John Arnold: Johnny missed boat to England - my parish is so glad he did!
It might be a thought, a phrase, a picture - meeting someone or hearing a song or a poem, and I’m off down boreens of memory, bóithrín na smaointe .
Random thoughts get stringed together and then I truly understand the truth behind ‘Que sera, sera’ -whatever will be, will be.
Take last Sunday at Mass here in Bartlemy. An ordinary Sunday Mass, you might say, but I must admit my thoughts didn’t dwell too long on the reading from Ecclesiastes dealing with ‘all is vanity’ - in other words, the futility of human activity in pursuing earthly endeavours. You see, my cousin Fr Seanie Barry was the celebrant.
Just home on holidays from his Mission work in Kenya, Fr Seanie was celebrating the Mass for the anniversaries of Martin and Nora Murphy of Hightown - neighbours of mine and great community and ‘parish’ people.
Both died in recent years and are so well remembered by family and many friends.
That’s a phrase that I often heard Martin Murphy use - after great wins and narrow defeats - ‘sure, they played as good as they could’, and when all is said and done, what more can you ask for in a match or in life in general?
For the last two seasons, Bride Rovers had lost out to Blarney in vital games, and we surely didn’t want to ‘achieve’ an unenviable three-in-a-row. All the pundits had us as outsiders, but that was for Sunday afternoon and at 9.30am Mass that seemed a long way away to me!
I remember Martin Murphy’s father Johnny, well, though I was only nearing my twelfth birthday when he died in December, 1968. He had a round, pleasant face and always seemed to be wearing a cap!
He was born in Ballymurphy, near Innishannon, back in 1889 - his father was Martin, and Mary Madden was his mother.
Leaving school at 14, Johnny worked at various jobs in his home parish and the surrounding area in the early 1900s.
Around 1915, along with a cousin, Johnny Murphy decided to emigrate, to ‘take the boat’ to England in search of more lucrative employment. Both men walked to Cork city with their bag on their back with plans to board the on the quayside.
Through some misunderstanding or other or wrong information, by the time they got to Cork the ship had sailed. Yes, in reality they had missed the boat.
That reminds me of another man that had travelled from west Waterford to Cobh to board the Titanic - he too missed the boat out of Queenstown, as it was known at the time – I attended his funeral in Cork about 70 years later, he lived into his 90s!
That’s another story for another day, but getting back to Johnny Murphy - disappointed no doubt to have missed the boat and his ticket to a new life, he secured a job in Cork city for a while.
Then he went to work on O’Donovan’s farm in Glengarriffe, Leamlara - this family had connections in Bartlemy so Johnny ended up working for William ‘Captain’ O’Connell in Ballinakilla – in sight of Bartlemy Church.
O’Connell was elected captain of the local hurling team in the 1880s and ’til the day he died in 1939 he was known as the Captain.
Before tarred roads came into being, the roads were ‘sheeted’ with broken stones. Men like Johnny Murphy ‘contracted’ with the county council to maintain sections of roads and were paid accordingly. They quarried and broke the stones by hand, tough work indeed.
Johnny and his wife Nora, or Noie, as she was generally called, had two sons, Tom and Martin.
Growing up in rural Cork in the 1930s and ’40s, following the local and the county hurling teams was the thing to do. The railway station in Fermoy was a gift. Trains ran regularly to big games in Thurles, Limerick, Killarney, Ennis, and Dungarvan, and Dublin too, so cycling the eight miles to Fermoy was nothing.
Tom Murphy and a friend went to Thurles by train one day - Christy Ring was the star player back then. When the game was over, the two lads, like thousands more, ran back to the station to get the first train home. They got separated and ended up on different trains across the platform.
Out the open window, his friend shouted, ‘You’re on the wrong train, Murphy’ - but he wasn’t! His friend had sat down on a seat in the wrong train and was quickly on his way to Limerick!
Up until his death in 1991, Tom, a great man for ‘sayings’, would laugh as he repeated the words of his friend ‘You’re on the wrong train, Murphy’!
His brother Martin played minor and junior hurling, but the Bride Rovers club was at a low ebb at the end of the 1940s. A new club was started in 1951 and Martin was one of the 39 who subscribed 2/6 each to raise funds.
When I joined Bride Rovers in 1972, Martin Murphy was one of those supporters at every game. His wife Nora was a close relation of the famous Limerick hurlers, the Bennis brothers of Patrickswell, so the Murphy household was steeped in the GAA from all sides!
Martin served as a team selector with the club and was a great friend to anyone who ever wore the green white and gold jersey.
Johnny Murphy died in 1968; 30 years later we won the County Junior Hurling Championship for the first time ever.
I remember well the morning after that win. I went for de paper early - just to be sure I wasn’t dreaming! I drove up to Hightown to meet a beaming Martin. Naturally, he was at the final. We were elated, overjoyed, and emotional. He recalled days when we struggled to ‘put out 15’, and now County champions.
Thankfully, Martin lived to see his beloved club contest Intermediate and Senior county finals.
All those thoughts came tumbling into my mind last Sunday morning.
We won the match in Páirc Uí Rinn too and, as Martin often said, ‘sure, they played as good as they could’ -and what more can we ever ask for?
Ah yes, and to think of Johnny Murphy walking the road from Innishannon to Cork all those years ago. They say he missed the boat but not really, he stayed in Cork, and wasn’t it great he did so?
App?
