Myles Away From Dublin (2 page)

I was startled to read recently in the giant Sunday issue of a San Francisco paper the casual statement that handball is the national game of Ireland. It made me think generally about games. What is a national game or, for that matter, what is a
game
?

The dictionaries are a bit vague here. A game is said to be any amusement or sport, or a contest played for
recreation
or as an exhibition of skill. It seems also that the word ‘game’ meaning creatures other than what is meat, fish or poultry and which you go after with a gun is really the same word, as also is gaming in the sense of gambling.

It is not so easy to decide within those meanings what a national game is. In western continental Europe it is probably true to say that the national game of most countries is soccer. But would it be true to say that the national game of Spain is bull-fighting, or is bull-fighting a game at all? Is boxing a game? The Swiss spend a lot of their time skiing and otherwise cavorting on snow and ice. Could that be called their national game? And if one were to get into an acrimonious argument with a member of the Japanese nation, one might suddenly find oneself in mid-air and then slammed to the floor with a shattering crash – merely as a result of participating in the national game of ju-ju. Deciding on the US national game would take some thought. Baseball comes to mind but there is also great emphasis on basket-ball, ice hockey, football and … handball.

The founders of our civilisation took their games very seriously and left a heritage in the matter, as is evidenced by the fact that this year there is world-wide participation in the Olympic Games.

The Greeks called their games
agones
,
which are mentioned in the
Iliad
. They were by no means exclusively recreational athletic exercises but were part of religious observances. Games were held as part of funeral rites or in thanks to the gods for some military triumph or a disaster averted. Olympia was a naturally enclosed place not far from Athens, lined with statues of great athletes of the past and surmounted by a chryselephantine statue of the Olympian Zeus by the famous sculptor Pheidias. The games in their ritualistic aspect were evidence of the refinement of the Greeks as they took the place of the savage custom elsewhere of slaughtering slaves and captives on the grave of any important man who died, as an offering to the gods.

What were the events of the games? The
foot
race
was important, being usually decided in heats and run over about 200 yards. For a time there was also a race in heavy armour, highly recommended by Plato as great training for the army. Next came
wrestling
,
not very different from the all-in stuff of today. Then came the
pentathlon
,
a miscellaneous 5-game contest which
included
the long jump. Tall tales were in fashion even then, and the record shows a wonder-man named Phayllus credited with a jump of 35 feet. I am told this is quite impossible but there may have been something special in the Hellenic air of those days. There were boxing contests similar to those of today but subject to the condition that a boxer who killed his opponent, unless by sheer accident, not only was disqualified but was severely punished. (That is a condition we do not insist on today.)
Chariot-racing
,
a very dangerous event, was also very important and as many as 40 chariots taking part in the same race. And that was about the lot.

The Roman games, or
ludi
,
veered away from the good clean fun of the Greeks. Everything was on a vaster
scale and the Colosseum, which still stands substantially in Rome, was reputed to seat 350,000 people. These games also had at least a nominal religious significance. Chariot races were very popular, the war-cars being often hauled by as many as four horses. The coarseness of the people’s taste was shown by their love of the aspect of the games known as
venatio
– the baiting of wild animals in the arena, setting them on one another or on criminals and slaves. Remote provinces were ransacked for rare and ferocious animals. Lions, tigers, giraffes, elephants and crocodiles were on frequent display; on one occasion Pompey provided 600 lions and on one occasion of the celebration of a victory of Trajan, 11,000 wild animals were butchered in the arena. Julius Caesar himself is credited with having invented
bullfighting
. In due time Christians were thrown to the lions but the ‘normal’ prize attraction was the gladiators who had to fight to the death and who were chased out on to the arena with red hot irons where they showed reluctance or fear. There were even women gladiators, being matched with dwarfs.

We started, however, with handball. It seems beyond dispute that the true Irish national game is hurling, for we are told that Cuchulainn could not undertake any journey without pucking a ball ahead of him and following it. (The true roots of golf may be there.)

It seems true, however, that handball did originate in Ireland about a thousand years ago. Today it is one of the most popular games for men in the United States. The first man to work out the modern scientific system of play in the 1850s was a Tipperaryman with the engaging name of William Baggs. Another pioneer was named David Browning and in 1885 John Lawlor won the Irish championship. In 1887 Lawlor was matched with Casey of the US for a purse of $1,000 for the best
out of 21 games, 10 to be played in Cork and 11 in the US. Lawlor won six games in Cork but Casey won seven straight in New York and thus won the match.

