In the early spring of 1953, Cornelius Dunne — or "Neely" as he was known to his friends — had just reached his twentieth birthday. Like many other young men of twenty, he was weighing up his options. Would he stick it out at home or take the boat to England? It was a difficult decision. There was no farm to hold him back but he was the only son of a widowed mother who had no one else in the world to look after her. Not that Neely was much use in that department; his upbringing was a bit on the pampered side, but only to the extent that pampering was possible in those lean times. Having procrastinated for a number of weeks, his idleness of body and soul did not go unnoticed by the local parish priest. Neely finally bit the bullet when an enthusiastic missionary was dispatched to his tighín to recruit him for the priesthood. He bade farewell on a wet Saturday morning armed with a freshly baked brown cake, flask of tae and all the savings his poor mother could muster to get h...