Details
Title: Walfrid: A Life of Faith Community and Football
Author: Michael Connolly
Published: 4 November 2022
Homepage: Br Walfrid
Link: Thirsty Books
Synopsis
Walfrid: A Life of Faith Community and Football
Andrew Kerins [Brother Walfrid] [1840 – 1915] was one of the most significant Irish immigrants to Scotland. He was an outstanding individual in relation to Catholic education and charity in Glasgow and a major contributor to the emergence of organised sport in Scotland in the late nineteenth century.
He was but one individual, amongst countless thousands of victims, who survived the catastrophe of An Gorta Mor in Ireland, only to be forced to leave behind family, community and homeland in the hope of finding a better life overseas. Over one million others perished owing to the prevalence of starvation and disease during Ireland’s darkest period. Kerins left for Glasgow as a fifteen-year-old boy and the spectre of hunger, accompanied by a concern for the spiritual and physical well-being of others, are motifs which endured throughout his long and impactful life.
Dr Michael Connolly’s research points up three major themes which motivated Walfrid’s actions in life with the Marist Brothers – namely, his Catholic faith, communitybased charitable action, alongside a close and enduring association with football, and Celtic FC in particular. He played a leading role in originally founding Celtic in order to support the impoverished Irish Catholic diaspora in Glasgow. Later in life he did the same work in London’s East End.
‘Managed to read this lovely book on long haul flights this week! Who knew that when my children were cheering on Glasgow’s legendary Celtic football team that the club’s foundational story was of an altogether different kind of heroism and one that richly deserves this scholarly telling. History has for too long overlooked the seminal role in Celtic’s narrative of Brother Walfrid, a humble Irish monk whose life was one of utterly unselfish but visionary service far from home. Michael Connolly in this beautifully told biography, makes Brother Walfrid visible again as he deserves to be. Congratulations and best wishes for its success. I loved the book!’
Mary McAleese
‘An extraordinary book on an extraordinary man. The definitive story of Brother Walfrid. . . ’
Hugh McDonald, journalist
‘I would like to congratulate Dr Michael Connolly for this excellent and definitive biography.’
Peter Lawwell, Celtic Football Club
‘. . . a well-researched and fascinating account of Brother Walfrid’s life. ’
Alison Healy, journalist and author
‘Michael Connolly’s research provides fascinating and important information on the life and work of a man who had a significant impact on the development of the city of Glasgow. . . the combination of his Irish heritage, Marist formation, passion for sport, and religious faith brought improvement to the lives of the poor children.’
Brother Brendan Geary, F.M.S., PhD.,
Provincial of the Marist Brothers, 2010 – 2019
‘Walfrid is the poignant, authoritative account of an Irish migrant who transformed society by his dedication and commitment to the poor. Dr Michael Connelly has provided a narrative that goes well beyond the Celtic story, with timeless thoughts for this age as well as of years past.
Bart McGettrick
‘In this biography, Dr Michael Connolly explores Walfrid in the context of late Victorian Scottish life and in the process explains the reasons why Celtic, a football institution in Scotland as well as a socio-cultural Irish diasporic symbol, means so much to so many. This book adds to knowledge and understanding of charity, education, Catholicism, Irishness and football in modern Scotland and further afield.’
Dr Joseph M Bradley University of Edinburgh
‘This is a story which requires telling and re-telling down the generations and Michael Connolly has made an outstanding contribution to that endeavour.’
Jeanette Findlay, Chair, Coiste Cuimhneachain An Gorta Mòr
(Famine Memorial Committee)
‘The book engages deeply with the masculine worlds of Catholic religious Brothers and football players but it also explores struggles to support Irish multigenerational immigrant communities with education and basic living needs.’
Bronwen Walter Emerita Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
‘A charitable conscience and a caring work ethic are attributes that helped Brother Walfrid create one of the most powerful charitable sports organisations in the world. Michael Connolly’s fascinating account of his life will help deliver that mission globally.’
Paul McStay, former Celtic and Scotland captain
Review
‘His grave sticks out: it’s always got a Celtic scarf on’
Brother Walfrid’s sculpture at Celtic Park, cast in bronze with a granite pedestal
Brother Walfrid’s sculpture at Celtic Park, cast in bronze with a granite pedestal
Michael Grant
Tuesday November 08 2022, 12.01am, The Times
One of the stadium tour guides at Celtic Park could be forgiven for wanting to rush around the place and then park his group at the Brother Walfrid statue to start waxing lyrical. Dr Michael Connolly, a 32-year-old regular in the Lisbon Lions stand, can hold his own on most matters concerning Celtic but let there be no doubt about his specialist subject were he to appear on Mastermind.
