Love of Country

Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land;
Whose heart hath ne'er within burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,
Despite those titles, power and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

— Sir Walter Scott

Pathetic Tipperary Display

National Hurling League Division 1A:

Dublin 2-20; Tipperary 0-14

In yesterday's game, played at Parnell Park, Dublin,Tipperary's inept display was reminiscent of the worst period — in the late '70's and early '80's — of their hurling recession between 1971 and 1987. The truth of the matter is that the recession in Tipperary hurling never ended; it simply improved from a dire situation as exemplified by the euphoria with which we all greeted the first round championship victory over Clare in 1983.

Being happy with winning one All-Ireland senior championship every decade is very depressing. In the 1950's and 1960's — the glory years of Tipperary hurling — titles were won by first time ground hurling, great spirit and physicality. It was a time when the leading Tipperary club teams could take on the top clubs in any other county and beat them. The changes to the club championship system allowed teams of inferior quality to continue playing senior year after year in a competition which guaranteed them 4 or 5 games even if they lost each one. The idea of relegation was anathema to those involved at club and board level. Not surprisingly, the competitive element and standard deteriorated. Tipperary teams, for a long number of years, have been unable to hit the ball on the ground and they are lacking the defensive qualities to properly defend the goal — and I am not talking here about foul tactics.

Unfortunately, hurling has become a handling game — especially over the past ten or more years. At times it is like rugby played with hurleys. Tipperary are finding it hard to compete with teams that always favoured the handling game because they lack the craft and physicality.

The Irish Peasant Girl

The song, Slievenamon, from the pen of Charles Kickham, has become the anthem of Tipperary. His other song, The Irish Peasant Girl, is dear to the hearts of those of us who live near the Anner at the foot of Slievenamon. I will quote the words hereon:

The Irish Peasant Girl

She lived beside the Anner,
At the foot of Slievenamon,
A gentle peasant girl,
With mild eyes like the dawn,
Her lips were dewy rosebuds,
Her teeth of pearls rare,
and a snowdrift 'neath a beechen bough,
Her neck and nut brown-hair. 

How pleasant 'twas to meet her
On Sunday,when the bell
Was filling with its mellow tones
Lone wood and grassy dell,
And when at eve young maidens
Strayed the river-bank along,
The widow's brown-haired daughter
Was loveliest of the throng. 

O brave, brave, Irish girls —
We well may call you brave;
For the least of all your perils
Is the stormy ocean wave,
When you leave your quiet valleys,
And cross the Atlantic's foam
To hoard your hard-won earnings
For the helpless ones at home. 

"Write word to my dear mother —
Say we'll meet with God above;
And tell my little brothers
I send them all my love;
May the angels ever guard them,
Is their sister's prayer" —
And folded in the letter
Was a braid of nut-brown hair. 

Ah, cold and well-nigh callous
This weary heart has grown,
For thy hapless fate, dear Ireland,
And for sorrows of my own;
Yet a tear my eye will moisten,
When by Anner's bank I stray,
For the Lily of the Mountain foot
That withered far away. 

— Charles J. Kickham

The following is taken from Tipperary County:People and Places which is described as an anthology of people, places and sites in the history of Tipperary. It was published in 1993 and it's editor was Michael Hallinan. Michael was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. He occupied a number of important positions in the Civil and Public Service. He was born at Aughavolimane, Ballinamult, the southernmost townland in County Tipperary.

The Irish Peasant Girl was first contributed to the Celt in 1859. It was intended as a protest against the national evil of emigration, with special reference to the moral dangers to which young people were exposed on board ship in those harsh times. Kickham had been inspired by the fate of an exquisite gentle girl who pined away in exile, and who had sent some of her brown tresses, with a tender message, to her little brothers and sisters on Anner's bank at Killusty, Fethard, Co.Tipperary. The poet always called to see his cousin Catherin Carew, whenever trout-fishing in Killusty, and her departure for America. 

Michael Cavanagh of Cappoquin (later of Washington D.C.) who met Kickham in New York in 1864, on referring to Maid of Anner, was shown her photograph by him."The face seemed to be of a girl of eighteen, of oval shape, every feature as perfect as a painter ever imagined. But its great charm consisted in an expression of angelic innocence" 

— James Maher, Mullinahone

Act of Kindness

A news item which appeared in last week's issue of The Nationalist newspaper, Clonmel, attracted my attention. It was written by staff reporter, Eamon Lacey, and it shows that there are people — and a young person in this case — who are capable of fine acts of kindness. At a time when all around us a low based agenda is being pushed — supported by the national organs of the media — noble acts like this give us hope.

I will quote the article hereunder:

CARING JAMIE IS A GOOD SAMARITAN TO FAI BOSS 

John Delaney's Mum in Motorway Blizzard

Eamon Lacey

A Clonmel man who rescued a mother and daughter from a blizzard while on a journey home from hospital has been hailed as a hero. 

Joan Delaney, wife of former FAI treasurer Joe Delaney and mother of FAI chief executive officer John Delaney, and her daughter were saved by a young Clonmel man who came to their aid when he saw their car stopped up on the Cork/Dublin motorway near Watergrasshill in atrocious weather conditions on Tuesday night of last week. 

The car in which Joan and her daughter Jean were travelling seized up and came to an abrupt stop. 

