Ad maiorem Dei gloriam
He walked purposely across the empty hall his
footsteps echoing as he went. In an hour or two the hall would be full and
there would be much persuading, cajoling and no doubt arguing to be done. He had already decided on the name of the club and the direction it
would take but he knew the factions who would fill the hall tonight well. There were those who wanted a Glasgow
Hibernians to mimic the Edinburgh side but he wanted his club to have its own identity. He reached his small
room at the back of the hall in East Rose Street. He would write out the club’s
mission and read it to the assembled community tonight.
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 mumbled the old Jesuit
phrase which reminded him of why he was here among the poor in the first place;
‘Ad maiorem Dei gloriam.’ The Jesuits wouldn’t
mind a Marist borrowing their motto…’To the greater glory of God.’ It
was, after all, why they were all working in the poorest parts of the world. As he sat at his desk and thought of the
words he would write, a spider 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 5 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 waiting.’ 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 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 right. 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, younger than he was but painfully thin and
haggard. 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. It breaks my heart son but these
are dark times. They are in God’s hands now. For as sure as the sun rises men 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. People were
willing to pay to watch a good 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.’
He began to write and the words seemed to
flow from his pen…
‘A football club will be formed for the
maintenance of dinner tables for the children and the unemployed…’
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