Scotch Broth – Frank McNally on Michael Cusack's frustrated hope for a pan-Celtic sports alliance
One of his confederates in this enterprise was a Dublin-based Scot of socialist leanings, A Morrison-Miller, whose Caledonian Games exhibitions had already been a spark for the GAA. Together, in 1887, he and Cusack founded a newspaper to promote their joint cause: The Celtic Times.
Alas, as it is in Ireland, the first item on the agenda in Scottish politics is the split. Thus in May 1887, to Cusack's disgust, Morrison-Miller was expelled from his own Caledonian Games Society by a Presbyterian faction opposed to the Irish outreach programme.
Apart from having a stand in Croke Park named after him, Cusack went on to be immortalised by his portrayal as 'the Citizen' in James Joyce's Ulysses. Or at least by the perception that he is the Citizen.
READ MORE
In fact, like others in the book, the character was a composite of different people. And insofar as Joyce led readers to believe that the bigoted, anti-Semitic Citizen was him alone, Cusack might have had a case for libel had he lived to see Ulysses published.
But as Luke Gibbons pointed out to me during the Bloomsday Festival, the same Cusack may also hold the key to one of the continuing mysteries of Joyce's masterpiece: the anonymous postcard with the message, as interpreted by Mrs Breen, wife of the agitated recipient: 'U.P.: Up.'
The simplest interpretation is a slang phrase of the time, equivalent to
kaput
. If a person or thing was 'U.P.: Up', they were finished. Which might indeed be considered offensive, but hardly the basis for the £10,000 libel suit on which Denis Breen is seeking advice.
Cusack, meanwhile, offers a different explanation, as Gibbons found out some years ago when tracking down a full set of the original Celtic Times print run. For there, in Cusack's gossip column of 18th June 1887, is the headline: 'U.P. Up'.
Underneath it, Cusack reported the 'extraordinary treble-whip meeting' of the CGS that had 'unceremoniously deposed' Morrison-Miller. The piece includes reference to a 'United Presbyterian' faction, punning on their desire to keep
up
appearances, and ends by declaring: 'The CGS has died a sudden and unprovided for death. R.I.P.'
Elsewhere in his newspaper, Cusack detected a part played in the coup by a shadowy organisation called The Irish Times. He suggested it was trying to wrestle control of the CGS in the same way (as he alleged) that the Freeman's Journal had tried to do with the GAA:
'Is the staff of The Irish Times trying to grab the work of Mr Miller's hands, much as the Freeman tried to grab the work of my hands? Answer at once, Mr James Carlyle, manager of The Irish Times. You signed the circular calling the meeting. Read Carleton's 'Rody the Rover,' and you will find that we ought to be very careful to avoid those practices which little by little qualify us to out-Judas Judas.'
We don't know if Carlyle took up the suggestion to read William Carleton's novel about double-dealing among Ribbonmen – a militant Catholic movement of the early 19th century. We do know that the same Irish Times manager also was later namechecked in Ulysses, perhaps with mischievous intent.
Even as he ponders the 'U.P. Up' mystery, guessing that Alf Bergan or Richie Goulding 'wrote it for a lark in the Scotch House', Leopold Bloom passes The Irish Times, and admiring the success of its small ads operation, credits 'James Carlisle' (sic), the 'cunning old Scotch hunks'.
An effect of the internal coup in the CGS was the cancelation of the Caledonian Games planned for 1887 and their replacement by a 'picnic'.
According to Cusack, this caused such an outpouring of letters to The Irish Times that the paper could carry only one tenth of them. Among those that made it in was a satirical proposal that the CGS be renamed the 'Scotch Anti-Irish Bun and Lemonade Society'.
In his book Joyce's Ghosts: Ireland, Modernism, and Memory (2015), Gibbons suggests a link between the anonymous postcard and the sectarian commercial wars being fought in Dublin in the early years of the 20th century.
Those included the setting up of an undercover Catholic Association, to counter Protestant dominance in business.
The Denis Breen of Ulysses was a proudly devout Catholic, said to be related to a senior Vatican clergyman. This is a cause for ridicule in Barney Kiernan's pub. When Bloom sympathises with Mrs Breen's plight, the narrator sneers:
'Begob I saw there was trouble coming. And Bloom explaining he meant on account of it being cruel for the wife having to go round after the old stuttering fool. Cruelty to animals so it is to let that bloody povertystricken Breen out on grass…And she with her nose cockahoop after she married him because a cousin of his old fellow's was pew opener to the pope.'
If the 'U.P.: Up' postcard was hinting that the pious Breen had secretly joined the United Presbyterians, that might indeed be grounds for a libel case. At the very least, it would explain why his goat was so much – as the expression puts it – up.
