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The Celtic Times:
Michael Cusack's Gaelic Games Newspaper 1887
The Irish Times
12th July 2003
The Celtic Times:
Michael Cusack’s Gaelic Games Newspaper 1887
An Irishman’s Diary by Arthur Quinlan
A magnificent 350-page facsimile edition
of The Celtic Times, the short-lived weekly newspaper published by Michael
Cusack, founder of the GAA, is being launched in Killarney this weekend
on the occasion of the Munster football final between Kerry and Limerick.
It has been produced by Clasp Press at the Clare County Library headquarters
in Ennis.
Cusack produced the first issue of the
paper in January 1887, about six months after his dismissal from the association
which he had founded in 1884. In his introduction to the new facsimile
edition, Marcus de Búrca, barrister, historian of the GAA and biographer
of Cusack, says Cusack believed his dismissal stemmed from a disagreement
on a fundamental point of policy. “It was inevitable therefore,
that he would use the editorial columns of The Celtic Times to try to
influence GAA policy.”
But The Celtic Times, devoted to “native
games”, athletics and Irish culture generally, as well as serving
as a vehicle for Cusack’s attacks on the leadership of the GAA,
survived for only a year and it was long believed that all trace of it
had been lost. In a foreword to the facsimile edition, Breandán
Mac Lua, a Clare-born journalist now living in Windsor, England, who founded
The Irish Post in 1970, tells the extraordinary story of how he came into
possession of what is believed to be Michael Cusack’s own publisher’s
file of the paper.
During an English literature lecture
which Mr Mac Lua attended at University College, Dublin, Prof Roger McHugh
stated that The Celtic Times was extinct. Not a single copy was to be
found in any archive or university library, and not even in the National
Library in Dublin.
Nearly a decade later, in 1969, Mr Mac
Lua received a message from the late Tommy Moore, a Kilkenny man from
Castlecomer, who ran a well known GAA public house in Cathedral Street,
Dublin. Moore was a legendary GAA figure who as a young man won senior
All-Ireland hurling medals with Dublin in 1917 and 1920. He was also on
the Dublin team that lost the 1919 and 1921 finals and for 40 years he
had been chairman and president of the Faughs hurling club.
When the young Clare man arrived next
day Tommy was behind the bar. He nodded his head approvingly and said,
“I liked your book The Steadfast Rule and I want you to have this.”
With that, Mac Lua says, “he reached under the counter and handed
me a large brown paper parcel. He did not say what it was nor did I ask.”
Mr Mac Lua then drove home to Rathfarnham
where he lived with his wife, Maeve, and his young family and opened up
the parcel on the kitchen table. “I was in possession of the complete
file of The Celtic Times – every issue, it would appear. I was overwhelmed.
It was as if I had been appointed the guardian of the Holy Grail.”
Mr Mac Lua recalled how Tommy Moore
was one of a small group of friends who clubbed together to commission
Hopkins & Hopkins, the Dublin silversmiths, to produce a trophy modelled
on the Ardagh Chalice to commemorate Sam Maguire, who died in the mid-1920s.
This is still the All-Ireland football trophy.
“Tommy died in 1973 and not a
word had been spoken to anyone, nor did I during the 20 years while I
minded the file of The Celtic Times,” says Mr Mac Lua. One evening
over dinner in London he told his secret to his old friend, the late Breandán
Ó hEither, whom he allowed to study the file. That was provided
he did not disclose where it was and who was minding it. After taking
notes for an article for The Irish Times, Ó hEither persuaded Mac
Lua that he “could not be guardian forever”.
Meanwhile Marcus de Búrca, who
was writing his biography of Cusack, asked if he could study the file.
Mac Lua knew his father, Padraig de Búrca, SC, who was for many
years honorary legal advisor to the central council of the GAA. The National
Library and the Clare County Library also both wanted to have the file.
The custodian, being, like Cusack, a native of “the Rocky Burren
of North Clare”, was aware of the innovative work achieved by Noel
Crowley, chief county librarian. He decided that Cusack would have liked
Clare to be the final home of The Celtic Times.
The publication proved a financial disaster
for Cusack. He naturally got no co-operation from the GAA or from rival
newspapers including The Freeman’s Journal, and had difficulty in
getting reports of events. Circulation had dropped from 20,000 a week
to less than half that before he finally ceased production in January
1888. It was reported that in a final, desperate effort Cusack sold his
watch to raise funds for the last edition.
Always a colourful and controversial
character, Cusack caught the imagination of James Joyce. He is depicted
as The Citizen in Ulysses and is named in Portrait of an Artist and twice
in Finnegans Wake. He died on a Dublin Street in 1906 at the age of 59.
Fittingly, the Munster branch of the
GAA provided financial assistance to the facsimile production of The Celtic
Times, which is a Clare Local Studies Project and a FÁS Community
Response.
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