the chance of getting into a frilly surplice but rather for the opportunity of wielding one of the long brass candle extinguishers and above all for the chance of getting my clammy hands onto the mysterious smoking thurible. Would that my aspirations had reached no higher than to become a pious pirate! However, since the convent had no sloop, schooner, barque or even brigantine conveniently to hand, but did boast its own little church, becoming an altar boy was the more easily realisable ambition.

Of course, no sane or half-way sensible Catholic priest would so much as consider arming an inexperienced altar boy of tender years with such a potentially devastating item as thurible. And the truth was that our local priest didn’t. As I vaguely recall, a deal was struck with an older, much taller and seemingly much more responsible boy who acted as the official Thurifer, the bearer of the gleaming thurible. Doubtless the deal would have involved the exchange of a number of back copies of the Junior Catholic Truth Society Adventure Comic for Boys, the Fun Catechism for Young People or some minor division devotional cards (we are talking of such relatively little known figures as St. David of Wandsworth, also known as the Blessed Procrastinator; Michael of Shaftesbury, Patron Saint of Catfish; or the Blessed Rebecca of Pevkos) .

For those readers fortunate enough not to have been sent to a Roman Catholic convent at an impressionable age, I should perhaps describe a thurible, or censor as it is sometimes known. Bearing a somewhat sinister resemblance to an old fashioned hand grenade, the device is a brass sphere with a pattern of ventilation holes cut into its upper surface so as to facilitate the burning of the red-hot incensed charcoal within. Suspended by a chain which also serves to retain the lid, it is intended to be gently swung to & fro thus resulting in small clouds of fragrant incense wafting through the church.

The day of my initiation dawned – a normal week day and not even a famous saint’s day. At the time, I rather regretted the lack of a large audience for my debut and – as it turned out – final performance. In hindsight, given the total loss of faith suffered by some of the observers and by at least one of the main protagonists, this was fortunate. Receiving minimal instruction in the use of the thurible, I emerged into the church at the end of the procession, swinging the brass orb for all I was worth. Murillo’s Virgin gazed sadly but benignly down, soft Autumnal light filtered through the stained glass window above the altar, the priest advanced towards the congregation.

All went well until about half way into the mass. However, by the time we reached the end of the homily my arm had begun to tire. Being a good deal shorter than the official Thurifer, I had not only to swing the heavy brass orb but also to keep my arm raised uncomfortably high in order to allow it to safely clear the rich crimson carpet. By the close of the Nicene Creed, my arms were aching horribly, my eyes were streaming from the smoke and I had all but given up, concluding that possibly being a Thurifer wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and that the life of a buccaneer might be the easier option. It was at that point the priest noticed my diminishing efforts and gestured rather imperiously for me to resume.

Under the circumstances, I think I might possibly be forgiven for forgetting one small but significant procedural detail: the absolutely crucial importance of raising my arm. In one last manful effort, I gave the thurible a hefty swing, the smoking metal orb flew rather than swung up, rotated through a full 360 degrees before hitting the carpet with a loud clang, and bounced up again with open lid showering everything and everybody in the immediate vicinity with sparks and fragments of burning charcoal.

From here on all was utter pandemonium and my memory of events consists of no more than a few excessively lurid snapshots. One is of the elderly Mother Superior hitching up her habit and athletically vaulting the altar rail to extinguish the smouldering charcoal on the carpet. Another is of the priest’s heavy black boots as he jumps up and down savagely batting the sparks from his cassock (this particular image has haunted me ever since). A third is of the priest’s face, contorted with such rage as to resemble a pirate of the first, very much non-devotional variety; indeed, in my imagination, it could have belonged to Blackbeard's evil twin brother . Yet a fourth is of the other altar boys being doused with water. Finally, there is a shot of the nuns looking aghast as the priest mouths some blood-curdling, vaguely piratical imprecation at me. I don’t remember much else as at that point I fled the scene, singed surplice wafting in my wake.

As I recall, there were few consequences as far as I was concerned. Indeed, the nuns were very sweet and I don’t think I was so much as reprimanded. What I do recall is much use of phrases involving millstones being cast round necks and something about suffering children. I am not sure what happened to the unfortunate priest, but I believe he left the church. As for thuribles, I gave up on the wretched things. What I really wanted to get my hands on was a monstrance. Come to think of it, despite the lapse of time and of my faith, I still do.