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Irish Times
5 hours ago
- Irish Times
Letters to the Editor, August 21st: On Norman names, Tony Holohan and the Shannon pipeline
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Catherine Connolly would need to trim her vocals to suit the role and I somehow doubt if she is able to do that, having already 'shot her bolt' so forcefully at this stage. – Yours, etc. PHYLLIDA WHITE, READ MORE Kilmanagh, Co Kilkenny, Oasis rubbish Sir, – My jaw dropped on Monday morning driving from Dorset Street across the apparently aptly-named Binn's Bridge. Whether it was the wonderful weather or high jinks before the Oasis gig in Croke Park on Sunday, I certainly turned left in anger (on to Whitworth Road) on seeing the amount of rubbish left around the Royal Canal. If citizens fail in their duty, litter wardens could clean up on such a day. Or event organisers should be required to have rubbish collectors on the main routes and known litter black spots before and during the gig as seen recently at Zach Bryan. There is no excuse. – Yours, etc, KATE HOGAN, Stillorgan, Co Dublin. A break for the health service Sir, – I recently spent my summer holiday in Ireland, and was unlucky to have an accident which resulted in a double fracture in my right arm. Because of the injury, I was treated in five different public hospitals – Ennis, small injury clinic; Limerick, fracture clinic; Croom, surgery; Castlebar, ED; Kilkenny ED – and I would like to express my thanks for the absolutely excellent level of treatment and service that I received everywhere. An extremely high level of efficiency, and, most importantly, I was greeted and treated with kindness and empathy by everyone I met, from receptionists to porters, nurses to surgeons. As I regularly read reports of the failings of the Irish health service, I feel it is very important to share my extremely positive experience. – Yours, etc, SARAH IRONSIDE, Brussels, Belgium Discerning taste Sir, – Concerning the correspondence about people not taking the top paper of the pile but rummaging and taking the second or third paper ('Discerning taste', Letters, August 19th ). A long time ago the Death Notices were printed on the back page of The Irish Times. Many people would turn over the first paper of the pile and have a quick look at the notices without having to buy the paper. – Yours, etc, SEAMUS STEPHENSON, Clontarf, Dublin 3. Sir, – Guilty as charged, I must confess that I am one of those unscrupulous Irish Times readers berated by Tony Corcoran ('Discerning taste', Letters, August 19th ). I regularly take a sneak preview of the paper on the shelves, but I always fold it back neatly and replace it in the second or third position in the bundle. – Yours, etc, JOHN LEAHY, Wilton Road, Cork. Race for the Áras Sir, – Reading Kathy Sheridan's column (' Tony Holohan's reluctance to admit mistakes sits badly with the national mood ,' Opinion, August 19th), I worry as to the idea that one man, an accomplished doctor who helped lead the country through a difficult and unprecedented crisis, might be considered unelectable given a loud minority of conspiracy theorists and nutcases, whereas another man who recklessly and unapologetically mismanaged the State, allowing the boom to become even boomer until the economy collapsed leaving scars still palpable up and down the country, should see no impediment to election. I occasionally wonder at the leaders of certain major nations, thinking: of all the millions of people they have to choose from, is this the best they have? An exception was Ireland over the last two presidential mandates. I fear the exception may be about to end. – Yours, etc, JOHN F McELHONE, Eden Road, Rosbeg, Co Donegal. What's in a Norman name Sir, – Fintan O'Toole has, in a single article (' Sinn Féin may reject commemorating the Normans, but there are some suspiciously Saxon names in its ranks ,' Opinion, August 19th) successfully demolished this mythical concept of 'We Irish' as being descendants of the inhabitants of an ideal world in ancient times – a world of pure Gaelic Irishness. After waves of invasions (including that of the Vikings), we find the Normans arriving. While they directly came from Wales, they were in essence representing the French King Henry II, who ruled over most of France at the time. After each of these invasions, we learn that the invaders 'became more Irish than the Irish themselves'. Fast forward to the 20th century, and we see in our history books 'unusual' names of key figures who featured centrally in the struggle for Irish freedom – Hobson, Hyde, Griffith, Spring-Rice, Childers, Lemass, de Valera, Casement, Gonne, Gore-Booth etc. Now, we would not find such names among the Irish chieftains who were forced to submit to the Norman invaders. Rather, the families of these people came to Ireland in the centuries that followed, which demonstrates that as a people we have evolved over time to be the 'Irish' we are right now. The Normans form part of that evolution and. to borrow a familiar expression, they are 'part of what we are', whether some like it or not. – Yours, etc, EAMON O'FLYNN, Merrion Road, Dublin 4 Sir, – Fintan O'Toole (' Sinn Féin may reject commemorating the Normans, but there are some suspiciously Saxon names in its ranks ,' Opinion, August 19th) makes a common mistake as regards Irish surnames. In the 18th century in Ireland, many ordinary people did not have a surname, and, in order to give themselves a lift socially, they