This work, based on Scéal na hIomána, by Brother Liam Ó Caithnia is truly an amazing gift to GAA people, and those of us who love the game of hurling in particular, but it is also of massive historical importance in revealing the lives of Irish people through the 17th and 18th centuries, right up to founding of the association by Michael Cusack and friends in 1884.
It throws much of what we have ever known about the origins of our game on its head. I have learned that Brother Ó Caithnia, known to his pupils in St Joseph’s CBS Fairview, presented his weighty scholarly work on the history of hurling as a thesis in the 1970s, for which he was conferred with a PhD.
However, his magnificent work remained largely hidden from the hurling fraternity because the book, which runs to over 820 pages in total, was written in Irish. This edited version is still a real treasure, and everyone who made the publication of this book possible is deserving of our deep gratitude.
As I’ve said, we all think we know everything that we need to know about the long story of our greatest game. When we read this book, however, we realise that we have known so little.
I am no exception. Hurling has been a huge part of my life since I was a boy, and like everyone else, apart from been told that Setanta went off with his hurley and his ball, and drove it into Culann’s hound’s mouth, as a result of which he became Cúchulainn, I was never told anything else really.
Through my adult life I was a primary schoolteacher, and I would love to have understood more about our game so that I could have imparted it to my own pupils.
As a hurler myself, and then a coach and manager with my club, James Stephens and County Kilkenny, I was continually busy with my own involvement with the game. The years fly by when you are enjoying yourself, and you never think about the origins of our game.
At the end of 2023, I was handed a typescript of the book, and I understood for the first time how far back our game goes, and how, in the 17th and 18th centuries in particular, it evolved and went from strength to strength – and strength to weakness if you examine the state of the game in large parts of the country today.
What amazed me most of all was how strong hurling was in practically every single county. And my own Kilkenny, while now considered one of the real powers of the game, struggled for so long to keep in step with the rest of the country. Kilkenny, unbelievably, was often closer to the bottom of the barrel as the game thrived throughout the North and the Midlands, and in counties like Mayo – and on the beaches of the Inishkea islands off the coast – we find out that the game of hurling engrossed and energised practically every single community.
The lives of Irish people in those early centuries were simple, and they did not have very much free time to indulge themselves in past-times, but in reading this book we still find that hurling was a natural part of their lives. Nobody had money to spend on unnecessary expenses, but woodland surrounded everyone, and sliotars of all sorts were brilliantly and imaginatively created in homes.
Making a ball was hugely satisfying. There was an innocence, and a brilliance, about how they used anything to hand literally to make a small sphere which would eventually enthrance everyone who got to play in a game, and those who watched on.
There was no denying the people of Ireland their game.
The gentry and landowners, of course, loved the game as much as the Irish people who laboured on their lands, and with their guidance and generosity, the game thrived for centuries. Sitting high on their horses, they acted as managers and ensured that their teams behaved and that the thousands of onlookers did not get in the way of the action.
The landed English gentry defied their own parliament in fostering the game for centuries, and that alone tells us all something about the power of hurling in former times. The game thrilled. It fuelled passion, and bragging rights. It encouraged gambling. It offered wonderful prizes. All of this was no different, really, to the way people in this day and age seek to fill their lives with a little more fun.
There were no referees. Women attended in large numbers and they involved themselves in every aspect of the game once it commenced, attending to the injured, and also on occasion, we learn, involving themselves in the game itself when it was necessary in order to block their own goalmouth.
The game was a battle. Games could last for a whole week, and the prizes which included money and barrels of porter, ensured that those who travelled, often barefoot, for miles and miles to see a contest were seldom disappointed. Imagine thousands of people pouring into huge meadows and finding vantage points. Six thousand, seven thousand people, and all of them finding a way to see what was happening.
It is truly hard to imagine.
All those thousands of people waiting for hours and hours, most often, for just the one goal which would decide who won and lost. Then, everyone facing the long journey home. It is so hard to close our eyes and see it, but the work of Brother Ó Caithnia allows us to see!
But it was never just about the goal that was eventually scored, it was about the battle in its entirety and the entertainment it offered those people who had so little excitement and release in their lives.
People in those times were strong physically, to begin with. They knew how to compete, and because they worked so hard all their lives, they also knew how to enjoy themselves when an opportunity was at hand. In reading this edited version of the book, we see that a ‘madness’ was alive and well – but then, the beauty of hurling right up to this day is that it makes us all quite ‘mad’ about the game.
Parish versus parish, and county versus county, hurling has always had the capacity to be so much more than a game. There was no central body organising everything. The people made their own rules, and understood the game they wanted to watch. It was a game which suited who they were as a people.
Our game was loved throughout the ‘civilised’ world in those earlier centuries, and even those who were hostile to our culture, like Oliver Cromwell, attended a game of hurling in Hyde Park in London. A game was played in front of King Louis IX in Paris. The game of hurling was indeed a treasure.
It is often said that those of us who have loved hurling more than any other game are guilty of believing it is ‘superior’ to any other. I do not necessarily buy into this at all. Every game with deep roots in history has been loved and has sustained people in their lives.
But hurling is a little different.
For a start, you have a weapon in your hand. And you have to know how to control that stick, and you have to possess a discipline which is unlike any other game. The skill level and the speed at which the game has always been played, the physicality and the use of your body in protecting the ball and the body, fielding a high ball, controlling a ball on the ground… the game has always demanded so much more.
Is it any wonder it was popular and thrived in the 17th and 18th centuries. And, most probably, formed a central place in the loves of Irish people long before that.
Whatever about that and how far back the game goes, this book educates us, and informs us about the lives and the chief sporting love of our immediate ancestors in every single county in Ireland.
We owe Brother Ó Caithnia a huge thank you for telling us.
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