Setting afloat the Celtic

 

 

Setting afloat the Celtic

He crossed the empty hall with deliberate purpose, each measured footfall striking the boards and returning to him in a hollow echo. For now, it was a cavern of stillness, a place suspended between intent and uproar; but he knew well that within the hour it would swell with bodies and cigarette smoke, with persuasion sharpened into argument, with the restless friction of men convinced they were right. Hibernian and Dundee Harp had demonstrated that they could attract a good crowd to watch their charity games. The Sacred Heart School had already served over 50,000 meals to children and in doing so had boosted attendance considerably. He knew if his people were to climb out of poverty then education had a vital role to play. The time had come for the Irish of Glasgow to have their own football club.

The name was chosen. The course laid. Yet certainty, he knew, was a private luxury. Tonight it would be tested against the will of others—against those who would come pressing for a Glasgow Hibernians, a shadow cast in imitation of Edinburgh’s pride. They would speak of loyalty, of tradition, of the comfort of a borrowed identity. But he wanted none of it. If a club were to be born here, it would stand on its own feet, answer to its own name, and grow from the soil beneath it rather than cling to another city’s roots. At the back of the hall, along East Rose Street, he reached the small room set aside for him. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, shutting out the echo of the passage. Here, at least, there would be order.

He drew up a chair and set pen to paper, the scratch of the nib breaking the silence. Line by line, he began to shape the club’s purpose—not merely a name, but a declaration, something that could be spoken aloud and carry weight enough to steady a room divided. When he read it that night, he would not be arguing; he would be offering something whole, something certain. Outside, the hall waited. Soon it would be filled with voices. But for now, there was only ink, and intention, and the quiet conviction of a man determined to begin something that belonged, unmistakably, to itself.

As he moved towards his desk, he caught a glimpse of himself in the dusty, wooden-framed mirror by the window. He looked old and tired. The years of toil in Glasgow’s east end had taken their toll. He allowed himself a small smile and sat at his desk. He picked up his pen and continued to write the circular he had started earlier that day…

‘The above club was formed in November 1887 by a number of the Catholics of the East End of the City. The main objective of the club is to supply the East End conferences of the St. Vincent De Paul Society with funds for the maintenance of the Dinner Tables of our needy children in the Missions of St Mary’s, Sacred Heart, and St. Michael’s. Many cases of sheer poverty are left unaided through lack of means. It is therefore with this principle object that we have set afloat the Celtic, and we invite you as one of our ever-ready friends to assist in putting our new Park in proper working order for the coming football season.’

As he sat at his desk and thought of the words he would write, a spider caught his eye as it scurried for cover behind some books. Something about it stirred a memory from long ago and his childhood in County Sligo, he stared into space, his mind lost somewhere in a past long gone…

The glistening web of a wolf spider, heavy with dew clung to the reeds. The light of a new dawn shone through the strands of the web casting a shimmering kaleidoscope of colours. It was as if the spider had set out to snare a rainbow. The child, barely 7 years old lay on the damp grass watching it intently, mesmerised by its beauty. A gentle breeze caused the web to sway gently before his young eyes. He felt as much a part of this land as the spider or the birds greeting the new day with their chorus. All of his short life his grandmother had whispered or sung to him in the old tongue, the folk tales of their ancient land. She has passed them onto him as they sat by the turf fire on wild winter’s days when the trees bent in the westerly wind. She had poured them into his drowsy head as she rocked him to sleep at night. She had sung to him the ancient tale of the Children of Lir who had been changed into swans by their father’s jealous second wife and destined to remain that way until the sound of a Christian bell was heard in the land. She had told him of Dagda’s Harp which had the power to make men weep, laugh or even sleep at its sound. She had also taught him respect for the land and all the creatures which drew life from it. ‘Listen to me sweet child,’ she’d say, ‘everything has a spirit. The rocks, the pools, the hills and trees, all are woven into the very pattern of life. When men forget this truth disaster usually follows.’ 

Even as a small child he understood something of her wisdom. A slight movement of the web made the child tilt his head slightly, a smile of anticipation crossing his lips as he saw the spider emerge from its hiding place. A small fly was struggling on the lower part of the web and in its vain attempts to free itself had merely hastened its demise. A voice broke into his silent world, ‘Andrew, where are you?’ He raised himself onto his knees and glanced back towards his family’s small cottage. He could see his mother’s familiar form glancing to her left and right looking for him with a worried look on her face. ‘Andrew!’ she called again, this time louder. He stood and faced her, seeing her relief as she realised he was safe. She strode towards him and knelt by him pulling him close, ‘You need to stop leaving the cottage before we’re awake. The bog can be a dangerous place for a child. Whatever are you thinking?’ She swept him up in her arms and headed back towards the house, ‘Come now, you’re father and brother are preparing breakfast.’ Andrew glanced over her shoulder and smiled at the spider’s web. He’d return to look at it again one day soon.

