Religion, Irish nationalism and Gaelic games: the Dungourney GAA plaque
Early twentieth-century Ireland was driven by a dynamic mixture of nationalism, Catholicism and Gaelic games. In an era when few people (other than emigrants) travelled far from their native place, identification with the semi-abstract concept of the Irish nation was built upwards from fierce loyalties to locality, especially to the parish. By organising inter-county competitions after its foundation in 1884, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) reinforced an intermediate level of patriotism, which particularly manifested itself in areas such Cork and Tipperary where the game of hurling inspired massive popular enthusiasm. These four elements – nationalism, religion, hurling and locality – are neatly interwoven in a memorial plaque beside the altar rail in the small and attractive parish church at Dungourney, near Midleton in County Cork.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, the Dungourney hurlers were a force in Irish sport out of all proportion to the size of the community that they represented. The focal point of the locality, a scattering of houses around the Catholic parish church, was hardly large enough to be termed a village: in 1837, it had not even matched nearby Clonmult, which contained "about 20 cabins".[1] The twin settlements, located in upland east Cork, not far from the market town of Midleton, were hard hit by the Famine and the subsequent continuing process of emigration. The population of the civil parish of Dungourney had more than halved from the 1,660 people counted by the census in 1841 – four years later, when the Famine struck, there would almost certainly have been more – to the 695 recorded in 1911. Within the slightly different boundaries of the District Electoral Division, Dungourney's population had fallen from 719 in 1891 to 579 twenty years later. Of these, 279 were males over the age of nine. Clonmult, with a population of 207 in 1911 (down from 305 in 1891), added little to the pool of potential hurlers, let alone superstars: the two communities were home to just 142 men in the 21 to 40 age group.Yet, together, they produced one of the most formidable hurling teams in the whole of Ireland. "Dungourney was far more than a team of good hurlers led by a super-skipper; it was a well balanced set of surpassing men".[2] At that time, there were seventeen players in a hurling team (the number was reduced to fifteen in 1913). Yet even in the years when "they swept all Munster before them", the Dungourney team "never had more than seventeen players to travel. They just managed to make up seventeen players … with never a substitute nor a man over." Remarkably, too, they also played Gaelic football. Once they won a gruelling county hurling semi-final, and took the field five minutes later to play – and win – a match in the other code. "That’s the kind of men Dungourney had, great athletes, all courage and endurance."[3]
The GAA had introduced national competitions in 1887, using the term "All-Ireland" to ignore minority deviations from its definition of the national identity. However, the competition rules differed from modern practice. First, the club side that won the championship at local level automatically became the county team, which explains why the plaque refers to Dungourney as the "All Ireland Hurling Team" for the 1902 and 1907 seasons. However, a flexible attitude to eligibility allowed the designated club to borrow star players from their rivals, making the system a half-way house to selection through a county panel. Second, the previous year's All-Ireland winner was given a bye to the final: they were, literally, the champions who accepted a challenge from the county that had emerged triumphant from the knock-out stages. Third, there was a degree of calendar overlap: Dungourney won the Cork county title for 1902 by defeating Shanballymore in May 1903. There was a slightly puzzling further delay before they appeared in their first All-Ireland final, in September 1904, a whole two years after the designated season. One reason for this may have been that the GAA intended to stage the hurling and football finals at the newly completed Cork Athletic Grounds, which meant that they had to wait until the primitive stadium was ready for use.[4]
Another reason for the delay may probably be found in the fact that the defending champions were the London Irish. The depopulation that had drained late-nineteenth century Ireland of so many of its people had particularly removed young men who saw no future at home. Many asserted their continuing Irish identity by playing Gaelic games: Michael Collins, who spent almost a decade in London, returning shortly before the Easter Rising, was one of many who used his hurley to resist assimilation. GAA rules excommunicated anyone who dabbled in "foreign games", while contact with the British State was definitely forbidden. When Cork (represented on this occasion by a city club, St Finbarr's) won the 1905 All-Ireland final (in April 1907), the defeated Kilkenny team managed to overturn the result by pointing out that their conquerors had fielded a British Army reservist. This political emphasis helps to explain why hurling, which is a very attractive spectator sport, never spread outside Ireland or Irish exile communities – unlike, say, cricket, which was enthusiastically adopted by subject peoples in South Asia and the West Indies, despite its British imperial overtones. (The English games of association football and rugby also spread to different and sometimes antagonistic cultures.) In terms of the delay to the 1902 final, it is likely that players who had moved to London in response to stern economic necessity could not easily take time to return home even to play in an All-Ireland final.