In the stadium’s Jock Stein lounge tonight there will be an event to celebrate the launch of Walfrid, A Life of Faith, Community and Football, Connolly’s biography of the club’s founding father and, as far as many supporters are concerned, its moral compass. On Sunday, when the club acknowledged the 135th anniversary of being formally constituted, Brother Walfrid’s central role was acknowledged in having established Celtic as a vehicle to raise money for soup kitchens in Glasgow’s east end.
Walfrid has always been central to Celtic’s proud sense of itself as a club but there had never been a study of his whole life and so a PhD study was commissioned by Glasgow arts company The Nine Muses and Connolly successfully applied for it. The book emerged from four years of research, a labour of love. The challenge was to flesh out a figure simultaneously revered and little known by much of the Celtic fanbase.
“I would have fallen into the same category as maybe 90 per cent of Celtic supporters,” Connolly said. “I would have been able to tell you a vague idea of who he was, that he was Irish, Catholic, that he came here to Scotland and founded a football club. But other than that? It was really a skeleton, almost a myth that we have inherited about this guy.
“And you come to realise he was only connected officially with the football club from its formation in 1888 to 1892. It’s less than five years and then he’s off, and he lived until he was 74. So there was almost anther seven decades of his life which were understudied or unresearched. I had a blank canvas really.”
So who was he? Walfrid was born Andrew Kerins and was just 15 when he left rural County Sligo in Ireland to come to Glasgow by cattle boat in 1855. While still in his teens Kerins worked alongside many other Irish labourers in railway engineering in Springburn and later he entered teaching and began attending classes by the Marist Brothers, an international Catholic community. He joined the order himself and became Brother Walfrid.
He worked in the city’s east end to teach children, mainly of Irish immigrants, and committed himself to the wider impoverished Irish Catholic diaspora in Glasgow and later London. Hunger was a motif throughout his decades of service. In 1884 he created the poor children’s dinner tables charity which was feeding a thousand kids in the east end within 12 months. He shrewdly identified the creation of football club, Celtic, as a way to service or raise funds towards the cause.
“That was the key for me, to trace his roots right back to an Gorta Mor [Ireland’s great famine],” Connolly said. “He was born in 1840 seven years before the worst effects of the famine in ‘Black 47’. His childhood is characterised by that starvation, hunger and death and a real brutal upbringing and formative years. He was one of the lucky ones who was able to survive and get out and go elsewhere and improve his lot. But I don’t think it ever left him. He was always concerned with the feeding of children from a poorer background.”
Celtic were already being pulled in different directions by the time Walfrid’s religious superiors sent him from Glasgow to London. Professionalism and money were coming into Scottish football. “Celtic are to the fore of the professionalisation of Scottish football in 1893. That’s just a year after Walfrid left. You do get a sense of drift in the original principles after he leaves. But it’s also important to note that the charitable function did endure in some way, shape or form.”
Connolly’s endless hours in library archives fleshed out Walfrid’s subsequent life and work in London and his eventual return to see out his days at the Marist Brothers’ flagship school in Dumfries. He died aged 74 in 1915, by then heavy and in failing health. Later the same day Celtic became Scottish champions for the 12th time.
Up to his death Walfrid still received weekly Saturday evening telegrams telling him the Celtic score. In a notable departure from the Marists’ sombre conventions he was buried with a Celtic jersey on his coffin. Decades later Jock Stein and the then Celtic chairman, Sir Robert Kelly, brought the European Cup to his resting place.
“Even today, if you visit Dumfries where he is buried, the graveyard is laid out in a very uniform way. The ethos of the Marist brothers is simplicity and poverty, it’s all very solemn. But Walfrid’s grave sticks out a mile because it’s always got a Celtic scarf draped over it,” explains Connolly.
Connolly’s favourite discovery was a cassette tape made in 1982 by a man who knew Walfrid and made recordings discussing him. “It’s this man’s spoken memory of dealing with Walfrid in person and how he was quite a big presence, a jovial, characterful kind of person. Cards on the table, as a Celtic supporter growing up I didn’t want to find he was some kind of awful character so it was really good to hear confirmation that he had that sense of humour and was remembered fondly by his pupils.”
And revered by Celtic fans decades later. “It was only last season I was at a European game and there was a 40 by 40 foot banner of him and you’re thinking: ‘I need to do this justice’.”
Walfrid: A Life of Faith, Community and Football by Michael Connolly. £20, from thirstybooks.com
Product Details
- Publisher : Thirsty Books (4 Nov. 2022)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 228 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1739992237
- ISBN-13 : 978-1739992231