It seems a pity that handball is not encouraged more in the schools here for, the capital cost of the alley apart, it must be one of the cheapest as well as one of the most vigorous sports imaginable.

Up to ten or twelve years ago – how vague one can be on comparatively recent happenings! – an arriving diplomat would be greeted at airport or railway station in Ireland by a detachment of what the natives insisted on calling the Blue Hussars. These were ordinary army men but they were mounted and wore a blue dress uniform which was set off with certain gay trimmings.

Cynics murmured about comic opera police and some sourpusses asked how much this nonsense was costing the taxpayer but the people in general liked those boys in blue and admired their glistening horses; if an objector pointed out that they did not pay or were a dead loss, the answer was ‘Does the army itself pay?’ What army on earth does pay? If a country must have one (as apparently every country must) why not make it worth looking at on ceremonial occasions and get away from this awful monotony of nameless men in
battle-dress
and steel helmets marching endlessly away to God knows where?

Suddenly the Blue Hussars were abolished. No official reason was given. Possibly some civil servant, suffering from his occupational disease of indigestion, found that their extinction would save the country £20 and that maybe another five could be made by flogging their uniforms to the Queen’s Theatre. That sort of reasoning is contemptible.

A few weeks ago in a restaurant I heard a member of a group which I would describe as of the student class point scornfully to a paper and say: ‘They can’t even write or print correctly. They call the Costume Barracks
at Athlone the Custume Barracks.’

That rather shallow of military dress, between the garb of the Blue Hussars and the defenders at Athlone, is my excuse for referring here to the Custume Barracks at Athlone. When a student myself, I tried to write an extended essay on Sergeant Custume and remember being deeply shocked at the way any information about him was so diffused and scanty. I cannot reveal, even now, his Christian name. There is no consecutive account of him in existence in print and among the scattered data is the
Memoirs
of
King
James
II
,
to be seen in some libraries, and
A
Diary
of
the
Siege
of
Athlone
,
not to be seen in any library except the British Museum, where it is an unpublished manuscript, author described as ‘Engineer Officer’ but otherwise
unidentified
.

Some people insist on identifying an important stage in Irish history with the Battle of the Boyne; decisive as that was, the Battle of the Shannon should not be ignored. It was there that Sergeant Custume and ten unnamed comrades gave their lives in a vain but very courageous gesture.

The year was 1691 and the Jacobite war here was coming to a climax. The Irish armies, under Maxwell, a Scot, had been driven across the Shannon at Athlone but were encamped in good order on the western bank of the river. The stout masonry bridge which they seemed to command consisted of nine arches plus, at the western side, a drawbridge with a tower or castle nearby, this bridge separating them from the Williamite armies under Ginkel. Clearly it was Ginkel’s job to take the bridge and cross the river.

On this apparently simple situation, any records I looked up are surprisingly vague. The Irish on the Connacht side broke the bridge but it is not clear
whether they demolished part of the masonry structure or simply raised the drawbridge. The two forces were roughly equal except that the Williamites had great superiority in artillery and had probably attacked the tower housing the machinery operating the drawbridge and disabled it. In any event, Ginkel’s army had to cross the Shannon using a bridge, part of which was missing.

After a bombardment lasting 98 hours, his men started across the existing part of the bridge in the middle of a June night, carrying massive beams and planks to span the broken part of the bridge. So skilful and stealthy were they that they had their timbers in position before the defenders knew exactly what was happening; the confusion was probably due to the
nonstop
exchange of gunfire across the river.

It was here that Sergeant Custume came to notice. He went to his superior officer and volunteered, with ten men who accompanied him, to tear down the shaky structure of planks. He was given permission to attempt what seemed a quite impossible task, for the timbers were massive and gunfire at the spot was unrelenting. It may seem comic to add that Sergeant Custume and his little company wore armour but the detail is important inasmuch as the rifle, with its revolving missile of great penetration, had not yet been invented and bullets from straight-bore muskets bounced off armour. Custume and his men did the apparently impossible job, and all were eventually killed. Another company which took their place were likewise wiped out.