The Dungourney captain, James Kelleher, was ruthless both on the field and off it. Although his gallant comrades had stunned the Gaelic games world by winning the Cork county title, he dropped nine of them – more than half the team – and borrowed players from four other clubs: Blackrock and Redmonds in the city, Sarsfield from nearby Glanmire and Carrigtwohill.[5] By contrast, in-fighting in the London camp had a negative effect on team selection, and it seems likely that the compromise squad that played in Cork had few if any opportunities to train together. The upshot was that the final, played on Sunday 11 September 1904, provided a disappointing curtain-raiser for the new stadium: Kelleher's hybrid Cork team notched up 3 goals and sixteen points, while the Londoners failed to trouble the score umpires at all. While Dungourney trumpeted their success as "the greatest victory ever recorded in the annals of G.A.A. for the final tie", the actual play was (at times) less one-sided than the result might suggest. The home side scored most of its points in the first half, falling back into defensive mode as the exiles attempted to counter-attack later in the game. Unfortunately, and perhaps the result of conflicts in their selection process, the Londoners were inaccurate in their pucking, and their assaults on goal all ended in wides. Only one other All-Ireland final, the first, played in 1888, has ever recorded the grim verdict later made notorious by the Eurovision Song contest: nul points. The victors subsequently formally thanked their nine imports for "so substantially aiding the Dungourney men to procure their great victory".[6]
Dungourney represented the county again at the 1907 All-Ireland final, which was played at Dungarvan in June 1908, this time against Kilkenny. Once again, Kelleher adapted his squad, bringing in seven guest players. It proved to be the most thrilling decider in GAA history. Cork narrowly led at half-time, by four goals and two points to Kilkenny's mirror image of two goals and four points (i.e. fourteen points to ten). Early in the second half, the Leinster men stormed back to draw level, and the contest became a high-scoring see-saw. It closed with Kilkenny at three goals and twelve points against Cork's four goals and eight points: the Dungourney hurlers had failed to secure their second All-Ireland title by a single point.[7]
This remarkable concentration of sporting talent in a sparsely populated neighbourhood was driven by James ("Jamesy" or sometimes "Jim") Kelleher, a farmer's son from Clonmult. Born in 1878, he was recognised – in the words of the Dictionary of Irish Biography – as a "hurling prodigy" from the time of his first appearance for Dungourney at the age of fourteen. "In build, speed, stamina, alertness, fieldcraft, anticipation, taken all in all, he was undoubtedly the master." Like Christy Ring, who would supplant him in popular memory as the archetypal hurling hero, he was a man who combined middling height (he was also an accomplished jockey) with enormous physical strength and skill with the hurley. His favourite position was full back, but he could drive and direct the poc fada, the end-to-end shot, to position his team-mates so that they could score – and even, on at least one occasion, bounce the sliotar dramatically over the distant goal to register a point himself. Patsy Barry, in The Cork Accent, recalled Kelleher taking a 'free' thirty yards out. Rather than lifting the sliotar and going for a point, he aimed straight for the goal and was so confident of scoring that he instantly turned round and trotted back to his full-back position for the re-start. His ability to 'read' the field and identify opponents' weak spots made him a particularly effective captain and he was credited with influencing strategic thinking behind the game. "Jamesy Kelleher was the greatest of them all," a 1942 reminiscence insisted. "It was this same Jamesy who brought his own Dungourney hurlers past all opposition and set them up with the great hurling champions of Ireland. ... He was not alone a credit to Cork. He was the glory of all Ireland." Kelleher was ably supported by his vice-captain, "his great friend, strong, rangy Jim Ronayne", who was three years his junior. "A great, fierce, punishing hurler … [h]e was one of the strongest and toughest men ever to take the field for Cork." An opponent paid him a grudging tribute: "When Ronayne stood near the half-line, you could pass him with nothing short of a tank."[8]
Successive census returns provide further detail about the two men, of interest since presumably they, or their families, were responsible for the gift of the altar rail and the plaque in Dungourney church. Of course, they owed their positions in the team primarily to their exceptional skill and fitness, but both men came from families that provided natural leadership in the countryside. The recently available 1926 Free State census recorded that James Kelleher was a late-forties bachelor who was, in effect, managing the 116-acre (47 hectares) farm of his elderly widowed mother.[9] The three successive census returns that are now in the public domain, 1901, 1911 and 1926, also provide useful insights into the survival (and non-revival) of the Irish language. Although James Kelleher was described in 1914 as "the most decent gael in the county", he did not speak Irish.[10] It is noteworthy that both his parents were bilingual, but they evidently chose to rear their children exclusively through English. With such a background, he was probably familiar with many Irish phrases, but it would seem that his enthusiasm for Gaelic games did not impel him to learn to speak the language.[11]
