An Moltóir isn’t normally given to lofty thoughts, but with the hurling year now finally put to bed and the long nights drawn in, he recently found himself musing about the role of the artist in Irish society. One supposes they talk about nothing else during the half-time breaks at club matches in Tulla.

It has frequently been suggested that artists (the poets and painters and so on) have their finger on the pulse of society – that they can detect where a country is going and, through their writings and paintings, can accelerate the process of getting there. Wasn’t it WB Yeats who agonised about the terrible beauty that was born as a result of young men being inspired by his poetry to go out and fight in 1916?

But then An Moltóir asked himself: just how do these people actually know just what is flowing through the pulse of the nation? What kind of contact do they have with the common man or woman? Perhaps, like Eamon De Valera, they think they just have to look into their own hearts to find out what the nation is feeling. If so, it is as dubious a methodology as Dev’s was: in his time the youths and maidens at the crossroads weren’t dancing – they were waiting for the bus to take them to England.

So what’s my drift (assuming, says you, there is one)? Well, it’s just that, for almost one hundred years now, Gaelic games have been at the very heart of Irish identity and Irish culture. They reach deep into almost every community, mobilising hundreds of thousands of people as players, supporters and organisers. Today, the nation looks on agog as Tyrone and Armagh, and Cork and Kilkenny, tear into each other for the honour of family, parish and county – just as it was mesmerised by the confrontations of Christy Ring and Mick Mackey sixty years ago. The primal necessity of such an institution is clearly evident from the way the games have not only survived but thrived despite the idiots who have been in charge of running affairs down through the years.

And yet, where is all this reflected in the national artistic heritage? Where are the great poems celebrating the epic struggles which, to echo Patrick Kavanagh, reduced the "Munich bother" to insignificance. For many people still, the first Sunday in the September of 1939 is the day of the "thunder and lightning" All-Ireland, not the day the Second World War broke out. Has anyone seen one major painting or sculpture depicting scenes such as Ned Power’s soaring catch under pressure from Christy Ring in Thurles in 1962?

Powering out from Ring.
Has anyone read a single novel which even makes an oblique reference to hurling or Gaelic football, even though these have been the staples of conversation in pubs, outside creameries and at cattle marts all over the country since at least the 1930s?

True, the brave and bould RTÉ did attempt to make some concession to the significance of Gaelic games in Irish society by giving us not one, but two helpings of the series "On Home Ground". The problem is, it was clear that whoever wrote the scripts for those series didn’t know the first thing either about football or about football people. But then, An Moltóir asked himself: what do you expect? Remembering back to his school days, there were always those sensitive souls wrapped up in literature and music and suchlike who went on to become the artists of later years. These were the very people who never set foot inside a GAA ground to even watch a game, never mind play in it. Rather than rejoicing at the spectacle of powerful bodies smashing into each other on the playing field, they shuddered at the thought and looked away (not that they were even there to see it in the first place).

So is it any wonder that Gaelic games – and sports in general – have never figured in the ouevre of the nation’s artists? Nor indeed is Ireland an exception in this regard. An Moltóir has been in a few art galleries around the world (carrying the wife’s shopping, wouldn’t you know, but still having a peek here and there, just to justify the price of admission) and cannot recall any scenes of a sporting nature – except for the odd horse race. One supposes that if a penniless painter is on the lookout for an ould bit of sponsorship, the sport of kings isn’t a bad place to start. One wonders if someone was to start up a St.Vincent’s school of painting (we’re talking about Marino here, by the way, not the one-eared Dutch wonder), would Bertie Ahern be moved to give them a few of the bob being saved through the merciless dismantling of the Community Employment Scheme? A much more likely scenario is a scheme of tax concessions for the Punchestown Poets, a previously unknown group who recently sent a casual letter of introduction to that great patron of the arts (well, the racing arts anyway), the Minister for Finance.

But, dear reader, can it be that you are still wondering where all these musings originated from? Well, it so happened that your scribe had occasion to spend a few days recently in the wonderful city of Prague. Where once it had a somewhat austere beauty, now, following a big paint job to tidy up the mess left by last year’s floods, and the incursion of fast food joints and American tourists in the aftermath of the Communist collapse, it has the appearance and atmosphere of a giant Disney theme park. Of course, part of the new cultural package is a selection of Irish pubs, and An Moltóir had occasion to venture into one of these, Caffrey’s, located on a corner of the Old Square. And there he was transfixed by a picture taking up a large portion of one of the walls.

The Prague picture
An Moltóir found himself being dragged back several times to Caffrey’s (the decent pint of stout was admittedly an additional attraction) and just sitting staring at the picture for ages. We are not going to attempt an analysis of the picture here, except to observe that there are so many different aspects to it – its composition and imagery, the faces, the surrounds, the gear. It also brought back memories, as An Moltóir recalls one particular hurling ground where the teams togged out in a pub up the town and then marched down the street to (and staggered back from) the pitch. Typically, an enquiry made at the bar about the picture’s provenance was met by a quizzical look and a shrug.

So somewhere in Ireland there is an artist who has – in An Moltóir’s view – captured the essence of what being a member of the hurling community is all about. Perhaps there is some reader out there who recognises this picture (the image on the wall in Caffrey’s is presumably a print) and who can enlighten us further. In the meantime, let us celebrate this particular version of the men in green!