A Variety of Prophets Gerry OShea
“There
are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in your
philosophy, Horatio.” Shakespeare’s Hamlet uttered these dramatic words criticizing
his friend Horatio’s over-dependence on logical reasoning for his grasp of
reality.
Renaissance thinking was in the ascendant
among the intelligentsia in those years with its stress on the scientific
method in searching for truth. Hamlet’s words warn us that imagination and
intuition also provide valuable insights into the conundrums of life.
Shakespeare
was not in the minds of the Mayo people when they won their second All-Ireland
Football Championship in a row in September 1950, although people still discuss
a post-game controversy that can be defined in terms of the disagreement between
Horatio and Hamlet.
Winning
the Sam Maguire Cup was and remains today the apogee of achievement in Irish
sport. Saying that the people in that county were elated at this victory
certainly counts as an understatement.
The team
members traveled home from Dublin on Monday morning, anticipating huge crowds in
their itinerary as they paraded jubilantly through the county waving the famous
Sam Maguire Trophy. When they reached the village of Foxford on the river Moy in
the northeastern part of the county, the raucous celebrations were heard far
and wide.
Their
jubilant noisemaking clashed with funeral services in the church, and the
officiating priest’s call for respectful silence for the duration of the
services went unheeded. Defying a priest’s wishes invited anger and recrimination
in Ireland in those years, and this man was exceptionally irate that his
request was being disregarded. He saw it as a direct challenge to his authority
as well as disrespect for the bereaved family.
Knowing the
vibrant history of prophetic declarations in the bible, the minister, red-faced
and incandescent with rage, condemned the victorious county team and prophesied
that Mayo would never win another All-Ireland championship while any of the victorious
players were still alive.
Most people
considered that the clergyman overreacted. One wag commented that it would have
taken another appearance by the Blessed Virgin, as allegedly happened in nearby
Knock, to dampen the enthusiasm of the football celebrations led by that team
of heroes.
The county
has had numerous winning ladies’ and minor football teams since 1950. However,
while the senior county team has contested eleven finals since that great
victory 74 years ago, amazingly, they lost every one of them. For the record,
the last member of the team, the great Paddy Prendergast, passed away just
three years ago at age 95.
Mentioning
the prophetic dimension of this event may seem to trivialize the warnings of
the great prophets of the Old Testament, but the Foxford showdown still casts a
long shadow. For the teams from this great footballing county to be starved of
success for over 70 years just defies all logic.
Eleven big-day losses before crowds of over 75,000
people in Croke Park with all the attendant community heartache got people talking
about priestly curses and prophecies, especially as the number of defeats
increased from one decade to the next.
In the
Judeo-Christian tradition, prophets were commissioned to speak for the Almighty.
They often rebuked the people for wandering from their allegiance to Yahweh and
warned about negative consequences for their wayward actions.
Jeremiah, known as the prophet of gloom,
preached against the evils of injustice and poverty in his time. Isaiah walked
around naked for three years to get the people’s attention for his penitential
message about rejecting their evil ways.
Nathan risked banishment and even execution
when he openly criticized the great King David for cultivating an adulterous
relationship with Bathsheba, as well as assigning her husband to play a
particularly dangerous role in a tribal battlefield, leading to his death.
King David
repented his lechery and famously wrote Psalm 22, predicting the crucifixion over
1000 years before Christ was born. These men - and a few prophetesses, too –
shared a sense of outrage that the Jewish people, at various times, had
abandoned the God who had brought them out of the land of Egypt and often
predicted dire consequences for their sinful behavior.
The Foxford
priest’s dilemma could not be compared to the gravity of Nathan’s rebuke of King
David’s dastardly misbehavior, but evidently, he felt so strongly about all the
noise ruining the funeral ceremony that he drew on some spiritual power for
revenge.
We recall
Patrick Kavanagh’s famous poem “Epic,” in which he contrasts the historical
significance of grand events with the importance of local seemingly trivial
conflicts. The poem is set during the Munich crisis of 1938, when European
leaders, led by Neville Chamberlain, tried to assuage Hitler’s claims to
Sudetenland.
The agreement they reached, which became
synonymous with appeasement, was not the focus of Kavanagh’s sonnet. In fact,
he diminishes the gravitas of those negotiations by naming them “the Munich
bother.” The poet who hailed from Inniskeen, a village in County Monaghan, was
famous for his ability to transform the ordinary and banal into something with
wider significance.
This poem
talks about a violent feud between the Duffys and the McCabes over a small
patch of land. Kavanagh understands the pretentious irony of writing about such
trivial matters. “Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind. He said : I
made the Illiad from such a local row. Gods make their own importance.”
Perhaps the
doubters of the powers of that Mayo priest should reflect on the whisperings of
Homer’s ghost in Patrick Kavanagh’s ear – gods make their own importance.
Gerry OShea
blogs at wemustbetalking.com
Comments
Post a Comment