The Clash of the Ash.(history, nationalism and Ireland)(Excerpt)(Fiction)

History will record that of all the misfortunes to have befallen the downtrodden Irish, none was as dangerous or debilitating as the tidal wave of wealth that mercilessly struck the nation in the late 20th century. Our brave little island, accustomed as it was to famine, plague, pestilence, war and accordion music was suddenly attacked by a virus to which it had no antibodies--success. Wealth and the threat of full employment gnawed pitilessly away at the national self-image. We grew smug and fat and allowed our memories grow short. One truth emerged--if there is one thing more tedious than a little island nation lachrymosely lamenting all its troubles, well, it's a little island nation imagining itself to be the center of the universe. Solemnly we decided that having a Planet Hollywood franchise in town meant that we were officially twinned with Tinseltown. We had a duty to be tacky. The phenomenon of second-rate celebrities drinking in our pubs was taken as an international endorsement of our incredible lovability. We felt no need to apologize for Riverdance. Forgetful of our own diaspora we came over all Aryan when considering the possibility of allowing immigrants to share our good fortune. People who thought they knew Ireland found that they couldn't locate the heart of the place anymore. They recognized the phony baloney of medieval banquets and they knew about Easter Revolutions and pub opening hours. They were immune to blarney. They knew the back road into Thurles and where to get a good soft pint of Guinness after they've taken it. They saw past the postcard visions of freckled red heads loading creels of turf onto the backs of donkeys. They knew about information technology, for God's sake. They don't know Ireland though. Not anymore.

It's easy to forgive them. It doesn't take much to miss out on the pulse of a country on the make, just a knack for looking the wrong way at the right time, just a wrongheaded thought that sport is too much seriousness in pursuit of too much trivia. To know this country you have to know the sounds, the smells and the feel of hurling, the unique, shining game of stick and ball that is one of the jewels of our living culture. Miss it and you know nothing of Ireland today, nothing of Ireland past. Imagine this. Imagine the classroom in which we vegetated during the overcast 1970s. High windows. Chalk dust in the air. The Virgin Mary teetering high in one corner. De Valera on the other wall watching her like a hawk. Acne everywhere. Therein presided a teacher of the Irish language who hailed from County Clare. He was never the most phlegmatic of men and his traffic light red complexion purchased him the most imaginative of schoolboy nicknames, Redser. Irony like pasta had yet to reach Ireland in the 1970s. Anyway Redser suffered from the seasonal affective disorder that was part and parcel of being a devotee of Clare hurling. Clare's hurling seasons were like Woody Allen films--they seldom ended happily and often took tragic-comic turns. We were the fall guys. From spring onwards Redser's moods oscillated with the fortunes of the Clare hurling team. Oscillated? By late May he was suicidal verging on homicidal. It was a tough time for Clare, their nascent side never quite made the breakthrough. Whatever pains they suffered were nought as compared to the travails we went through one hundred miles away in northside Dublin, however. Clare's specialty at the time was the league and through the spring as they reached two finals in succession Redser's mood would brighten and our lives would be easier. Clare brimmed with potential and every morning we stood with Redser and offered prayers that they might thrive at last. Naturally they would find a way not to thrive. They hurled below themselves to spite us, they invented ever more ingenious ways to fail, they became celebrated for their creativity in securing defeat. Typically they would lose a league final in May just in time to give our summer examinations the tingle of anticipation that must have preceded the Spanish Inquisition. We knew three things. One: we yearned to see Clare succeed. Two: they would never succeed. Three: hurling mattered. What's the point of this? Well, hurling is substance. It is continuity. I think of Clare, I think of Redser, all those years when Clare yearned to express itself as a hurling county, all those Sunday afternoons when we either journeyed to see them beaten or heard news of their demise come crackling over a car radio.

It matters. In a changing, depreciating world hurling holds its value like nothing else. When all else fails in Ireland, when we are cursed by peace and prosperity and left to survey our own numbing vacuity, hurling will save us from being an idiot culture. You have to have grown up with a Redser or been dragged to Munster finals by hurling men or to have stumbled somehow on the arcane glories of the game to know the sense of place, the sense of community and the sense of passion that hurling engenders. You have to recognise the game as a manufacturer of myths and legends, a supply line of heroes. Yes. Hurling will teach you all you want to know about the sore history of this island. And take your breath away while doing it.

