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ABSTRACT
The late nineteenth century saw Irish children being exposed to formal sport in an unprecedented fashion. This era coincided with Ireland’s so-called Gaelic Revival and the emergence of a virulent nationalism that helped fuel the Irish Revolutionary period which followed. Yet little research has been conducted on how nationalists used sport in their efforts to entice children into their campaigns for Ireland’s cultural and political independence. This study examines the part which sport, particularly Gaelic games, played in attempts to inspire devotion to the ideal of an Irish-Ireland among the nation’s children. It explores the efforts to promote native sports as the games of choice for children across the school grounds and playing fields of Ireland and the influence of nationalist media propaganda in this endeavour. Finally, it considers the role of sport in the training and physical culture of an array of Irish youth movements which arose at this time.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. See Thompson and Keenan, Treasure Islands; MacLellan and Mauger, Growing Pains; Luddy and Smiths, Children, Childhood and Irish Society; Cox and Riordan, Adolescence in Modern Irish History; and Boylan and Gallagher, Constructions of the Irish Child.
2. For more information visit https://irishchildhood.wordpress.com and http://museumofchildhood.ie.
3. See Hay, “This Treasured Island”; Hay, “The Propaganda of Na Fianna Éireann”; Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots; Walsh, Boy Republic.
4. Holt, Sport and the British, 141.
5. Hunt, Sport and Society in Victorian Ireland, 45.
6. See note 4 above.
7. Cronin, Sport and Nationalism, 140.
8. J.A. Mangan defined athleticism as “Physical exercise […] taken, considerably and compulsorily, in the sincere belief […] that it was a highly effective means of inculcating valuable instrumental and impressive educational goals”: Mangan, Athleticism, 9.
9. For an overview of the emergence of the cult of athleticism in the British school system see Gathorne-Hardy, The Public School Phenomenon, 145–154; Holt, Sport and the British, 74–86; and Mangan, Athleticism, 13–28.
10. Tranter, Sport and Society, 58; and Holt, Sport and the British, 94.
11. The extent to which the ideology of athleticism in Irish schools led to the promotion and popular appeal of modern sport in Ireland at this time has been keenly debated. See Finn, “Trinity Mysteries”; Cronin “Trinity Mysteries”; Hickey, “Evolution of Athleticism”.
12. Hickey, “Evolution of Athleticism,” 1403. In addition, Ireland had 8,649 national primary schools. 1911 Census of Ireland, 42/58.
13. Pašeta, Before the Revolution, 40; Finn, “Trinity Mysteries,” 2264; O’Neill, Catholics of Consequence, 51–53. In Ireland the same rhetoric was used to justify the integral place of sport in these elite institutions. For example, the Castleknock College Chronicle asked: “Is it not in their school games boys must learn that manliness, energy, enthusiasm and ingeniousness which they must afterwards show in the battle of life?”: Castleknock Chronicle (June, 1890), cited in Hickey, “Athleticism,” 1398.
14. Rouse, Sport and Ireland, 215.
15. Flanagan, “Western Ocean,” 43.
16. Mandle, The GAA, 5.
17. Cronin, Duncan and Rouse, A People’s History, 19.
18. Finn, “Trinity Mysteries,” 2271. The institution was set up specifically to tutor students wishing to pass the civil service examination.
19. Celtic Times, May 14 1887.
20. Devlin, “The Schools League,” 14.
21. Flanagan, “Western Ocean,” 43.
22. Devlin, Our Native Games, 52.
23. Rouse, “Why the GAA was Founded,” 81.
24. Pašeta, Before the Revolution, 40.
25. The Christian Brothers were a Catholic lay order founded in 1803 whose mission was to serve the poor, principally by supplying an education to young boys. By 1911, they operated fifty-three secondary schools across Ireland. Flanagan, “ Western Ocean,” 43; 1911 Census of Ireland, 56.
26. Hutchinson, Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism, 136.
27. Flanagan, “Western Ocean,” 44.
28. Coldrey, Faith and Fatherland, 113.
29. For a detailed discussion of the hostility between the Catholic Church and the early GAA see McElligott, Forging a Kingdom, 84–100.
30. McAnallen, The Cups That Cheered, 16. The Gaelic League strove to preserve and revive the use of the Irish language as part of a larger crusade to reverse the Anglicisation of Irish life and help transform Irish society into a populist Gaelic culture: McMahon, Grand Opportunity, 2; and Hutchinson, Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism, 119.
