An Irishman's Diary

I haven't heard Al Gore mention it yet, but among the earliest casualties of climate change could be the Child of Prague.

The iconic statuette is still widely credited in Ireland with the power to ensure sunny weather for a wedding or other major event. So the cult has been having a disastrous time this summer, during which the term "bridal shower" has acquired new meaning.

The crisis reached a climax at my cousin's wedding last week when, despite the deployment of several statuettes outdoors the night before, it rained all day. It's possible they were not deployed correctly, of course. In common with many folk customs, the one involving the Child of Prague has a certain amount of wriggle room, without which its credibility would be in shreds by now.

There is, for example, a school of thought that the statue is most potent when headless - but only if it has been decapitated by accident. Plaster statues are notoriously prone to losing their heads, anyway. And this particular theory may have arisen from convenience in poorer times, when people couldn't afford to buy a new one.

Head or no head, however, the current summer must be among the biggest challenges the cult has faced since it took off almost four centuries ago. Although long resident in a church in Prague, the original figurine was made in Spain, probably in the 14th century. It became the Bambino di Praga only after it was brought to the Czech city as the wedding gift of a Spanish princess. But it was the statue's role in the triumph of Catholicism in Bohemia during the Thirty Years War that seems to have inspired belief in its powers.

The war was sparked by the Defenestration of Prague in 1618, when Czech nobles threw the Habsburg governors out of a high castle window in revenge for attacks on Protestant churches. The governors' falls were broken by either a moat or a dunghill, in different versions. Even so, the incident led to a multiple-phase international conflict that far outran its origins.

As one historian put it, "almost all [ the combatants] were actuated by fear rather than by lust of conquest or passion of faith. They wanted peace and they fought for 30 years to be sure of it. They did not learn then, and have not learned since, that war only breeds war." The main outcome of the conflict was the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). A lesser outcome was the cult of the Bambino, by then housed in the Church of Our Lady Victorious in Prague's Karmelitska - Carmelite Street - where it had become associated with a string of miracles.

In later centuries, as copies were exported around the Catholic world, the cult spread. But for all the various powers attributed to the figurine, only the Irish appear to have credited it with influencing the weather. And the fact that the belief has survived so many washed-out summers here suggests the faith is indeed great.

Even in Ireland, however, there are variations in the tradition. The Sligo historian Joe McGowan has written of how his mother always kept a ha'penny under the statue: a custom supposed to ensure that the house would never be without money. The house was never with money, he ruefully admits, but his mother's belief was unshakeable.

As for the statue's meteorological powers, McGowan says they didn't know about these in Mullaghmore, "or we might have changed its duties and spent the ha'penny." I wonder if they know about them in Limerick, around J.P. McManus's house. Only 24 hours after my cousin's wedding, curiously, J.P.'s daughter got married in uninterrupted sunshine. But if her father had put the Child of Prague out beforehand, he must be in the habit of keeping a coin under it as well, judging by the amount of money about the house. He could have bough the whole church in Karmelitska, just to be on the safe side, if anyone was selling.

Among the wedding's reported luxuries - from €850,000 worth of flowers to Lionel Richie - the one that impressed me most was the special water feature: a "reflective pool" around which guests enjoyed champagne and sushi on arrival. Unlike the water features at many weddings this summer, this one had not just fallen out of the sky. It was designed deliberately.

My invitation to the McManus nuptials must have got lost in the post, unlike my invitation to the French embassy's Bastille Day garden party, an event also bathed in sunshine. Maybe the ambassador had put the Child of Prague out too. Or maybe it's just that, being French territory, the embassy is not subject to local weather.

I was reminded that the embassy is French territory by the splendid sight of the gendarme, complete with kepi, who welcomed guests at the gate. Or in our case, who frowned and said: "Je suis désolé, mais ce n'est pas possible." The problem, it emerged, was that we were accompanied by our two-year-old baby, and that nobody under 18 was allowed in.

The gendarme said this was on the invitation, but when we showed him that it wasn't, he just shrugged and said he was still désolé. So the baby and his mother had to repair to a nearby park for an hour while I tackled the champagne and Camembert alone. Thus it was that, whatever about the Child of Prague, the embassy put the Child of Kilmainham out. And the sun shone. I just hope it doesn't start a tradition.