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i 5 8 / A M E S [ 1904 ]girl by the name of Sarah Kavanagh from the country and he never spoketo her after that.We had a party one Holly eve night My father used to make games forus such as cross sticks hanging from the ceiling there would be an appleon one stick soap on the other and a lighted candle on the other stick oureyes would be covered so we could not see and my father would spin thesticks around and we would bite at the apple my father would put the soapin Noras mouth the house would be in roars of laughter while Nora wouldbe getting the soap out of her mouth we would fill our mouths with wheatand then go round the house listening at the doors to hear if a boys namementioned as he would be our supposed future husband and we wouldburst out laughing and run like the dickens for fear of the boys would catchus but they could never catch us we would then go to another house andbuy a pennyworth of pins we would stick 9 pins into the red part of theapple and throw the 10th pin away we would put the apple with the pinsin, in our left foot stocking and tie it with our right foot garter and put itunder our head when we would go to bed to dream of our future husbandwe would steal a head of cabbage out of a garden we never stood in beforeon a moonlight night on Hallow eve and have a mirror we would go intoa field and stand on a dunghill and eat the head of cabbage and lookingthrough the mirror to see if we could see the face of our future husband.Those were the old fashioned charms we used to play on Hallow eve.Nora knew another boy whom she was very fond of his name was Michael(Sonny) Bodkin he was going to the Universarty College here he wasa very handsome young man with a beautiful head of black wavy hair hewas a great admirer of Nora but she was too young and afraid to be seenwith the boys. We used to go to his father's shop for a pennyworth ofconversation lozenges the flat sweets with rhymes on them (such as I loveyou and will meet you tonight). Sonny Bodkin died very young.Some time after this Nora met Willy Mulvey she just met him on thebridge he asked her would she meet him and Nora said to me Mary whatwill 1 do. I told her to go out with him she then asked me what I woulddo. I said I would wait for her I would have to sit in the Abbey Churchwait for her as I supposed to be out with her and we had to be homebefore 10 o.c. at night or she would get a beating. She was afraid of heruncle Tommy Healy as he would be on the town watching Nora with hiswalking stick 41and always whistling a tune (My Mountain Maid Arise).He was a beautiful whistler and singer Nora was terribly afraid of him AsI dare not be seen till she would back I would have to stay in the AbbeyChurch till she would come she would have a large box of chocolates andwould scatter them all on the table in my house and share them with usall.* Nora would meet me after she leave Willie Mulvey at the AbbeyChurch and we would be home together and a box of sweets to enjoy."Bodkin, who gave her a bracelet, seems to fuse with Mulvey, who gave her creamsweets, in a note Joyce wrote about the character of Bertha in Exiles: 'She weeps overRahoon too, over him whom her love has killed, the dark boy whom, as the earth, sheembraces in death and disintegration. He is her buried life, her past. His attendant imagesare the trinkets and toys of girlhood (bracelet, cream sweets, palegreen lily of the valley,the convent garden).' 42 See also p. 316.