Charlie & the Bhoys Official Site

HOME

CDs

DVD

LYRICS

CONTACT

GIG GUIDE

SHOP

MORE




		Fáilte - Banna ceoil Cheiltigh Ghlasgú is fearr ar domhan

BOOKING INFO

If you have any enquires, big or small, then e-mail us here.

EMAILING LIST

Join our e-mailing list here for information on CATB. This will not bombard you with emails. Ten per year average.

xPLAYER NIGHTS

Would you like members of the Lisbon Lions to attend your night alongside CATB? Or maybe an ex player from 70s, 80s or 90s. Click here for more information.

DID YOU KNOW?

Charlie & the Bhoys were the first band to combine 'Let the People Sing' and 'This Land is Your Land'. It seems to be the normal way to sing both the songs these days.

STORY - BROTHER WALFRID

On the 18th of May in the small sleepy village of Ballymote, County Sligo a baby boy was born into the Kerins family. Christened Andrew by his parents, John Kerins and Elizabeth Finn, he would survive the ravages of a famine-stricken Ireland and devote his life to the welfare of the poor and needy, an endeavour which ultimately culminated in the foundation of one of the world's greatest football club.

Andrew Kerins was but an infant when the first reported case of potato rot was recorded in Ireland on the 13th of September 1845. Known as 'The Great Hunger', from 1846 to 1851 a series of failures in the potato crop resulted in at least 1.5 million deaths from famine and typhus.

Kerins, however, managed to survive the destitution of a broken country and joined the Marist Priests' Teaching Order on the 11th of September 1864, at the age of 24.

Taking the name Brother Walfrid, he subsequently moved to Scotland and settled in the sprawling East End area of Glasgow, where after teaching at St Mary's School he took up a new change in 1874 as headmaster of the newly-opened Sacred Heart School.

In association with the St Vincent de Paul Society, Brother Walfrid organized the Poor Children's Penny Dinner' Table where children and some old people were provided with one warm substantial meal each day.

Brother Dorotheus did likewise at St Mary's and the school's Centenary History publication recall: 'The penny was charged only when no great hardship was involved to preserve the self-respect of the beneficiaries. Many parents whose children needed the meal would have baulked at the idea of receiving charity but were reconciled by the face-saving device of a token payment.'

Brother Walfrid was an energetic, enthusiastic man and a born organizer. Besides his clerical and educational duties, he ran youth football teams, initiated and chaired a literary society for the school leavers in the parish and was noted for his persistence and success in pursuing prospective employers on behalf his young students.

He shrewdly observed the growing interest in the sport of football among the working class and became involved in arranging exhibition games for charity.

After the glowing success of Edinburgh Hibernians in the 1887 Scottish Cup Final, the representatives of St Mary's, St Andrew's and St Alphonsus parishes decided it was time Glasgow had an Irish football club.

A number of stormy meetings took place during September 1887 and the new club was formally constituted on the 6th of November that year.

Brother Walfrid advocated the name 'Celtic', which was duly adopted in preference to that of Glasgow Hibernians. The name was consistent with the fact that he had previously organized teams under the name 'Columba', which evoked the common religious inheritance of Scotland and Ireland. But so unfamiliar were the Glasgow Irish with the name 'Celtic', they immediately mispronounced it with a soft 'C'. To his dying day, Brother Walfrid maintained the proper pronunciation.

Although he held no official position of power in the club, Brother Walfrid's influence was far-reaching and extended into every committee and meeting.

Only one week after the meeting of 6 November, six acres of vacant ground were leased beside Janefield Cemetery. For the next six months, the Marist priest and his throng of voluntary workers laboured night and day with their hands, driven on by love and pride, to transform the vacant site into the first Celtic Park.

In 1892, Brother Walfrid was transferred to London, where he continued his excellent educational work. However, with his departure the club lost its unswerving primary interest in charity. Thankfully, though, when the second decade of the 2oth century arrived, Celtic displayed an increased awareness of social responsibility and a welcome return to the older values of charitable concern for orphanages and people who had fallen on hard times. It was a development which pleased Brother Walfrid.

His last published comment about Celtic came in the summer of 1911, when he renewed acquaintance with the Celtic officials and players as they returned from a Continental tour.

In a conversation with Tom Maley, then a football writer with the 'Glasgow Observer', he was reported to have said: "Well, well, time has brought changes; outside ourselves there are few left of the old brigade. I know none of the present lot of players, but they are under the old colours and are quartered in the dear old quarters, and that suffices."

Not long after this meeting, Brother Walfrid's health broke down and he crossed back over the border to the Marist house at Mount St Michael, Dumfries, where after a prolonged illness his remains were laid to rest on the 17th of April 1915.

Willie Maley paid the following tribute as he reflected on the great man's career: "He must have spent a considerable period near the Blarney Stone in his young days, as his persuasive powers once experienced could never be forgotten. His work for Celtic had been a labour of love remained as keen as ever to hear how his 'boys', as he termed the team, were doing."

Brother Walfrid lives on today, not only in the annals of Celtic Football Club, but also in his native Ballymore, County Sligo, where the community park commemorates his name.

Charlie & the Bhoys play their second fund raising night for the Brother Walfrid Statue to an audience including, Sean Fallon, Stevie Chalmers, Bobby Lennox, John Fallon and Celtic Chairman Brian Quinn to celebrate the unveiling of The Brother Walfrid Memorial Statue.
The Statue can be found in the birth place of Brother Walfrid in Ballymote, Sligo.

MORE STORIES:	Meeting Albert Kidd \| Brother Walfrid \| Irish Flag Flutter \| Jock Stein
	Johnny Doyle \| John Lennon \| John Thomson \| Willie Maley