31. Kerry Sentinel, May 17 1905; and O’Callaghan, Rugby in Munster, 152.
32. Coldrey, Faith and Fatherland, 192. The League was open to teams of boys aged between 12 and 17. In 1917, plans to establish an under 12’s league competition were begun: Our Boys, November 1917.
33. The Dublin Schools League also had a special cup which was presented to the team “which makes the best endeavour to spread the use of our native tongue on the field of play and in the club-rooms”. Our Boys: November 1917.
34. O’Sullivan, Story of the GAA, 185.
35. De Búrca, “Irish Colleges,” 74. The meeting was chaired by Reverend John Doody, the president of the prestigious St Kiernan’s College, Kilkenny. Patrick Pearse, representing his own Scoil Éanna, was appointed vice-chairman of the Council.
36. Nic Congáil, “Gaelic Feminism,” 169.
37. Hargreaves, Sporting Females, 45.
38. For example, the Irish Ladies Hockey Union was formed in 1894: Nic Congáil, “Gaelic Feminism,” 170.
39. Fitzpatrick, Rouse and McAnallen, “The Freedom of the Field,” 124.
40. Nic Congáil, “Gaelic Feminism,” 179. Camogie also became part of the curriculum of St. Ita’s school, a short-lived girls school founded by Patrick Pearse in 1911 and modelled on Scoil Éanna: Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots, 20.
41. Kerryman, June 19 1915.
42. Indeed the Royal Irish Constabulary, always wary of any overtly nationalist organisation which appeared in Ireland, had noted in their intelligence reports the, perhaps unsurprising, close bond between the Gaelic League and the GAA, with one “educating the mind” while the other trained “the body”: National Archives of Ireland, Crime District Special Branch: Inspector General and County Inspector Reports, Box 2, 24242/S, March 12 1901.
43. In reality, “foreign games” meant specifically the British sports of soccer, rugby, cricket and hockey, which were now off limits to GAA members. See Rouse, “The GAA Ban on Foreign Games,” 334.
44. De Búrca, The GAA, 71. In Devlin’s history of the GAA he insisted that the leaning of Irish men towards imported games was simply “the desire, born of serfdom and all its venalities, to ape and pose as a superior caste”: Devlin, Native Games, 65.
45. Anglo-Celt, November 28 1908.
46. Anglo-Celt, December 12 1908.
47. “West Briton” was a derogatory term used to describe an Irish person who imitated British culture and fashions. The term came to prominence within the pages of the influential nationalist newspaper, The Leader, edited by D.P. Moran: Hutchinson, Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism, 119.
48. Anglo-Celt, 26 December 1908. Sasanach is the Irish for an English person.
49. De Búrca, “Irish Colleges,” 72–73, 76.
50. Pašeta, Before the Revolution, 44.
51. Croke Park Archive, Annual Congress Minutes 1911–1927: April 16 1911.
52. Gaelic Athlete, September 13 1913.
53. Walsh, Recollections of a Rebel, 17.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. Coldrey, Faith and Fatherland, 193.
57. Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots, 34.
58. Scoil Éanna Prospectus,1910.
59. Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots, 113.
60. Ibid., 79–82.
61. In the earliest literary references to hurling, it is the sons of kings and other nobles who play the game: Ó Maolfabhail, “Hurling,” 154.
62. Quoted in Walsh, Boy Republic, 134.
63. An Macaomh, Christmas 1909. In 1910 the school’s senior hurling and football teams reached the finals of the Dublin Schools Championship, a remarkable achievement for a school established less than two years before.
64. An Macaomh, Christmas 1910.
65. Andrews, Dublin Made Me, 43.
66. See note 64 above.
67. Bean na hÉireann, July 1909.
68. Hay, “Children and the Irish Cultural Revival,” 6.
69. Hobson, Ireland, 15.
70. O’Neill, “Children, Childhood and Irish Society,” 183–184; and Condon, “The Patriotic Children’s Treat,” 176.
71. Hay, “This Treasured Island,” 36.
72. See Fitzpatrick, “Knowledge, Belief and the Irish Revolution”; and Fitzpatrick, “The Futility of History.”
73. Hay, “Children and the Irish Cultural Revival,” 9.
74. Anglo-Celt, November 28 1908.
75. Nic Congáil, “Irish Fireside Club,” 92.
76. Ibid., 99.
77. Irish Freedom was a monthly paper produced by the IRB.
78. Irish Freedom, February 1913.
79. Flanagan, Western Ocean, 45.
80. Ibid., 46–47.
81. One example was The Story of Cúchulainn: The Boy-Hero of Ancient Ireland which appeared as a regular serial throughout the autumn of 1916. See Our Boys, September 1916.
