Unless you’ve been living under a rock, its likely you’ve heard ‘Killeagh’, the phenomenally successful song from Limerick-based band Kingfishr, which has not only topped the Irish singles charts and Spotify’s listings, but has led to countless exuberant renditions by the band’s legions of fans in pubs, concerts, and public places, and inevitability enjoyed wall-to-wall coverage around the weekend’s All-Ireland hurling clash.
As the band’s bass player, Eoin Fitzgibbon, explained to The 2 Johnnies when the song first went viral, the song was written when the local hurling team from Killeagh, a small village in east Cork, looked like they might reach an East Cork Junior A final, after a long dry spell.
The song is about Killeagh, then, but its ubiquity is because its really about so much more than that. The lyrics are a powerful reminder of our need for connection and for roots, for meaning and identity. It’s a song about the importance of parish and place and family and community and culture and history – and about how the love of those things shape us and move us and bind us throughout our lives.
It’s about participation and representation too, and about finding or recognising what gives us meaning. And obviously about Gaelic games and ancient sports that are uniquely ours. That’s a lot to capture in one short song.
From the woods of Glenbower, To the river Dissour
From the arms of my mother, to the land ever pure
All I have to remember, is the pride that I felt
Round the Páirc Uí Chinnéide, where the boys never knelt
There’s the local references: the woods of Glenbower (from Gleann Bodhar, the deafening valley because of the noise of the river rushing throughout when swollen by winter rain) which are a remnant of an ancient Irish forest, and the afore-mentioned river Dissour, and the local GAA grounds, but the universality of the emotions mean it could be any club or parish.
Hurling, as Matt Treacy said yesterday, has been part of us for as long as we’ve known anything about our people. Its in our DNA, with our language and culture, and the passion comes from the cradle and the heart of the family home, to the club and the pride of playing for the parish. That’s why ‘the boys never knelt’, why hurlers sweat blood and tears and leave it all on the pitch, training like Olympians without a penny in return, because that is something to remember, something to achieve.
There’s that recognition in the song too, an emotion that perhaps only the amateur players playing the fastest and greatest ball game on grass in the world could capture, that the participation in the game whether at Junior A or in Croke Park, is for the “parish to last ever more”. We want the things we love to endure.
There’s a old, somewhat blurry video of Eoin Fitzpatrick as a child, clutching a tiny camán, telling his Dad that when he grows up he wants to play for Killeagh, a sentiment shared in countless households by countless small boys and girls – long before – and then ever after – the GAA under visionaries like Michael Cusack sought to put vital structure and organisation on local and national pride.
Hurling is enjoying a surge in popularity, and has caught the attention of viewers worldwide, though this clip shows legendary BBC broadcaster Des Lynam describing it 43 years ago as being “without question the fastest of all field sports” and adding that it “demands explicit skills, tremendous stamina, and a great deal of courage to play it well”.
It is, after all, the game of legends, with every school child learning how Setanta, arriving at the house of Chulainn and facing the chieftain’s most ferocious hound, felled the animal with the devastating speed of his sliotar.
Hawk-eye technology, not around in Cú Chulainn’s time, tells us that the fastest shot now recorded in Croke Park was a belter from TJ Reid of Kilkenny in a battle against Limerick in the 2014 All Ireland Senior Hurling semi-final, which achieved a speed of 181.1 kph. The the average shot speed of the Kilkenny team in the same match was 123.6 kph, the GAA notes, a damn fast average.
“When my time’s at an ending, when my days are no more,” Kingfishr sing to crescendo in ‘Killeagh’. “Bury me with my hurley by the River Dissour”. That’s a powerfully resonant line. The wheel of life brings you back to the things and to the people that matter most. Without that connection we are lost, whatever sport you follow, whatever parish you cheer for.
At the weekend, as the country was convulsed in all things Gaelic games, another man likely buried with his hurley was getting a lot of attention. The gravestone of Magnus Mac Orristin, in Clonca Church in Donegal, and most likely from the 16th century, was being shared everywhere. Mac Orristin is believed to be a gallowglass warrior, but alongside the sword are what appear to be a camán and a sliotar. A man with priorities.
These are deep-rooted affiliations: as previously noted on this platform – the old tales tell of the first record of a hurling match as “an epic encounter that took place in 1272 BC between the Fir Bolg and the Tuatha Dé Dannan at Maigh Tuartha near Cong in County Mayo”. The game is an ancient part of what we are.
My Dad was from Coorclare and loved his native game almost as much as he loved traditional music, so the long, barren years of defeat after defeat under the curse of Biddy Early left their mark, as they did for all in the Banner who longed for the chance to lift the McCarthy Cup. In 1995, when the 81-year tortuous wait finally came to an end, I thought he would burst with happiness and sheer joy. And the delight of sharing the county’s triumph lasted for years.
I remember he and his brother Pádraig afterwards re-watching the recorded match over and over, reliving every minute as if they were back in the stands on that heart-stopping day, their chairs inching closer and closer every time until they were almost on top of the television. Equally fascinating to me was that they and so many of their generation could also recount and relive not just the great clashes watched by thousands, but the local battles between neighbouring teams they saw as young men, games played out decades previously but still recalled vividly down to the players, the action and the scores.
Now, my headline might be described as somewhat misleading as not everyone might love ‘Killeagh’ and the hurling. But we’re happy to give them a chance to catch up. Tá fáilte mór romhaibh.
Hurling and parish and pride of place. Its part of what we are, and this sport is unique to us as a people. But the message of ‘Killeagh’ is universal. Connection and family and identity and community matters. That’s why the crowd is singing their hearts out.