HONour The Parish

Pride before the fall is what we are told.

What happens when local pride meets 
ancient tradition and modern norms are abandoned 
in the search for a temporary glory.

They didn’t just train harder.
They fed something.
And it worked.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:34

It took me a while to piece this one together, a bit of a Colombo job. Manny's a night I spent in the high stool trying to draw it out of lads who had taken the Ash Mafia's omerta, and were more than happy to take the secrets of that thing of theirs to the grave. You have to be careful with these three letter organizations. They all have a code, and they all have the notion that operational secrecy is key, often on pain of exile, or worse. Now there were a few different yarns around it, the usual crack of stories added to and stories taken away from it. But I'm fairly sure I have it straight now. It all began in a place called Ballyderglin, the kind of postcard Midlands parish you'd see in any documentary showcasing rural life, or what you'd imagine the rural life of that part of the country to be like. It must have been what Dev had in mind when he had visions or more like delusions of dancing at the crossroads and sturdy youths who could eat their weight in cabbage and pork. It began with a bit of a kickoff over a wind turbine development. It was on the edge of one of the old commercial bogs that dot that part of the country. A lad called O'Cassiday was fighting toot and nail to stop three or four of them being put in the edge of a strip of bog that he was supposed to have made out was a cornerstone of local folklore, an archaeological site of UNESCO importance, and at one point I'm told he would probably have sworn on his oath that it was where the arc came to rest after the flood. Not unusual, you might say, as these things always get a certain amount of the locals riled up, with talks of subsonic vibrations and balls of ice being flung into the stratosphere off the edges of what they call the windmill's blade. But in this case there was no real opposition, no protests, no signs on telegraph calls, and no committees of objectors gathering in co-local halls to shout at the man from Dublin. The only voice of opposition crying out from the wilderness was Ocasity. Eventually, and inevitably, the machines moved in, and within a day the body was pulled up. A young lad of about twenty five or six whose head was caved in with a hurl sometime in the late fifties. He'd long been thought of having fled to Australia after getting a young one in a bit of bother, and given the times as they were, the whole thing was never spoken of or questioned all that much. Not long after O'Cassade was the first man they pulled in, and after a day or two of fairly heavy questioning, he gave up the whole lot. In his day he was well able to take a hit, but the mind is a funny thing, and it can give way quicker than a shoulder if the right pressure is applied. You see, back in the forties and early fifties, Bally Durgle was a big name in club hurling. Did bagged in all Ireland and were no minnows in any encounter. If you saw that county's team line out, you could be sure there were three or four of the ballet boys in it. But times were tough in the good old days, and over the course of the decade, a lot of that team went to England or America for work. By the end of the 50s they were well hollowed out, with only young lads from the brothers making up a team that on a good day had the Bear 15 with two on the sideline. I suppose that's what set the whole thing off in a way. In 58 they were absolutely hammered on a fine Sunday evening by their neighbours from Ratgarrow. A very physical match, even in the days before Helmets and Mount Guards, where it seemed as if the boys of Bally were put to the sword twenty minutes in by the men of Ratgarrow. A true cricket score, as one old timer recalled, had never seen the likes of it. Clockwork Culligan, as they called him after that, put point after point over for Garrow, and when Bally came streaming up the pitch to answer, they were cut down without mercy. Bloodied and bruised, they were mocked and laughed at from every stand and sideline. The majority of their own had left at half time to get on the road with the light. Even their usually gallant opponents on the pitch couldn't help but sneer from the moment the final whistle blew. Now, in fairness to them, true it all they tried to remain above it, but even a team used to as many defeats, false stones, corners turned, and fresh starts as this lot had only one thought by the end of the day. Get to the bus and get on the road. Get the business of putting this behind them underway and get inevitable spit-ridden bollocking from O'Cassade over with. It would have remained a footnote, but not a particularly important day in the wider history of the sport, if not for the fact that as I left the grounds, an unknown Rat Garra supporter shouted at their backs, you'll have to toss a bull in to turn it around. That was all it took. A play was set in motion at that moment, a long poke into the darkness, whose importance wouldn't get the full aftermatch treatment for at least half a century. Sitting in a back-breaking metal frame seat in the back of that old bus, half sick from diesel fumes and fag smoke as it rattled over rough roads and humpbacked bridges, it was that off-the-cuff comment, a bit of harmless banter to rub salt on the wound, that gave O'Cassity the notion, a strange, irrational notion, more of a memory and a feeling than an idea, but nonetheless an idea that was planted, and whose roots began to search his mind for the drill to grow out of. He recalled his grandfather telling him the old Pishogs of the townland, tales of lads throwing bones against doors in the dead of night, and turnips being left on piers to send the right message to a disagreeable neighbour. But also that in the olden times, before anyone knew right from wrong, and when fairies and the great heroes of legend walked the same paths day and night through thick forests, the Parisher tribe would on occasion, if the need arose, toss in a bull. The story went that if the prize bull of the townland was slaughtered at the right spot, apparently now known as the corner field on the edge of the bog, good luck and prosperity would follow for a decade, and that it might even carry on for a few years past that. But the Min and Cassoks had put it into this practice some time before the First War, and had warned that only observance and prayer would ensure that God's light would shine on the parrot. Despite or even in spite of this, the bogs have always held the power over people in this part of the world. They preserved what died and were quick to put manners in what lived if they were too carefree when crossing. Even up until recent times, the bog was central to a type of ritual. Each day men would gather in the anointed spot and donning appropriate garb would repeat a series of checks and statements. Ledgers and worksheets were produced and pledges and signatures administered. The final sacrament was the dispensing of the fuel that gave life to the great cutting machines who skimmed the wet black bounty of sod off the bog so that it might be burnt as warmed. Its ice stinging incense drifting up streets and across fields throughout the country. For Bally that ritual too had been ended, not by the aforementioned faithful, but by the most modern of priests in his flowing white lab coat with clipboard in hand, the scientist. It had been said that no parish had weathered the hunger as well as Bally Durglin. When the spuds were black in the ground up and down the county and country, Bally had a final harvest that carried him through that first bleak year. Berries and apple trees were bountiful and rough mountain haggards where none should grow, and even those who went to the poor house stayed strong and came back, ready to turn the land once the blight had passed. Drifting back to his present from the long days sat at his grandfather's knee in the warm glow of an open heart. O'Cassidy looked up in a moment of contemplation, and through the smoke and the jangling sounds of the trebly wireless churning out the hits of the day. He saw young Connell right up front. His tall, strong stature and head of thick blonde hair were the envy of many a surly farm lad, and he had no problem crossing the floor at the parish hall. He had carried the team or at least made the scores look respectable for nearly two years. He put points over the bar and full backs under his boot, a battering ram of a lad, who it was said was as fast as a hare and as strong as a bull.