Listen. Ireland isn't Celtic Tiger wealth and a decade-long discussion about house prices. Ireland is a last second point by Ciaran Carey, a haymaking clearance by Brian Lohan, a quick as a fish turn by Joe Deane, a bony-fingered catch by Joe Rabbitte. It's all those moments when you catch us with our guard down, with the traditional caution gone and the old dour mask laid on the floor. Times when our hats fly through the air. In a country made dark by bad religion and bloody invasions and lousy politics the pure sport of hurling has been our fiesta, our Mardi Gras, our carnival. And when finally we got rich and handled it with the class of the Beverly Hillbillies it was hurling that flourished and stood as an affirmation of all that could be culturally special about Ireland.

There is so much more to hurling than that which meets the eye and, by the way, what meets the eye is truly sensational and glorious. Hurling isn't merely a patch of grass, two goalposts and thirty players in search of a ball. The game is the most common expression of our hunger for poetry, the truest expression of Ireland's wild beauty. Hurling is art wrapped up in sport. Hurling's rhythm is measured out in perfect arcs, the pentameter of honest play. A ball dropping from the sky into a swirling thicket of arms and hurleys. A length of ash flashing on a scurrying ground ball. An overhead pull exploding the air as it meets with the sliotar and makes all heads turn and all jaws drop. Two sticks and two shoulders converging like thunder clouds. Sawdust in the square boys! The abrupt punctuation mark of a score. Celebration. Ya boy ya! It goes beyond that again, though. Its elemental and untameable nature distinguishes the game and tethers it to our hearts. Sure, hurling is track-suits and training and sweat and practice, but to watch and to play is to join arms with a line of ancestors who disappear over the horizon at that point where history becomes myth. Hurling percolates through the community and leaves its mark even on those who disdain the game as a relic of a peasant past. There is no purer strain of bigotry in Irish sport than that which resides in the hearts of those who cannot abide the game. Their animus is an expression of the tensions of change, the need to force Ireland to be something different. Something at more homogenous ease in a world of franchises and mega-mergers. Hurling is defiant.

You need to know certain things, the facts that underpin our little civilization. Men and teams have defined geography and vice versa. If Tipperary hadn't got hurling we would think of a different sort of place when the name was mentioned. The character of Kilkenny people is written in the way they play the game. We didn't know the grain of Clare until their hurling blossomed late in the century and redefined the place for us. You need to develop the reflexes. Try word association tests. Cloyne? First thought: Christy Ring. Gowran? First thought: D J Carey. Tullaroan? First thought: Lory Meagher. And so on through The Faythe and Buffers Alley and Maddens Terrace and Ballyhale and Bullaun and Ballygunner and a thousand other spots that have the sanctity of grottoes because of the hurlers who sprung from there. And know that the geography made the hurlers. Delve through the sociological history of the country and you will find the explanations for how certain counties play the game, how the styles evolved. Which areas enjoyed the patronage of landlords, which hewed the game out of a rough version of hockey and which places especially in the north west saw the game die in their arms. History is the glue that holds the game together in these times.

These days to know the minutae of the game is to know about rights deals and sponsorships and under the table payments to managers, yet the playing of championships is a sort of sacred duty one of those things that we have never let go out of fashion. The preamble to, the formal history of hurling is legend. The stuff we all learned in the classroom. Tain Bo Culaigne from the 9th century: Setanta was pucking his ball in the air (silver ball, bronze hurley), minding his own business when he was confronted by the slavering hound of one Cullain. We know that Setanta in the mood could have soloed past the hound with a large meatball on the bas of his hurley and wearing a couple of lambchops as shinguards. Instead he went for the big play and planted the sliotar at considerable speed down the hound's gullit. From then on Setanta would be Cullain's hound or Cu Chullain. The game of hurling existed as a reference point in our history from even before then. Mentioned in heroic literature and bardic texts from the 8th century (the first sportswriting!), depicted on high crosses in Monasterboice and Kells from the 10th century, it is a recurring motif of history, an extended metaphor for heroism right through the ages until such time as the game became formalized in 1884 when one Michael Cusack organized his Metropolitans (no less!) to play Killimor in Ballinasloe on Easter Sunday for the prize of a ten sovereign silver trophy. Afterwards the teams raced each other for free beer. And the hurley itself is an emblem of aspiration and heroism. Weeping men carrying hurley sticks at the funeral of Charles Stewart Parnell. Rebels training with hurley sticks on their shoulders instead of guns. Coffins lowered into the earth with the occupant's club jersey and favourite hurley making the long journey with him. The game deserves a wider audience but history has penned it in. Ireland has colonized no place so its sport is its own. It's the world's loss.