The acreage of James Ronayne's farm at Donickmore, to the east of Clonmult, was not recorded in 1926, but Griffith's Valuation shows a John Ronayne holding a massive 294 acres (119 hectares) there in 1853. The farm was certainly a large enough operation in 1911 for James to employ two resident farm workers. One of them, Edmund Farrissey, then aged 38, was evidently a long-time retainer. Ten years later, he was attacked by a bull, always a hazard on Irish farms. James Ronayne courageously (and at some risk) attempted to rescue him by prodding the angry beast with a pike, but Farrissey died of his injuries.[12]
Like most of the local population (and, almost certainly, all of the Dungourney hurling team), James Ronayne was a Catholic, but his wife Jenny was a member of the Church of Ireland.[13] In 1911, their three small children, two girls and a boy, were all being reared as Catholics. This was the era of Ne Temere, when the Church adopted an inflexible attitude to the spiritual formation of the children of mixed marriages, rejecting the earlier custom that daughters were brought up in their mothers' church while boys followed the faith of their fathers.[14] There was no Irish spoken in the Ronayne family household and, like Kelleher, James Ronayne's enthusiasm for Irish sports did not extend to active support for the language. The 1926 census return noted of his 18-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son: "Read but not speak Irish." A younger boy, aged 11, lacked even that skill.
On the hurling field, the Dungourney team functioned as a ruthless machine. However, there may have been tensions and frictions within the camp: James Kelleher was a tough leader, as he had demonstrated when he dumped team-mates from the two All-Ireland line-ups. He was also what is known in Ireland as a horsey man, the Kelleher farm being large and prosperous enough to support the breeding of racehorses, which he rode himself at National Hunt meetings. But even the best of jockeys can suffer mishaps and, early in 1914, he fell at a point-to-point and broke a collarbone. It is probably no coincidence that his accident was followed by "bickerings" within the Dungourney club.[15] It is likely that some members suggested, and maybe more than merely suggested, that Jamesy Kelleher's accident provided a suitable opportunity for him to hand on the team captaincy. He responded by curtly applying to the GAA County Board for permission to transfer his registration to Midleton. Although he was quickly prevailed upon to withdraw his threat,[16] there may have been other areas of tension locally. In the GAA world, sport and politics were closely interrelated, and never more so than in the tense years that followed the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. James Kelleher was a moderate nationalist, a supporter of the Irish Parliamentary Party. He joined the Irish Volunteers and was elected commander of the Clonmult company in 1915. But the Volunteer movement was pulled apart by conflict between the supporters of John Redmond, the Westminster leader who favoured Irish participation in the war against German militarism, and the advanced republicans who refused to fight for either King or Kaiser. James Kelleher took no part in the 1916 Rising – poor organisation meant that few nationalists outside Dublin even had the option – but the following year, he resigned from the Volunteers because, according to the Dictionary of Irish Biography, he was "unhappy with the radicalisation of the organisation". Thus James Kelleher played no part in, and probably had no advance knowledge of, the events which culminated in the February 1921 ambush at Clonmult – on his doorstep – that left twelve Volunteers dead, one of the bloodiest episodes in the War of Independence. The captain and vice-captain of the great pre-war Dungourney hurling team both fitted the profile of conservative large-scale farmers who might have been predicted to be pro-Treaty and subsequently the backbone of Cumann na nGaedheal and its successor party, Fine Gael. Yet, although James Kelleher continued his well-publicised National Hunt activities, no report seems to indicate that either he or James Ronayne took any part in public life during Free State times.
There are several minor mysteries about the plaque that bears their names in Dungourney parish church. First, I have no idea of its date. James Ronayne died in 1936; James Kelleher in 1943. The lettering might generally suggest a mid-twentieth-century date, but there is some ambiguity in the wording: was the altar rail gifted by their families in memory of Kelleher and Ronayne, or was its presentation a tribute to their team-mates made by the two men themselves, perhaps in James Kelleher's case to draw a line under the disagreement of 1914? Invocations to prayer in Catholic churches usually specify pleas for the welfare of the soul of the beneficiaries. The omission of this familiar formula perhaps suggests that some members of the 1902 and 1907 All-Ireland teams were still alive: sixteen former members of the squad attended James Ronayne's funeral. It may be that more of the story might be revealed from church records or popular memory. It would be pleasant to know more about the origin of the altar rail. Were there perhaps eyebrows raised at the commemorative wording fixed so prominently on the chancel wall? Indeed, it is possible that the altar rail of 2026, a neat, low-positioned divide topped by polished timber, is a post-Vatican II replacement of the original gift. Nonetheless, even with its unresolved questions, the Dungourney plaque represents a vivid example of the interconnection of nationalism, Catholicism and local enthusiasm for Gaelic games.