The following day, young Andrew had joined his father and brother Bernard on a journey to the small market in Ballymote. His mother waved them off before turning to the many chores a country woman had to attend to. Not least of which was caring for her old and increasingly frail mother who had lived with then in their cramped little cottage for the past year. Their small cart was loaded with the meagre produce his father had grown with much effort and they needed to sell it at the market so that the landlord could have his rent. So many had been turned out onto the road in recent times and some had even been forced to watch as their humble homes were destroyed by the landlord’s agents. Young Andrew sat in the back of the cart among the cabbages and carrots as it lurched along the rutted roads and tracks to the town. They had barely gone a mile when his father stopped the cart and stared in silence at a field to his left. Andrew followed his father’s gaze and saw a group of perhaps eight or nine haggard figures, dressed in rags scavenging like crows in the rutted field. At least four of the wraith-like figures were children but they were so painfully thin and their long, unkempt hair covered much of their faces as they dug in the muddy turnip field with their bare hands. One of the skeletal adults let out a guttural cry as he had managed to drag a turnip from the unforgiving ground. The others flocked to him as he beat the turnip on a rock and attempted to bite into the hard, raw surface. Andrew looked at his father and saw that he was greatly troubled by what he was witnessing.

At the edge of the field, barely 10 yards from their cart, something drew Andrew’s attention. He was surprised to see the emaciated figure of a small girl. She was a similar age to him, but painfully thin and pale. Her eyes, dark, emotionless pools regarded him. He clothing was little more than a piece of rough sackcloth wrapped around her and tied with a thin piece of rope. Her feet, bare and thick with dirt, stood in a gathering puddle as she continued to watch Andrew with dark, hungry eyes. Instinctively he reached in to one of sacks of carrots his father had loaded onto the cart and took out a bright orange carrot. He threw it towards the child and it landed in the mud at her feet but she didn’t move, she just continued to watch him. Andrew’s father turned to him and gently rebuked him… ‘Andrew, I know you mean well but no more. If we give all our food away, we will be joining those poor wretches. We need to sell the food to pay the rent. It breaks my heart son but these are dark times. They are in God’s hands now. For as sure as the sun rises those with means have abandoned them.’ He sat down again in the cart and with a flick of the reins set the donkey pulling it again along the road. ‘But Father, they’re hungry?’ he had intoned. His father stared grimly ahead, perhaps determined that his little family wouldn’t be joining the increasingly desperate groups of starving and dispossessed people who haunted the countryside in these cruel times. Andrew turned and watched the girl as she receded into the distance behind the cart. She had still not moved and stood like a barely living statue by the roadside. He knew that his conscience would imprint this sight onto his mind forever and was in his own childlike way as troubled as his father by what they had witnessed. He mumbled a soft ‘sorry,’ which she would never, could never hear.

Andrew Kerins exhaled and dragged his mind back from 1840s Sligo to the pressing business at hand. As he began to write he forced his mind to blank out for a few moments, other desperate images of the black years of the great hunger which crowded his consciousness. What he had witnessed on that day long ago on the road to Ballymote was just a foretaste of the horrors to come. Sometimes thoughts of those times could overwhelm him and he would weep in the darkness of the night as he thought of the emaciated children tumbled into mass graves with neither coffin nor shroud. Sometimes it was the wailing of mothers with nothing to feed their crying offspring with. God how that cry haunted him still… For now, though, he must put such thoughts out of his mind. Tonight’s meeting was of vital importance and he needed to find the right words for his audience. He had grasped quickly the potential for the new sport to raise much needed money to help the poor around him in Glasgow. Never again did he want to see children go hungry and he and the men he had gathered around him would do something about it. People were willing to pay to watch a good football side play and there was no denying that his flock needed a symbol, a source of identity and pride. Most of his close associates felt as he did that their new club shouldn’t go down the temperance or strictly Catholic route. In the longer term this was wise as was his choice of name.

‘Yes, that name had a ring to it,’ he thought to himself; ‘Celtic.’

 

Remembering Brother Walfrid who died on this day in 1915.

On the day of his passing, his beloved Celtic defeated Third Lanark 4-0 at Cathkin Park to win the league. They would go on to many more honours.