"We were terrified. The blizzard was unbelievable. It was very frightening for us both", said Joan who had been collected from the Bons Securs hospital by her daughter Jean. 

"When we left Cork at 9.30 pm everything was okay but we then came into this awful blizzard a short distance after coming out of the Jack Lynch tunnel. Our car just stopped in the middle of the road, it seized up", said Joan. 

"We were there a while when we noticed this figure approaching the car. He asked us did we need help and he was just brilliant and looked after us and made sure we got home safely on the night", she said. 

The Good Samaritan, Jamie Fenton from Clonmel, who was doing a night course in Cork, managed to pull the car into the hard shoulder before driving it to Watergrasshill where they left it overnight. Jamie then drove Joan and her daughter Jean to their home in Tipperary town. 

"We got stuck in those awful conditions, we did not know what to do. Only for him we were in real trouble", said Joan. 

She said it was heartening to see such kindness. 

"Not only did he stop to help us in those awful conditions but he drove out of his way to bring us to our front door in Tipperary town. We were very grateful to him for saving us and looking after us so well", said Joan.

The Lake Isle of Inisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Inisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake waters lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

— W. B. Yeats

Pardon for Harry Gleeson

I was very pleased to hear on the radio during the past week that the Minister for Justice, Francis Fitzgerald, was about to give a posthumous pardon to Harry Gleeson.

I first became aware of  "the Harry Gleeson Case" on the publication of the book Murder at Marlhill in 1993. This was written by Dublin barrister Marcus Bourke who had a number of books prior to this — mainly about historical figures — and was also editor of the Tipperary Historical Society. Having read the book and spoken to people who remembered the period — including some from the New Inn area — I became convinced that Harry Gleeson was an innocent man.

For the benefit of people not familiar with the case, I will quote hereon the opening paragraph of the book:

At eight o'clock on the morning of Wednesday 23 April, 1941, Harry Gleeson was hanged in Mountjoy Jail in Dublin for the murder of his neighbour Mary McCarthy. Her body had been found in a remote spot on Gleeson's uncle's farm near New Inn in Co. Tipperary early on Thursday 21 November, 1940. Nine days later, on 30 November, Gleeson was arrested and charged with the murder. A six-day preliminary hearing in Clonmel District Court in January 1941 was followed by a ten-day jury trial in Green Street courthouse in Dublin in February. A four-day hearing in the Court of Criminal Appeal a month later and a reprieve campaign both failed, and the posting outside the jail gates of the customary notice by a prison official at 8.05 on the morning of 23 April recorded the execution of Gleeson.

Leading for the defence in the case was Sean McBride who was a young barrister at the time and was to become a senior council a few years afterwards. McBride had been a political activist from a young age and was Minister for External Affairs in the first Inter Party Government. He was convinced from the time he took on the case until his death of the innocence of Harry Gleeson. He, with Mr J.J.Timoney from Tipperary Town, visited the scene of the murder on two occasions, meticulously going over over ever detail. McBride had friends in the Cahir area — a town about 3 miles from the scene of the crime — whom he visited often. He obtained a lot of background information on the case from this source.

On the day before he was hanged Sean McBride visited Harry Gleeson in his condemned cell at the latter's request. When he returned to his car he wrote down what Harry Gleeson had said to him. He sent details to solicitor Timoney which makes for heart-rending reading:

He asked me to let his uncle and aunt and his friends know that he did not mind at all dying, as he was well prepared, and that he would pray for them as soon as he reached Heaven. He was quite calm and happy. He assured several times that he would not like to change places with anyone else, as he felt sure he had undergone his purgatory in this world and that he might never have the opportunity again to be so well prepared to meet his death. He was quite cheerful and chatted freely about his execution. He asked me to specially thank you all for the work you had done on his behalf, and said he would pray for you. At the end of the interview he stood up and said: "The last thing I want to say is that I will pray tomorrow that whoever did it will be discovered, and that the whole thing will be like an open book. I rely on you then to clear my name. I have no confession to make, only that I didn't do it. That is all. I will pray for you and be with you if I can, whenever you, Mr.Nolan-Whelan and Mr.Timoney are fighting and battling for justice".

Kilcash

What shall we do for timber?

The last of the woods is down.

Kilcash and the house of its glory

And the bell of the house are gone,

The spot where that lady waited

Who shamed all women for grace

When earls came sailing to greet her

And Mass was said in the place. 

My grief and my affliction

Your gates are taken away,

Your avenue needs attention,

Goats in the garden stray.

The courtyard's filled with water

And the great earls where are they?

The earls, the lady, the people

Beaten into the clay. 

No sound of duck or geese there,

Hawk's cry or eagle's call,

No humming of the bees there

That brought honey and wax for all,

Nor even the song of the birds there

When the sun goes down in the west,

No cuckoo on top of the boughs there,

Singing the world to rest. 

There's mist there tumbling from branches,

Unstirred by night and by day,

And darkness falling from heaven,

For our fortune has ebbed away,

There's no holly nor hazel nor ash there,

The pasture's rock and stone,

The crown of the forest has withered,

And the last of the game is gone. 

I beseech of Mary and Jesus

That the great come home again

With long dances danced in the garden,

Fiddle music and mirth among men,

That Kilcash the home of our fathers

Be lifted on high again,

And from that to the deluge of waters

In bounty and peace remain. 

— Translation by Frank O'Connor