ENDNOTES Other martinalia essays on east Cork themes include:
"The Castlemartyr bypass: historical roots of a failure in government"
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/442-castlemartyr-bypass
"The Garranjames Land League demonstrations of July 1881: labour, land and sand"
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/445-garranjames-demonstrations-1881
"East Cork's Australian Heritage Trail"
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/170-east-corks-australian-heritage-trail
[1] T. Cadigan, ed., Lewis's Cork… (Wilton, Cork, 1998, ed., cf. 1st ed. 1837), 118-19. Lewis did not bother to describe the nucleus of Dungourney.
[2] P. Barry, The Cork Accent... [1949], 155. A few players came from slightly further afield, e.g. Jerry 'Stonewall' Desmond, who lived between Killeagh and Mogeely. The Dungourney team almost certainly depended upon the bicycle. "They often walked long distances to the railway station on the morning of an important match, and paid their own expenses." (https://clonmultoldschool.ie/memory-lane-11-08-1936/).
[3] Reminiscences of John L. Power, Dublin Leader, 7 March 1942. Although the Dungourney team undoubtedly drew on a very limited pool of talent, it was not true that their squad was limited to the required 17 players: neither vice-captain James Ronayne nor Bill Hennessy, later remembered as a "stonewall backman", played in the county final against Shanballymore in May 1903. Most of that 1903 team were farmers' sons who were presumably long-term local residents, but there may have been some loss to emigration, and there comes a time when a GAA man must hang up his hurley and make way for younger talent. In its heyday, Dungourney even managed to field a second team (Cork Examiner, 25 November 1904). The 1942 tribute is testimony to the Dungourney legend rather than strict fact.
[4] Fans stormed the new ground, damaging the turnstiles. Some climbed on to the roof of a stand which collapsed. A journalist had compared the struggle for tickets at the county final in 1903 to the Black Hole of Calcutta. The Cork Athletic Grounds were later transformed into Páirc Uí Chaoimh (now SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh).
[5] S. Kearns, "Kelleher, James", Dictionary of Irish Biography: https://www.dib.ie/biography/kelleher-james-a4436; Cork Examiner, 22 September 1904. The importance of Gaelic games to Michael Collins during his London decade is discussed by P. Hart, Mick... (New York ed., 2006, cf. 1st ed., London, 2005), 37-50. GAA activities gave him his first experience of both administration and factional politics.
[6] Dublin Evening Telegraph, 17 September; Cork Examiner, 22 September 1904.
[7] Widely reported, e.g. Kilkenny Moderator, 24 June 1908.
[8] Dublin Leader, 7 March 1942; Barry, The Cork Accent, 155-6. 'Rangy' means thin with long limbs. The Dictionary of Irish Biography noted that James Kelleher was "regarded by his contemporaries as the greatest hurler of his generation". His memory has been to a considerable extent overlain by the subsequent legend of another Cork giant, Christy Ring: John A. Murphy, "Ring, Christy", Dictionary of Irish Biography: https://www.dib.ie/biography/ring-christy-a7685.
[9] "Assisting on Mother's Farm" was the entry next to James Kelleher's name. The 1926 census recorded him as aged 44: in fact, he was 48. This may have been an enumerator's error, but under-declaration of age was a common practice, e.g. for labourers because they did not wish potential employers to think they were too old to work, but perhaps for James Kelleher because he was still active in horse racing and Gaelic games. He married the next year and moved to his own property at nearby Ballyard. The Schools Collection of the National Folklore Collection has a tribute to him from Michael Fitzgerald of Ballynoe, Co. Waterford, submitted by Lily Fitzgerald in the late 1930s, which refers to Kelleher's point-to-point successes: https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4921847/4896345.
[10] Cork Free Press, 8 April 1914.