adopted the surname of the local landlord. In other words, there are many people in Ireland today, sporting particular surnames, who have no genetic connection whatsoever to those surnames. – Yours, etc, SÉAMAS de BARRA, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14. Sir, – Fintan O'Toole's recent article (' Sinn Féin may reject commemorating the Normans, but there are some suspiciously Saxon names in its ranks ,' Opinion, August 19th) reminded me of another piece in your paper a decade ago by John Grenham in the Irish Roots column on how our surnames were Anglicised. As that article concluded: 'As guides to ethnic origins, surnames in Ireland can be very treacherous indeed.' I suspect few supporters of Sinn Féin would deny the Anglo (Norman) roots of Wolfe Tone, Parnell or Pearse. Reasonable people cannot deny Mr O'Toole's conclusion that the Irish, like every nation, are 'a product of multiple invasions and migrations, colonisations and resistances, settlement and unsettlement'. Nonetheless, Mr O'Toole should be far more hesitant to take English-sounding names like Clarke, Sands and Hughes at face value. – Yours, etc, EOGAN HICKEY, Brussels, Belgium. Carbon credits and promises Sir, – The recent exchange between ActionAid Ireland and Verra's CEO in your newspaper (' A wolf in sheep's clothing, the false promise of carbon credits ,' Science & Climate, August 14th; Letters, August 20th) exposes the peculiar logic of carbon offsets: the more they fail, the louder their defenders claim they're indispensable. Karol Balfe rightly argues that carbon markets 'almost always fail to provide any real climate benefit' and amount to both a 'policy failure and a moral failure'. And the evidence is damning. Independent investigations – including by the Guardian and Die Zeit – found that over 90 per cent of rainforest offsets certified by Verra were essentially worthless. The reductions existed principally on paper. Meanwhile, offset schemes have been connected to land grabs, weakened community rights, and displacement in the Global South – hardly the marks of 'climate justice'. Even the projects described as success stories do not alter the basic arithmetic. A tonne of CO₂ released today is not retroactively cancelled by a promise that another tonne might, some day, be absorbed elsewhere. It is the climate policy equivalent of running up a credit-card bill and insisting one is solvent because next month's wages might cover it. Climate action cannot be reduced to accounting tricks. Offsets provide cover for delay – allowing companies and governments to declare progress while emissions keep climbing. This is similar to another sleight of hand recently under discussion: the 'temperature neutrality target', effectively freezing Ireland's emissions at current levels rather than driving them down. As Dr Colm Duffy of the University of Galway has warned, such an approach 'seriously jeopardises the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting warming to 1.5 °C'. It is not climate leadership; it is climate bookkeeping. Every euro and ounce of political will invested in sustaining this offsets bubble is one not directed toward genuine decarbonisation: phasing out fossil fuels, enabling renewables, or supporting communities on the front line of climate change. Until we admit that offsets – and clever new accounting targets – are part of the problem, not the solution, we will continue congratulating ourselves for what is only creative bookkeeping as the climate unravels around us. – Yours, etc, PAUL O'SHEA, Planet before Profit CLG, Ballycorus Road, Shankill, Co Dublin. Ryanair and global warming Sir, – Celestine O'Reilly writes of her disbelief that Ryanair is set to increase the number of seats out of Ireland by 15.5 per cent this winter ( Letters, August 20th ) despite evidence of the impact of global warming. Ryanair, like all businesses, responds to customer demand which clearly favours travel over climate impact, especially at such low prices (I too am guilty). Therein lies the issue. People pay lip service to the concept of dealing with climate change as long as it doesn't impact them – 'somebody else should do something about it'. I don't profess to have a solution to the problem, but blaming companies is an overly simplistic argument. Ultimately, people drive demand and therefore change – and solutions must start there. – Yours, etc, SEÁN DOWLING, Timoleague, Co Cork. Sir, – Based on our ongoing enthusiasm for air travel, even in the face of catastrophic climate change, Ryanair are very confident that most of their extra winter seats will be booked and paid for (' Ryanair adds 600,000 seats to Irish winter schedule ,' Business, August 16th). Maximising profits is their primary aim. Why should we expect them to care about climate change, unless and until it affects their bottom line? Michael O'Leary has ample evidence that Ryanair does not need to 'keep passengers happy', or to act responsibly in the face of climate change. Why bother, as long as they operate within the law and the money keeps rolling in, in ever-increasing quantities? Celestine O'Reilly ( Letters, August 20th ) refers to the 'insanity' of pumping out increasing amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. 