Pub Guide
The Celtic Times
by Daniel McCarthyRSS 
Recent Posts
- From the Chapel Gates of Cooraclare to the plot to seize America - the story of Brigadier General Martin Meaney
- Brian Boru, King of the Gaels, and Imperatoris Scotorum
- Happy Birthday to the Great Dalcassian, Muhammad Ali , now lets do away with the lip service - VIDEO
- Where Atlantis met the Cliffs of Moher – John Philip Holland the inventor of the submarine
- 'Gentlemen, you have a country' - Thomas Davis, a real Irish president
Archives
From the Chapel Gates of Cooraclare to the plot to seize America - the story of Brigadier General Martin Meaney
Happy Birthday to the Great Dalcassian, Muhammad Ali , now lets do away with the lip service - VIDEO
Exiled Gaels and sporting rebels - Exotic stories of Gaelic and indigenous games
Yet within the quilted patchwork of these indigenous games and memories, seldom is noticed a binding thread, which, when unraveled, takes you to the essence of our sporting traditions. Buried within the modern lore of our national games lay exotic histories which span across the world, from Batman’s Hill in Melbourne and the hallowed walls of Jerusalem to the Bocas Juniors of Diego Maradona in Buenos Aires; from the glittering floodlit nigh time glory of nineteenth century Madison Square Gardens experienced by once starving Irish peasants to the Parisian playing fields of the French Sun King.
One word leaps consistently from these obscured gems of Irish history amidst the tales of valour, struggle and joy – indomitable. Though defeat and victory may define the two sides of a sporting coin, these games, to borrow an iconic quote from an iconic Scouse sporting figure of another code, weren’t about life and death – they were much more than that.
In the footsteps of saints, scholars and sinners - A Celtic camino
Confessio Patricus, the written confessions of St Patrick, have a special resonance today, in this the age of damning reports from Raphoe to Cloyne on an infected church in an era of overwhelmingly disinterested, disconnected younger generations and demoralized older ones.
Patrick apparently was an unbecoming upstart figure to his clerical peers in the mid fifth century, and the Confessio was all about setting the record straight from his own perspective. A fifth century tribunal response, if you like, where the once enslaved Briton shepherd boy of part Roman stock (some sources indicate Kilpatrick, near Glasgow was his birthplace) sets down in his own hand the circumstances that led to his mission to Ireland and how he went about answering the call.
Indeed Dáibhí Ó Croinín a superb lecturer who could entice 9am attendances on hazy Friday mornings in Galway, quipped that Patrick, must have been the only citizen of the Roman empire to have been made a slave and live to tell the tale. It is also a strongly held viewpoint by Ó Croinín and prominent scholars of this period that Patrick the man, arrived into an Ireland that already had embryonic Christian communities and that aspects of these early missions are later combined within the persona of Patrick.
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What presidents, poets and celebrities say about the Irish
The Orange Sash and the clash of the ash - The Munster Boys of Melbourne, 12th July 1843-44
-The Munster Boys of Melbourne, 12th July 1843-44
The Munster Clans from far and near,
Celtic Games of Our Fathers - From Setanta to Rory McIlroy
Historians, though uncertain about exact chronologies, generally testify to the both the antiquity and commonality of the ball and stick games of the Irish and the Scots. The above legend of the Queen Sgáthach and the origins of camán in Scotland, quoted by my good friend, Hugh Dan MacLennan, the Mícéal Ó Muircheartaigh of Scotland, captures through metaphor the common heritage of the Irish and Scottish national games. ‘The game of camanachd’, MacLennan continues, ‘is peculiar to the Celts of Scotland and Ireland - peculiar that is to say, to the old Scottish or Gaelic-speaking people’. Shinty - iomain or camanachd in Scottish Gaelig - was introduced along with Christianity and the Gaelic language to Scotland around 1500 years ago by Irish missionaries. It is noteworthy that Saint Colmcille is believed to have arrived in Scotland as a result of a little local difficulty at an Irish hurling match! Born in c.521 A.D. in Donegal, Colmcille is actually the first historical person to be referenced in connection with the ancient game.
Presidential tidings and flying the flag for Ireland
It is good to learn of the recent news that one of the two original tricolors unfurled at the GPO buildings during the 1916 Easter Rising is now in the good hands of the folk at the American Irish Historical Society. Some comment has been raised about such a historically precious artifact, so central to the narrative of Irish independence, belonging on Irish soil, but to raise such heckles is to be totally oblivious to the point that Irish America was also at the heart of this independence movement.
That the American Irish Historical Society, with its traditional warm welcome and its dedication to the motto of its founding patrons, “That the world may know” now hosts the flag is entirely appropriate. The Society’s mission since the time of Teddy Roosevelt’s involvement and before to Thomas Hamilton Murray in the 1880s has been to bring to light the history of the Irish people. The history of the Irish people, with all of its complexities and varying shades of green, has never been exclusive to mere national boundaries - a 70 million diaspora can bear witness to this.
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