[11] I suspect that Irish was not much used in the GAA in James Kelleher's time: e.g. the first use of 'sliotar' that I have traced in a report of a hurling match appeared in Leinster Leader, 6 February 1932. "Killed by Hurling Ball" was the headline reporting a fatal accident to a Cork boy in 1911: Limerick Echo, 27 June 1911. An advertisement for "Hurling Balls" in the Dublin Leader, 16 May 1914, urged: "If you want to taste the real and unbounded delights of the grand old game use my famous emerald hide long-driving Balls made by experienced hurlers, 3/3 each. Ladies or Boys size, 2/8. Special terms Schools and Colleges." A contributor to the Waterford Evening News (12 September 1912) argued that "the Language Movement would receive a great impetus in the Cork district if a larger proportion of Gaelic Leaguers were in the forefront of the athletic arena. If there is one thing more than another calculated to hamper the progress of Irish-Ireland concerns it is the tendency to specialise: the bulk of our G.A.A. men do not touch the Gaelic League – not through any hostility, I believe, but on account of some species of mental torpor with the result that we find the feet developed at the expense of the head. Although the leading men in the Council of the G.A.A. are Gaelic Leaguers, still the majority of the League's brainy men eschew athletics and devote all their time to development of the intellect. Now, I think the great need of the present time is not so much the turning of Gaelic Leaguers into champion hurlers, but getting the devotees of the language movement into touch with G.A.A. matters by inducing them to become members of hurling clubs." More widely, the writer was troubled by the low intensity of the relationship between Gaelic games and consciousness of Irish nationality. "A great number of our hurlers and followers of our national pastimes have, I fear, very little conception of the first principles of the Gaelic Athletic Association." However, one club had proved a shining exception. "The famous Dungourney hurling team recently refused to play a championship match at a sports field in the County Cork where foreign games are played, and the Cork County Board had to arrange another venue." But, even in patriotic Dungourney, Irish nationalism and Irish language did not go hand-in-hand.
[12] Cork Constitution, 19 August 1921. James Ronayne's popularity is clear from the Cork Examiner obituary at his death in 1936, reprinted in https://clonmultoldschool.ie/memory-lane-11-08-1936/.
[13] In 1910, the Dungourney club's delegate to the GAA's Cork County Board proudly described it as "a good Gaelic, Catholic and Irish body", neatly interweaving all three elements of identity. The players were also all teetotallers. Southern Star, 12 February 1910. Between 1909 and 1914, Dungourney played several exhibition matches as part of fund-raising campaigns for the new church at Mogeely and the spire at Midleton parish church. The 1911 census recorded 20 Protestants among the 695 inhabitants of the civil parish of Dungourney. Jenny Ronayne was still returned as C of I in 1926, and presumably did not convert. The 1926 census recorded her birthplace as "Co. Cork, Dromdiah". This suggests that she was connected with the Big House, Dromdihy, near Killeagh, although not necessarily with the landowning family. The children's Catholic upbringing was more than merely nominal: one daughter became a nun.
[14] But Ne Temere was issued in 1907, and the first of the Ronayne children was born in 1906.
[15] Irish Field, 14 February: Evening Echo (Cork), 25 April 1914. Christy Ring also fell out with his local club, Cloyne, and did transfer to Glen Rovers in Cork city.
[16] Evening Echo, 22 April 1914. In a statement made in 1947 to the Bureau of Military History, William Kent of Castlelyons, a member of the family that made an isolated stand for the Republic in 1916, recalled how his brothers Thomas (executed in 1916) and David had attempted to discourage men from joining the British Army during the early stages of First World War. On one occasion, "[t]hey called a meeting at Clonmult and got the famous Clonmult hurlers to march to the village of Dungourney where a British recruiting meeting was being held," in an attempt to disrupt the proceedings. Thirty years had obviously blurred the memory of the Dungourney team's dominance (and William, who did not share his brothers' advanced views, evidently was not present), but the core is evidence of support for the Volunteers within the club. It would have been difficult to have mustered hurlers in Clonmult without involving James Kelleher. Another account (also from 1947) dates the episode to November 1915, and states that the Dungourney company of the Volunteers was formed later that day. At that time, there were few such units in east Cork. The Dungourney men took part in the mobilisation on Easter Sunday 1916 that concentrated Volunteer forces in the Macroom area in the expectation of a call to arms that day. When no explicit instructions were received in the contradictory messages from Dublin, local commanders concluded that plans for an insurrection had been abandoned. The Dungourney contingent was sent back to Cork by train and presumably eventually returned home, probably exhausted and almost certainly soaking wet (the weather was foul, and it is likely that they reached the city too late to catch the last train to Mogeely). When Pearse's message ("We start at noon today") arrived in Cork on the morning of Easter Monday, local commanders were "bewildered" and, in any case, unable to reassemble their units. F. O'Donoghue, ed., Rebel Cork's Fighting Story (Tralee, 1947), 34; F. O'Donoghue, "The Irish Vounteers in Cork 1913-1916", Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, lxxi (1966), 41-48, esp. 45.