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This increased to €1.6 billion by 2016, and in June 2024, the major projects advisory group recommended that an estimated cost of €10.4 billion would be needed – €10.4 billion no less, and no one has batted an eyelid. Some €67.6 million has been spent on the project between 2014 and 2024, and not a pipe laid. Serious consideration was not given to alternative solutions. For instance, the rivers in the East – the Liffey, Slaney, Boyne and Barrow – have a combined flow three-quarters that of the Shannon and the incremental development of these, together with the proper utilisation of the Poulaphouca reservoir (Blessington Lakes), would provide the same solution at a fraction of the cost. Existing investment is being ignored and existing resources are being underutilised. The Irish taxpayer has already paid for the construction of a 22kmsq reservoir (Poulaphouca) at the Blessington Lakes for this specific purpose, to store water for summer supply when the rivers are low. So why is Poulaphouca not being used as a long-term solution? Poulaphouca holds 190 billion litres of water and is one of the biggest reservoirs in these islands. Poulaphouca was originally intended for water supply primarily. The greater amount of the reservoir is devoted to electricity generation, a minuscule amount of electricity in the context of the overall electricity generation of the country. This must change and water supply be given priority. Cost would be almost zero. Thames Water in England are proposing to build a facility smaller than Poulaphouca (150 billion litres) and say it is needed to secure the supply for 15 million Londoners. Fifteen million no less! Poulaphouca is the centre of any possible solution in any instance, so why build a pipeline? Just optimise beneficial use of the reservoir together with the rivers of the east and save the country several billion euro. – Yours, etc, KAY MULLANE, River Shannon Protection Alliance, Ballina, Co Tipperary.
Irish Times
5 hours ago
- Irish Times
Government ‘should take advantage' of stable building costs now, say surveyors
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The Irish Sun
6 hours ago
- The Irish Sun
Irish independent senator ‘seriously considers' Presidential bid but fears Catherine Connolly has support ‘sewn up'
McCarthy pointed out the unfairness in the democratic parties for voting NEWLY elected Senator Aubrey McCarthy revealed that he would "seriously consider" running for President if there was support available for him. Independent Senator, who is also the founder of the homeless charity Tiglin, stated that "people that I have never even heard of put my name forward". 2 He is the founder of the homeless charity Tiglin Credit: Darren Fletcher Photography - Commissioned by The Sun 2 Senator Aubrey McCarthy addressed requests to put his name forward for the Aras race Credit: Alamy Speaking on RTE's Drivetime with John Cooke, he stated that his name had come up in the residential discussion in recent days. McCarthy added that, although he may not be known nationally, his charity has helped people across the country. He said: "Anybody who knows me, knows what I stand for. Nationally, I would say that I wouldn't be known but the charity I helped set up, Tiglin, has helped families from the four corners of Ireland… I have been involved for 20 years working in advocacy homeless." And that he was approached by a number of politicians in the Seanad and in Dail Eireann about putting himself forward as a candidate for the race. However, he revealed that it was "not possible" for him to gain the support of 20 members from the Oireachtas, adding: "Catherine Connolly has sewn up a lot of the independent route". "And then you go down the council route and you need the four councils. "The problem there is that there is meant to be a Diktat coming from Fine Gael to say their councillors have to support a Fine Gael candidate. "Fianna Fail, we don't know yet, but if that's the case, then that route is closed too." According to McCarthy, who was recently elected to the Seanad, it is difficult for any independent person to do so without widespread support. He added: "For a democracy, it does not sound very democratic." 'Sad to see him go' - GAA fans emotional seeing Michael D Higgins attend last men's All-Ireland final as President When asked if he would "seriously consider" running for president of Ireland, he responded that he would if there was widespread support. He also revealed that he has received phone calls from councillors to see if he would put himself forward. McCarthy said: "Without that broad support, who is going to put your posters up in Lifford, in Sneem in Kerry and also who is going to give you €500,000 to run." 'NOT VERY DEMOCRATIC' The charity found said he has heard several parties that have told members only to vote for their party's candidate, stating that "if that is the case, that is not very democratic". And he has talked to people in major political parties and would seriously consider it if he received their nomination. McCarthy claimed that although he "has not heard back" from the major parties, he has received feedback from members of those parties who are able to respond. The conversation on the show also revealed that he has called on the parties not to instruct their councillors to vote only for their party's candidate, which he said would "create a level playing field". He said: "You need independents on the ballot, in order to make the presidency a proper campaign, you can't just have it dictated by the political parties, that is unfair and undemocratic." McCarthy stated that if he were a Fianna Fail or Sinn Fein candidate, he would consider it to get support; otherwise, it wouldn't be a successful campaign.
