An Irishman's Diary on Brother Walfrid, Sligo-born founder of Celtic Football Club

Andrew Kerins was born in Ballymote, Co. Sligo, Ireland on 18 May 1840. He left Ireland at the age of 15 years to find work in Scotland. He joined the Marist Brothers, took the name Brother Walfrid and became a school teacher. He encouraged the school children where he taught in poor areas of Glasgow to play football. He even started up some football clubs. One of those clubs exists to this day and is known all over the world. It is called Celtic Football Club.

I have just written an Irishman's Diary about Brother Walfrid and the Celtic story in the Irish Times newspaper. Read it here.

Sculpture of Brother Walfrid, Ballymote, Co. Sligo. Image source.

Charles de Gaulle in Ireland (10 May-19 June 1969)

General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) came to Ireland for the first time in May 1969, just two weeks after he resigned the Presidency of France. He spent six weeks in Ireland and stayed in Co. Kerry (Sneem and Killarney), Co. Galway (Connemara) and Dublin.

Part of front page of The Kerryman newspaper from Saturday 17 May 1969. There were articles in French 'Salut au Général' and Irish 'Cead Mile Failte chuig an Rioghacht!' welcoming de Gaulle to Kerry, which is know as 'The Kingdom'.

De Gaulle landed in Cork airport on Saturday 10 May 1969 at 10:50am. He was greeted by the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch and his wife, Máirín. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Frank Aiken, was also in attendance. From there, de Gaulle headed to a hotel near the village of Sneem on the Iverage Peninsula in Co. Kerry. There is a memorial to him in Sneem. Find out more about it here. He stayed at the Heron's Cove hotel until 23 May when he headed for Connemara, Co. Galway, a place familiar to many French people because of the popular song, Les lacs du Connemara. There, he stayed at the Cashel House Hotel.

Memorial in Sneem, Co. Kerry. Image source.

On 3 June 1969, he headed to Killarney and stayed in an annex of the big house on the Kenmare Estate. De Gaulle's aide de camp, Admiral François de Flohic, said that the pubs in Killarney were "so different from the padded, clublike surroundings of London pubs". De Gaulle went for walks and had plenty of time to write. He even started to write Mémoires d'Espoir, an unfinished memoir, while in Ireland.

Charles de Gaulle and his wife walking in Ireland. His aide de camp is also pictured. Image source.

One of the reasons why De Gaulle left France at this time was to get away from the media frenzy that was happening there around the Presidential Election. An election that was taking place to fill the post that he had just vacated when his constitutional referendum for political reform was narrowly rejected by the electorate.

He visited the Irish President, Eamon de Valera, in Aras an Uachtaráin on 17 June and the following day, he visited the National Museum of Ireland. He also visited the ancient monastic site of Glendalough in Co. Wicklow. In the evening time, he was invited to an official dinner at Aras an Uachtaráin. On June 19, he was a guest of the Taoiseach at Dublin Castle, where they had lunch with the Irish government. He left Ireland that afternoon.

If you want to find out more about the visit, have a look at the following books and television programmes:

BOOKS

De Gaulle and Ireland, ed. by Pierre Joannon (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 1991)

Franco-Irish Connections: Essays, Memoirs and Poems in Honour of Pierre Joannon, ed. by Jane Conroy (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009).

TELEVISION

'De Gaulle, derniers secrets', Public Sénat, 7 November 2020. Watch it here.

'De Gaulle in Éirinn', TG4, 11 November 2020. Watch it here.