As Game as Christy Ring - Pure Athleticism

Last night, at dinner before the Leo Alumni meeting, I ran into an old friend Joanie Brennan. Joanie is now Mrs. Kevin Sullivan. Joanie and her many sisters were the best athletes in Little Flower Parish ( the parishses along 79th Street were thick with Cork, Kerry and Clare natives). We hated to see their approach as these pretty girls could fire a football spiral, or chuck a Clincher more accurately and with more power than any male within the vast parish limits. Their father is great Kerry footballer named Danny Brennan. County Kerry won the most All Ireland football ( caid in Irish) - 55 Titles in all.

Danny Brennan was a neighborhood legend having come to America preceded by stories of his athelticism on the football pitches of Ireland in the editions of the Kerryman Newspaper delivered to Kerrymen or picked up by the Salt-water Irish at the tobacco store on southwest corner of 79th & Ashland. My grandfather was a huge fan of Danny Brennan - who now resides in Smith Village in Morgan Park. Danny Brennan was football equivalent of the great hurler* Christy Ring.

My grandfather and his pals had an expression that stuck with most of us. If someone were considered to be a great athlete or even a skilled person at some small level that person was " As Game as Christy Ring, so!"

E.g. So, in Kerryman is an intensifier - You ( twenty -thirty grandchildren shouting at once) are a shower of bastards, so!" or " The collective lot of you are the nails in Chrit's hands and feet, so!" - indicated a heightened level displeasure in Grandpa Hickey.

As game as Christy Ring* refers to the great Cork Hurler Christy Ring. So great were this man's feats and feets that a song was inspired to be sung to the air of The Bold Tady Quill Here is the great Christy Ring





*

Christy Ring was born less than a mile from the small village of Cloyne in County Cork,in 1920.
As a fourteen-year old he played in goal for Cloyne's junior team, however, due to the absence of a minor team in Cloyne he joined a team in nearby Midleton. As a player with the St. Enda's club Ring was spotted by the Cork minor selectors and quickly made the inter-county team. Subsequently, Ring won his first All-Ireland medal in 1938. After moving to Cork city he joined the local Glen Rovers hurling club in 1941, winning a County Cork Championship medal in that year.
Ring's record at all levels of the game speaks for itself. During his career he won 8 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship medals (1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1946, 1952, 1953, 1954) and 4 National Hurling League medals (1940, 1941, 1948 and 1953) with Cork. He won 18 Railway Cup medals with Munster, appearing in 22 finals between 1942 and 1963. At club level Ring won 14 county championship medals with Glen Rovers.The incomparable Christy Ring 1938-1961


Christy has won
minor all-Ireland 1938
Junior county 1939
11 senior counties 41, 44, 45, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54, 58, 59 & 60
Senior county football 1954
Senior all Ireland 41, 42, 43 & 44
Munster senior championship 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 52, 53, 54, & 56
Railway cup 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, & 61
National league 39-40 40-41 47-48 52-53
Senior all-Ireland 46, 52, 53, & 54

Heaven bless our greatest hurler,
for his is the glory none can claim,
skippers came, but never greater,
in the annals of the game,
Golden records, cork had many,
But for these we cherished thee,
You won eight all-Ireland medals, for the city by the Lee.

*Hurling - Athletic Manslaughter

St. Colman of Kilmacduagh - Helped Preserve Thought in the West - Feast Day October 29th

"St. Colman was retired into the wilderness for the benefit of his devotion. He had no living creature about him except a rooster, a mouse, and a fly. The use of the rooster was to give him notice of the time of night by his crowing, that he might know when to apply himself to his prayers. The mouse had a proper office, which was to prevent the Saint from sleeping above five hours within the space of twenty-four; for, when the business of his devotion, which he exercised with great reverence and regularity upon his knees, had so fatigued his spirits that they required a longer refreshment, the mouse would come to his ears and scratch him with his feet till he was perfectly awake. The fly always attended on him when he was reading. It had the sense to walk along the lines of the book; and when the Saint had tired his eyes, and was willing to desist, the fly would stay upon the first letter of the next sentence, and by that means direct him where he was to begin."

St. Colman was a Clare Man - like Christy Ring* and Muhammad Ali. Colman lived in the 6th Century, a time known as the Dark Ages, when Ireland was the depository of Western Civilization and Greek Thought as one barbarian horde after another extinguished civilized life in the West.

Colman built a monastery with a 110 foot Round Tower - Round Towers were used to hide and preserve treasure, books, and ideas from savages.

St. Colman Mac Duagh thus began a great and holy work that was destined to endure for all time. It was a work which would inscribe his name on the hearts of a grateful Irish people, who would transmit it, with the memory of his virtues, from generation to generation. King Guaire, with his characteristic generosity, not only granted the site for the cathedral and monastery, but also granted large endowments for its future maintenance. His benignity did not stop there. The King through his influence was able to secure the assistance of St. Gobban Saer the eminent architect who flourished early in the seventh century. St. Gobban Saer was an illiterate monk in the monastery of St. Madoc of Ferns. An excerpt from the life of this saint (St. Gobban) provided by an ancient Irish chronicler says,
"A church was to be erected, but no builder could be found to guide the religious brethren in the work. Wherefore, full of confidence in God, St. Aidan (Madoc) blessed the hands of the untutored man named Gobban. From that moment he became most skilled in the intricacies of the art, and was able in a most perfect manner to complete the church of the monastery."

Would that a Colman might appear today and preserve some thought from our contemporary savages . . . and ourselves.


* A Man or Lad of Spirit was identified by the Salt Water Irish on the south side of Chicago as being 'as Game as Christy Ring!'

'As long as young men will match their hurling skills against each other on Ireland's green fields, as long as young boys swing their camáns(hurling bat) for the sheer thrill of the feel and the tingle in their fingers of the impact of ash on leather, as long as hurling is played the story of Christy Ring will be told. And that will be forever.'