In a strict military sense, it was all a waste of blood and time. Yet I wish the young fellow I mentioned at the start would learn the considerable difference between the words Custume and Costume.

I suppose it is a commonplace to say that life is a series of crises, all fraught with danger. Three familiar points of crisis are birth, marriage, death. But there are many, many others, some of them quite unexpected, some very frightening. Some seem even pleasurable. But you never know what tomorrow’s day will bring. Maybe it’s just as well.

I came almost literally to the crossroads recently. I had to move house. That phrase itself can be
troublesome
. The decent reader will know immediately that it means changing from one house into another or – to be even more explicit – shifting the furniture. The reasons for having to do this are innumerable. It might be a natural growth in the family, the terrible smell from some putrescence in the garden next door, or an all-out attempt to shift the wife’s mother, who came for a fortnight in 1926.

But changing house is not as easy as it looks, if it ever looked easy. Most of us do not know how complicated being born frequently is because we don’t remember the occurrence. But nobody who has changed house is likely to forget it. I write this ‘at home’, i.e., the change has not yet been made. But the bruises of the ‘softening up’ artillery barrage are still very keenly felt. I am plain scared. The day takes on the sombre guise of
Der
Tag.
Translating a simple term into German seems to give it a sinister edge.

It is only on moving house that a man realises the unbelievable assortment of stuff with which he has surrounded himself in – say – ten years. Start, say, with old letters. They should have been torn up many years ago, of course, but they are still there, hoarded and yellowing. The householder cannot make out who wrote them and about what. What is the meaning of the
postcard which is headed
warning
in indigo ink with the message
If
it
happens
again
action
will
be
taken
?

Under the stairs in a rusty biscuit tin is a lady’s full length ball dress probably fashionable early in the reign of Victoria. Why is it there and who put it there? It couldn’t be the property of your wife because she had not been born when it was in vogue and anyway would not be seen dead in such a ludicrous invention. For that matter, what is the front assembly of a child’s Edwardian tricycle doing under your bed? Who put
that
there?

The removal merchants are quite alive to the speculative nature of their trade and the unpredictable character of their customers. You are a sober, prudent individual and you go to one of them to get an estimate of cost of house removal. Jaunty as your step may be going in, you feel very much in need of an ambulance coming out – as I did. I set out initially to give the reader a word-by-word account of my interview but now find I cannot: it would be too harrowing. But let me just lift the hem. I am shown into a small room in which is seated at a desk a ruffianly-looking Gauleiter who does not look at me but barks out a demand for my name and address. I sit on a chair facing him, for there is no other. The dialogue starts like this:

‘Moving? I see. Scaling things down, ah? Lost the job, I suppose?’

‘I didn’t lose any job.’

‘I have them in here every day. Drink. The number of decent men destroyed by drink is terrible. It is drink, drink, drink, night and day. Home, family and religion – all is ignored. Just drink and then more drink.’

‘If you refer to intoxicants, I may say I never touch them.’

He looked up at me for the first time and frowned.

‘But there’s just one thing worse than drink,’ he rasped.
‘Women!’

‘I have been happily married,’ I managed to croak, ‘for twenty-five years.’

‘I have them in here every day. And the married men are the worst. Home, faith, fatherland – all gone down the Swanee to fly after some ugly strap of a farmer’s daughter.’

‘I happen to be married to a farmer’s daughter and she is not an ugly strap.’

‘And that’s another thing. The children are neglected. Never get a decent hot meal, dressed in rags and out all day robbing orchards. A law unto themselves. And you call this a Christian country.’

‘I didn’t call this country anything.’

‘And then you have every spare penny spent on those dirty papers they send over from London.’

I can’t go on – not this week, anyhow. In five minutes I had completely forgotten the object of my call, which was to get a quotation for the removal of furniture. I found myself making abject confessions on small but rather personal matters such as occasionally sleeping in my shirt on particularly cold nights in winter. I cannot remember whether at some stage I broke down and cried. Certainly I was terrified. The ogre opposite me seemed Evil incarnate. I will see if I am strong enough this day week to take up again the shattered thread of my narrative. Right now I am going out to have a small whiskey.