FROM THE ARCHIVES:Myles na gCopaleen was outraged by the Irish in the GAA's official programme for the All-Ireland football final the second-last time it was between teams from Ulster (Cavan, the victors) and Connacht (Mayo). – JOE JOYCE
A GREATER budget of mistakes, ineptitude, pretence and plain ignorance I have rarely seen, and I’ve seen it very rarely even since I saw it, so that what I have to report is merely what I saw at a glance (rather rarely, too!) The cover is done in green, white and ochre. Dominating it is the trade mark of the Dunlop Rubber Company but under the effigy of the monstrously-bearded inventor of the pneumatic football is the legend “Michael Cusack, Founder of the G.A.A.”. (Would a better name for him be Michael Queue-Sack?) Above his head there is a religious medal and above that again the words Clár Oifigeamhail, funny spelling and all. Below Michael Dunlop are listed, in gigantic Gaelic type, the Irish forms of the names of Cavan, Mayo, Dublin and Tyrone. No great scholarship is entailed in printing proper names, but three of the names are wrong. Cavan lacks its definite article, inevitable with anyone who knows what the word means. Mayo bears upon its tail an incorrect accent. The word for Dublin is preceded by an apostrophe which, though typographically slight, makes the word an atrocity too painful to explain to the lay reader.
When they can’t get even the cover right, it is to be expected that there is still better fun inside. The word for “Anthem” is spelt in the heading Amhrán. Twice in the text of the Gaelic “version” of the song (itself a really fearful mess) the word is Abhrán. The anthem itself is called An tAmhrán Náisiúnta, Amhrán na Laoch, and Amhrán na bhFiann. Under this item we encounter a strange fact in the mathematics of hospitality. There is a welcome (“extended,” of course) to the people arriving to fork out six thousand quid to the G.A.A., written in language that could not be bettered for stage-Irish Paddy-Whackery. At the top of this thing one reads, in Irish: ONE AND TWENTY WELCOMES BEFORE YE Under it the following: ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND WELCOMES
The unbelievable “welcome” itself takes the following form:
“To all the patrons of our native games who have come from everyone (sic) of the thirty-two counties to witness today’s great final we extend a hearty welcome to Croke Park. Nor is our welcome any less warm for the hundreds of Gaels who have come hosting from beyond the wave to be present at the final to-day.To those of Irish birth and blood we say Se do bheatha abhaile, welcome home to the land of your fathers; to those who are Irish neither by birth nor by blood, we also extend a kindly welcome from the Gaels of Ireland, gathered here in the heart of Gaeldom.”
And believe it or not, there are shamrocks in the margin! On the next page there is more paddy loutishness, including a song which begins: “Far away from the land of shamrock and heather, In search of a living as exiles we roam . . .”