82. Our Boys, April 1917.
83. Our Boys, November 1917.
84. Our Boys, November 1917, December 1917.
85. Power, “Boys’ Brigade in Ireland,” 41.
86. Falconer, Dublin Charities, 247.
87. Falconer, Dublin Charities, 248. Like the Boys’ Brigade, it was open to children aged 10–17 years and had an estimated membership of nearly 800 by 1902.
88. Freeman’s Journal, September 19 1902.
89. Fitzpatrick, “Militarism in Ireland,” 382–383. Internationally, one of the most famous examples of this phenomenon was Robert Baden-Powell’s Boy Scout movement.
90. There was, perhaps naturally, a degree of animosity between the nationalist Fianna and the imperialistic Baden-Powell Boy Scouts. In Ballybunion, Co. Kerry, the local companies of the Fianna and Scouts were embroiled in a street brawl in 1914. The Fianna boys won and threatened the Scouts never to appear out in public again, after which their company disbanded. Bureau of Military History Interviews (BMH), WS, 1212: William McCabe, p. 2.
91. Hobson, Ireland, 3.
92. Hobson, Ireland, 14.
93. BMH, WS 82: Bulmer Hobson, 1.
94. Ibid.
95. The organisation’s name came from the legendary company of warriors headed by Fionn Mac Cumhail and each club took the name of one of its members. BMH, WS 31: Bulmer Hobson, 1.
96. United Irishman, January 24 1903, cited in Hay, Bulmer Hobson, 28.
97. BMH, WS, 591: Eamon Martin, 2; Hay, “The Foundation of Na Fianna Éireann,” 53.
98. Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots, 123. Na Fianna Éireann was the first nationalist organisation to begin open military training in Ireland and its members would soon become a byword for republican purity: Townshend, The Republic, 317.
99. Nationalist and Leinster Times, October 10 1914.
100. Bean na hÉireann, September 1909.
101. Hay, “Scouting for Rebels,” 279.
102. Fianna Handbook, 6; and Nationalist and Leinster Times, October 10 1914.
103. Eamon Martin remembers how “special attention” was given to the study of Irish and that officers regularly attended Irish classes given by Patrick Pearse. BMH, WS 591: Eamon Martin, 4.
104. Fianna Handbook, 153.
105. Hay, “Irish Cultural Revival,” 11–12.
106. Fianna Handbook, 5.
107. Nationalist and Leinster Times, October 10 1914. Gaelic sports were reported to be a prominent feature of an early three-day training camp which the Fianna held outside Dublin in August 1910: Bean na hÉireann, September 1910.
108. Bean na hÉireann, October 1910.
109. Irish Volunteer, February 14 14 March 1914 1914.
110. BMH, WS 31: Bulmer Hobson, 5; Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots, 126.
111. Hay, Bulmer Hobson, 123.
112. BMH, WS 32: Garry Holohan, 58–59.
113. A letter writer to the Irish Independent in June 1913 openly wondered why any son of a nationalist would join the Baden-Powell Boy Scouts, a known “recruiting ground for England’s Army and Navy”, given the nationalist alternatives now available. He went on to list six such organisations – the Irish National Guard, Na Fianna Éireann, Macraidh na Éireann, Clan Colm Boys Scouts and the Hibernian Boys’ Brigade. Reprinted in the Kerry Weekly Reporter, June 21 1913.
114. See Freeman’s Journal, December 13 1911. The AOH was a Catholic nationalist fraternal society that spread to Ireland from Irish-American communities in the years surrounding 1900. It was closely aligned to the Irish Parliamentary Party and became a major influence in their Home Rule movement. McCluskey, “Make Way for the Molly Maguires,” 33.
115. Freeman’s Journal, December 13 1911.
116. Ibid.
117. Freeman’s Journal, September 14 13 May 1912 23 November 1913 21 May 1914 16 October 1915 1915; Meath Chronicle, September 19 1914.
118. Freeman’s Journal, December 13 26 February 1911 1912.
119. Freeman’s Journal, May 22 1913.
120. Hay, “Scouting for Rebels,” 271.
121. Mary Chadwick claimed to have been instrumental for this development and increasingly the Clann na Gael Girl Scouts morphed into a female version of the Fianna. Military Service Pension Collection, MSP 34, REF 20098, Mary Chadwick: sworn statement made before the Advisory Committee, 23 February 1937; BMH, WS, 934: Mary McLaughlin.
122. The Hibernian, July 17 1915.
123. Belfast News-Letter, March 27 1919.
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