ball wound and played professional soccer for Brighton and Hove in England long after the Siege of Limerick.
Red Jam Roll, the Dancer
I am reminded of boxing matters by an encounter I had this day with a former opponent of mine, pugilistically speaking. I do not mean that our encounter this day was a pugilistic one, but it was pugilistically speaking we last spoke. And that, at the lane running alongside the railway end of Croke Park.
Our street was a tough street and the last outpost of toughness you’d meet as you left North Dublin for the red brick respectability of Jones’s Road, Fitzroy Avenue, Clonliffe Road, and Drumcondra generally.
Kids from those parts we despised, hated and resented. For the following sins: they lived in houses one to a family which we thought greedy, unnaturaland unsocial; they wore suits all the one colour, both jacket and pants, where we wore a jersey and shorts; they carried leather schoolbags where we either had a strap round our books or else a cheap check cloth bag.
Furthermore, it was suspected that some of them took piano lessons and dancing lessons while we of the North Circular Road took anything we could lay our hands on which was not nailed down.
We brought one of them to our corner and bade him continue his performance and thereafter, any time we caught him, he was brought in bondage to the corner of Russell Street and invited to give a performance of the dance: hornpipe, jig, reel, or slip jig.
This young gent, in addition to being caught red-footed, was by colouring of hair red-headed, and I’ve often heard since that they are an exceedingly bad-tempered class of person which, signs on it, he was no exception. For having escaped from his exercises, by reason of an approaching Civic Guard by name ‘Dirty Lug’, he ran down to the canal bridge which was the border of our territory and used language the like of which was shocking to anyone from Russell Street and guaranteed to turn thousands grey if they hailed from some other part.
However, our vengeance for the insults heaped upon us by this red-headed hornpiper, that thought so bad of giving the people an old step on the corner of the street, was not an empty one.
One day not alone did we catch him but he’d a jam roll under his oxter – steaming hot, crisp and sweet from the bakery – and the shortest way from Summerhill to where he lived was through our street.He was tired, no doubt, with wearing suits and living in a house with only his own family and carrying that heavy leather schoolbag, not to mind the dancing lessons; no doubt he thought he had a right to be tired and he took the shortest way home with the cake for his ma.
He could see none of our gang but the fact that he didn’t see us didn’t mean we were not there. We were, as a matter of fact, playing ‘the make in’* on Brennan’s Hill down by the Mountjoy Brewery when his approach was signalled by a scout and in short order ‘the make in’ was postponed while we held up the red fellow and investigated his parcel.
We grabbed the booty and were so intent on devouring the jam roll that we let the prisoner go over the bridge and home to plot his vengeance.
He was a hidden villain all right. Long weeks after, myself and Scoil (or Skull, have it any way you fancy) Kane were moseying round Croker,* not minding anything in particular. Kerry was playing Cavan in Hurling or Derry was playing Tyrone in anything but it wasn’t a match of any great import to any save relations and friends, and a dilatory class of a Sunday afternoon was being had by all, when the Scoil (Skull) and myself were surrounded by a gang, if you please, from Jones’s Road, and who but the red-headed dancing master at the head of them.
But we didn’t take them seriously.
‘Sound man, Jam Roll,’ said I, not knowing what else to call him.
‘I’ll give you jam roll in a minute,’ said Jam Roll.
‘You’re a dacent boy,’ said I, ‘and will you wet the tea as you’re at
Red Jam Roll, the Dancer
I am reminded of boxing matters by an encounter I had this day with a former opponent of mine, pugilistically speaking. I do not mean that our encounter this day was a pugilistic one, but it was pugilistically speaking we last spoke. And that, at the lane running alongside the railway end of Croke Park.
Our street was a tough street and the last outpost of toughness you’d meet as you left North Dublin for the red brick respectability of Jones’s Road, Fitzroy Avenue, Clonliffe Road, and Drumcondra generally.
Kids from those parts we despised, hated and resented. For the following sins: they lived in houses one to a family which we thought greedy, unnaturaland unsocial; they wore suits all the one colour, both jacket and pants, where we wore a jersey and shorts; they carried leather schoolbags where we either had a strap round our books or else a cheap check cloth bag.
Furthermore, it was suspected that some of them took piano lessons and dancing lessons while we of the North Circular Road took anything we could lay our hands on which was not nailed down.
We brought one of them to our corner and bade him continue his performance and thereafter, any time we caught him, he was brought in bondage to the corner of Russell Street and invited to give a performance of the dance: hornpipe, jig, reel, or slip jig.
This young gent, in addition to being caught red-footed, was by colouring of hair red-headed, and I’ve often heard since that they are an exceedingly bad-tempered class of person which, signs on it, he was no exception. For having escaped from his exercises, by reason of an approaching Civic Guard by name ‘Dirty Lug’, he ran down to the canal bridge which was the border of our territory and used language the like of which was shocking to anyone from Russell Street and guaranteed to turn thousands grey if they hailed from some other part.
However, our vengeance for the insults heaped upon us by this red-headed hornpiper, that thought so bad of giving the people an old step on the corner of the street, was not an empty one.
One day not alone did we catch him but he’d a jam roll under his oxter – steaming hot, crisp and sweet from the bakery – and the shortest way from Summerhill to where he lived was through our street.He was tired, no doubt, with wearing suits and living in a house with only his own family and carrying that heavy leather schoolbag, not to mind the dancing lessons; no doubt he thought he had a right to be tired and he took the shortest way home with the cake for his ma.
He could see none of our gang but the fact that he didn’t see us didn’t mean we were not there. We were, as a matter of fact, playing ‘the make in’* on Brennan’s Hill down by the Mountjoy Brewery when his approach was signalled by a scout and in short order ‘the make in’ was postponed while we held up the red fellow and investigated his parcel.
We grabbed the booty and were so intent on devouring the jam roll that we let the prisoner go over the bridge and home to plot his vengeance.
He was a hidden villain all right. Long weeks after, myself and Scoil (or Skull, have it any way you fancy) Kane were moseying round Croker,* not minding anything in particular. Kerry was playing Cavan in Hurling or Derry was playing Tyrone in anything but it wasn’t a match of any great import to any save relations and friends, and a dilatory class of a Sunday afternoon was being had by all, when the Scoil (Skull) and myself were surrounded by a gang, if you please, from Jones’s Road, and who but the red-headed dancing master at the head of them.
But we didn’t take them seriously.
‘Sound man, Jam Roll,’ said I, not knowing what else to call him.
‘I’ll give you jam roll in a minute,’ said Jam Roll.
‘You’re a dacent boy,’ said I, ‘and will you wet the tea as you’re at
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