One of the few bright sparks in the Irish football team on Tuesday night was Festy Ebosele, whose hard-running performance earned the man of the match award.
Speaking of sparks, the last thing he did on the pitch – outsprinting defenders to set up what should have been the opening goal – was described by commentators as “electric”. Then, in a controversial 64th minute substitution, he was plugged out. But he’d already done enough to be judged hero of the hour.
Wexford-born of Nigerian parents, Ebosele has a growing cult among Irish supporters not just because of the pace and exuberance with which he plays. It also helps that, thanks to his first name – which is displayed on his shirt, instead of the more usual surname – he sounds like an oul’ fella from Connemara.
Festus, from the Latin for “joyful”, is a popular boy’s name in Nigeria. But in Ireland, it has always been concentrated in and around Clifden, often as a polite substitute for the problematic local saint’s name, Féchín.
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That has a soft ‘c’ in the West: witness the anglicised Templefeheen, a church ruin on Omey Island. But it hardens as it crosses Ireland. Hence a less poetic relic of the saint on the east coast: Termonfeckin. For this or other reasons, boys christened Féchín were often renamed Festus. Then, almost invariably, they ended up as Festys.
James Joyce was not a big football fan, but he would surely have followed the rise of Ireland’s latest Festy with interest. In his little read but much analysed Finnegans Wake, a pivotal character is called Festy King. This used to puzzle American scholars, who thought it a pure invention on the author’s part, and a title – punning on feisty or festivity – rather than a personal name.
But Joyce was a magpie for journalistic detail. And we now know that he lifted the persona from a court report in the Connacht Tribune 102 years ago this week, on October 20th, 1923. Not only is the forename common in Connemara, so is the surname. Hence the magpie’s haul on that occasion, as summed up by one scholar:
“In addition to the plaintiff, Pat O’Donnell, there are two Festy Kings, father and son, as well as a number of other Kings, including a Simon King, whose name Joyce notes and uses. Also reported are two trials concerning altercations at different fairs between Pat O’Donnell and the Kings. In one trial Pat appeals his conviction for attacking the Kings. In the other, the one on which Joyce took notes, the Kings and a certain Peter Naughton are accused of attacking Pat, who they say stole some sheep.”
Before the football star’s emergence, Ireland’s most distinguished Festy was probably Festy Mortimer, a boat-builder and fisherman who featured in Tim Robinson’s book: Connemara – The last Pool of Darkness
It was a bonus that the court reports included florid outbursts of language, conceived in the district’s mother tongue. Here, for example, the prosecution challenges Festy King:
– On your oath, did you not strike O’Donnell with a stone?– “On my oath, before God and his honour, I did not fire a stone either before or after I was born up to this day.” (laughter).
And here, the court addresses the subject of bad lighting at the scene of an assault: “At the request of Mr Greene it was decided to write again to the railway company with a view to getting the railway premises lighted by electricity. Mr Greene remarked it was a shame that people coming off the train at night had to grope their way in the dark at the railway station for there was not as much light there as would dim a child’s altar (laughter).”
Both laughter-inducing phrases ended up in the Wake. But it also increased the appeal of this comic court case to the author that the action had taken place in the middle of “Joyce Country”. Or as he put in an early draft of FW: “ ... in Joyce’s country in the heart of a wellfamed poteen district”.
As you’d expect, Festy Joyces are not unknown in that area either. One of them used to have a pub in the village of Recess. Elsewhere, I’m told, there is or used to be a French Festy too. He came to Connemara to learn thatching, then stayed, and was awarded honorary Festyness by the locals.
Before the football star’s emergence, Ireland’s most distinguished Festy was probably Festy Mortimer, a boat-builder and fisherman who featured in Tim Robinson’s book: Connemara – The last Pool of Darkness (2008).
His own vocations aside, Mortimer became a footnote in the history of European philosophy, when for a period in the late 1940s, he was a neighbour to the temporary Connemara resident, Ludwig Wittgenstein, widely considered the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. During a visit to Ireland, Wittgenstein spent time living near Killary Harbour.
He was probably exploring new ideas in mathematical philosophy there, and scholars might have enjoyed poring over his notes. But they can’t, because Festy Mortimer did cleaning work in the house where Wittgenstein stayed. And in an interview 45 years later, he recalled burning at the philosopher’s request “a very large pile of used manuscript papers”.
