It Occurs To Me: Divided loyalties
A few years ago a friend asked me how I’d handle being at a match where my nephews were playing against each other.
I told him I’d get my best Bertie Ahern anorak with a big hood out of the attic and stay quiet in a corner of the ground, studiously avoiding my sisters!
The Reid brothers
As an aside, he also mentioned the Termon connection, Ricky and Barry Gallager. Thankfully, I didn’t need the anorak in the studio and thoroughly enjoyed what was a brilliant encounter. Afterwards, a friend pondered: “I know Jim McGuinness tried to persuade Murphy to rejoin Donegal, but had no luck. If he had twenty minutes every county game, we’d have won the All-Ireland!”
Ah go on, Michael, give it a lash! (Just as an aside, David Clifford had eight shots in the first half for Fossa against Laune Rangers in Kerry…he scored 3 - 5. Despite this, Laune won!)
Ciaran’s ‘cycle Of Hope’
The Cannons of Straleel were neighbours and friends all those years ago when we lived in Bogagh, Kilcar.
Aodh Cannon and I were contemporaries and good friends, and he was a great footballer, an integral part of the Kilcar U-21 sides which won three championships in a row, 1972, 1973 and 1974. He was also a big asset with the Kilcar Championship winning team in 1980.
I laughed when I read Peter Campbell’s enjoyable interview last year with the great Michael Carr, who said: “That first team (in 1972) was a big physical team. I think myself and Aodh Cannon were the two smallest on the team. We wouldn’t be manning the midfield with the likes of Danny Gillespie and Gusty (Michael O’Donnell) around. We were scrawny.” My reason for laughing was that - if Carr and Cannon were scrawny - the rest must have been pure Schwarzeneggers!
In any event, Aodh Cannon’s nephew, Ciaran, who is a well known Highland Radio DJ and sports presenter, will be oiling the bicycle chain next month as he tackles the marathon Mizen to Malin Cycle of Hope charity event. He and 70 others will begin their cycle from Mizen Head in Cork on Sunday the 8th of September. The wheels will ‘birl’ for 6 days before finishing in Malin, after cycling for 750km.
The fundraising target was originally and at the time of writing, it’s close to €4000. There was a bucket collection at Leitir, Kilcar on Friday 23rd August and in four hours it raised €1515.30. Ciaran is a passionate GAA man, currently helping out with the Kilcar Senior team and is the CLG Chill Chartha registrar. A regular in Finn Park (his mum Carmel is from Ballybofey), Ciaran should land at the Millpark, Donegal, on September 13th before the last leg to Malin.
What’s in a name?
The earliest recorded example of a European surname is the Irish Ó Cléirigh (O’Clery or O’Cleary), meaning “descendant of the clerk,” recorded in County Galway in 916 AD.
By the 15th century, this learned family was well established in Donegal.
Mícheál Ó Cléirigh, historian and scribe, chief of the ‘Four Masters’, was born the fourth son of Donnchadh (son of Uilliam, son of Tuathail) Ó Cléirigh and his wife Honora Ultach (Onora Ó hUltacháin).
In 1630 he described himself as ‘dar duthchas ‘s darb foghlaim croinic’ (a chronicler by descent and education). He was a direct descendant of Tadhg Cam Ó Cléirigh (d. 1492), who, according to his obituary in the ‘Annals of the Four Masters’, had been ollamh to Ó Domhnaill in literature, poetry, and history.
The Ó Cléirigh family prospered as the political power of the Ó Domhnaill clan expanded in west Ulster through the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. His mother's maiden name links her to the professional family who were hereditary physicians to the Ó Domhnaill family. Mícheál's date of birth can be placed no earlier than the latter part of 1589 and more probably several years later. His baptismal name was Tadhg, and he was known in his native Donegal as ‘Tadhg an tSléibhe’ (Tadhg of the mountain).
Notwithstanding the fact that the O'Cléirigh’s were credited with having Europe’s first acknowledged surname, ‘Tadhg an tSléibhe’ gives it a lovely Donegal touch, and I was fascinated as a youngster by the names of local characters around Carrigart such as Paddy Long Barney and Paddy Mandy Hiúdaí. Everybody seemed to have a family moniker, except us, but when I first discovered that my Kilcar maternal grandad Frank Byrne, was known as Francie Mhicí Lochlainn, I secretly relished the discovery that on my maternal side, I was Francie Anna Francie Mhicí Lochlainn.
A few years ago, I wrote about the appallingly embarrassing names given to innocent wanes by parents with Hollywood aspirations, and it's got progressively worse. When I wrote my original article I mentioned the late rock star, Frank Zappa, whose children were Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan, and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen, proving that it wasn’t Woodbine Zappa smoked at the time of conception or birth. In Scotland I came across one Pocahontas McDuff, but the pair that topped them all were the McClatchy twins, whose mother obviously had catwalk notions, naming them Armani and Versace McClatchy! Recently, in Dublin, I heard a mammy screeching “Will you come back here, Scarlett!” (Sounded like ‘Scarla’!) and a friend overheard another shouting “Jasus, Rhapsody, will you sit down!”
I’ll stick with the Mhicí Lochlainns!
Bark worse than bite?
I see from recent statistics that parking fines in Donegal have more than doubled in the past 12 months. Drivers received 10,018 fines last year, compared to 4,892 in 2022.
Meanwhile, there were no dog fouling fines issued here in 2023. As a friend remarked: “It’s handier to nail the motorist!” She was referring to the fact that her local walk is infested daily with dog poo while the number of traffic wardens has been increased in the town. It’s about time our local authorities got their s..t together!
The brain worm joins Trump!
I see where Robert F Kennedy Jr has suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.
Talk about two peas in a pod…Tim Walz will have more ammunition for his ‘weird’ denunciations. The Kennedys have disowned Robert F and no wonder. Kennedy once told attorneys that a doctor believed an abnormality in his brain scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.”
He also posted a video on social media admitting to comedian Roseanne Barr that he left a dead bear in New York City’s Central Park a decade ago. Kennedy says in the video that another driver had killed the bear, and he pulled over and put it in his car with plans to skin it and “put the meat in my refrigerator.”
“I’m a very adventurous eater,” Kennedy has boasted: “I’ll eat virtually anything. There’s two things I wouldn’t eat — well, three. I wouldn’t eat a human, I wouldn’t eat a monkey, and I wouldn’t eat a dog. I think I’d eat anything else.” (Brain worms come to mind!)
He has also shared other conspiracy theories about vaccines, AIDS and the assassination of his uncle, JFK. Trump is welcome to him!
Mind you, since Covid, I have met people whom I thought fairly rational who have lost the plot with equally bizarre conspiracy theories. No bear eaters yet…but I wait with bated breath!
Brillo! Absolutely Brillo!
A friend took her new white motor down the country to visit her mammy. On the way, in the foul weather, the car became less white, so when she was enjoying a wee sleep-in, the aforementioned mammy decided to do the daughter a favour and give the motor a good wash.
The problem was - in her innocence - she used a Brillo pad! When the daughter awoke and looked out, it’s no exaggeration to say she had to be ‘scraped’ off the mother!