top of page

John Wyse Power, The GAA
and Nationalism

Founding of the GAA

The Gaelic Athletic Association was officially' founded on November 1, 1884 in Hayes's Hotel, Thurles. It might .have been founded at Loughrea where there was a strong hurling tradition in south-east Galway and where the first set of rules had been written down in 1869. Cusack approached the bishop of Clonfert, Dr. Duggan, about becoming the patron of the new body but, because of his age, declined to act and advised Cusack to ask Dr. Croke, Archbishop of Cashel, 'a fine Gael, young, vigorous and energetic.'

Although Cusack sent out many invitations to the foundation meeting in Hayes' s Hotel, Thurles in November 1884, only seven attended. They were Michael Cusack, Maurice Davin, John Wyse Power, John McKay, John K. Bracken, Thomas St. George McCarthy, Patrick J. O'Ryan. Davin took the chair and in a short speech outlined what he considered to be the essential objects of the proposed association. Davin was elected chairman. Cusack, McKay and Power were elected secretaries. The new association was named 'The Gaelic Athletic Association for the Preservation and Cultivation of National Pastimes.' It was agreed to invite Charles Stewart Parnell, Archbishop Croke of Cashel and Michael Davitt to become patrons of the new association. The new officers were requested to draw up rules.

The choice of Croke, Davitt and Pamell as patrons represented recognition of the major forces in the Irish nationalist movement of the day, and they all willingly accepted. In the course of his reply Dr. Croke accepted 'with the utmost pleasure.' In his letter, which was to become the unofficial charter of the association, he said: 'One of the most painful, let me assure you and, at the same time, one of the most frequently recurring reflections that, as an Irishman, I am compelled to make in connection with the present aspect of things in this country, is derived from the ugly and irritating fact, that we are daily importing from England, not only her manufactured goods, which we cannot help doing, since she has practically strangled our own manufacturing appliances but, together with her fashions, her accents, her vicious literature, her music, her dances, and her manifold mannerisms, her games also and her pastimes, to the utter discredit of our own grand national sports and to the sore humiliation, as I believe, of every genuine son and daughter of the old land. '

From this inauspicious beginning 'the association swept the country like a prairie fire.' Few movements in modem Ireland have taken root so rapidly and so firmly as the G.A.A. Inside a few months the nationalist community, almost everywhere, had answered the call that went out from the first few meetings of the new body.

*****************
Founding of the GAA and nationalism
CUMANN Lúthchleas Gael, the Gaelic Athletic Association, was founded 125 years ago and in that century and a quarter it has played a central role in Irish life as an organisation promoting national games and national identity. The GAA was often crucial in the struggle for independence and counted among its members many of those who fought and died for Irish freedom. 
The game of hurling has its origins in ancient Ireland while, as in most of Europe, forms of football were also played by people in the countryside. But throughout the 19th century organised sports in Ireland were the preserve of the privileged classes. It was the coming together of the idea of distinctively Irish sports and the demand for popular, non-elitist organisation and participation that gave rise to the GAA. 
Leading nationalists recognised the potential of native games. Young Ireland leader Thomas Francis Meagher organised sports meetings and hurling matches in Waterford in the period prior to the Rising of 1848. The founder of the Fenians in the United States, John O’Mahoney, urged the Fenians at home to form an association to promote athletics with a separatist outlook. 
A key figure in prompting the foundation of the GAA was Patrick Nally, a Mayo athlete and ‘Head Centre’ of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Connacht. He organised sports meetings on his family’s land with Charles Stuart Parnell as patron. In 1879, he met with Michael Cusack and discussed the idea of a sports body. In 1883, the Supreme Council of the IRB set up a sub-committee with the aim of establishing a nationally-minded athletic movement. 

IRB BACKING 
It was thus with IRB backing that the foundation meeting took place and the GAA was founded by Michael Cusack and Maurice Davin, the organisation’s first president, in Thurles in 1884.
Two of the seven founding members, J.K. Bracken and John Wyse Power, were IRB men. In the Parnell split in 1891 the IRB backed Parnell as did the GAA, whose patron he was. A contingent of 2,000 GAA members carried hurleys in Parnell’s funeral cortege. 
The early years saw tensions within the GAA between Home Rulers and republicans but the organisation managed to preserve its integrity by not becoming involved in party politics. That did not mean it was not political. Like Conradh na Gaeilge (the Gaelic League), which was founded in 1893, the GAA fostered a strong sense of national identity and organised its members democratically at local, regional and national level and this was a subversive act in an Ireland totally dominated by the British Empire.
The GAA was therefore a vital element in the mix of forces which led to the revival of Irish nationalism and republicanism at the start of the 20th century. BY MÍCHEÁL Mac DONNCHA 

**********************

Power, John Wyse  by Owen McGee

Power, John Wyse (1859–1926), nationalist and journalist, was born at Knock House near Waterford city, eldest son of James Power, a prosperous farmer, and Catherine Power (née Wyse). Educated locally and at Blackrock College, Co. Dublin, he joined the civil service in 1878 but soon became sympathetic to the Land League (established October 1879) and was expelled from the civil service in April 1881 after he became a vice-president of the IRB-patronised Young Ireland Society. He denounced Gladstone as a tyrant for suppressing the Land League (20 October 1881) and was arrested under the protection act and imprisoned without trial in Naas, Co. Kildare, on 6 December for attending a Ladies’ Land League in Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow, in the capacity of a reporter. Released on 30 March 1882, he soon began working for the Leinster Leader (Naas) and became its editor on 30 June 1883. Five days later he married Jennie O'Toole (Jennie Wyse Power (qv)), a former activist in the Ladies’ Land League. At the time of his marriage, he lived at 12 Upper Mount Pleasant Avenue, Rathmines, Dublin.

Joining the Society for the Protection of the Irish Language, he assisted John Fleming (qv) in editing the Gaelic Journal during the mid to late 1880s. He was also a founder of the GAA, being elected one of its three secretaries at its first convention (1 November 1884) and was reputedly a member of the IRB. A founder and first president of the county board of the Dublin GAA (established October 1886), he disappointed his IRB friends by generally siding with theFreeman's Journal (for which he worked as sub-editor from early 1885) during the clerical–republican controversies in the GAA the following year. During the mid to late 1880s he lived at 7 Royal Terrace, Fairview, where three of his children, Kathleen (d. 1887), Marie, and Nancy, were born.

In March 1891, together with Edmund Dwyer Gray (qv), he helped found the Parnell Leadership Fund, but left the Freeman that autumn to help establish the Irish Daily Independent (16 December 1891). During 1892 he became editor of the new Evening Herald, settled in Westland Row, where his son Charles was born, acted as a patron of the Irish National Amnesty Association (established 26 August 1892) and became a close friend and confidant of F. J. Allan(qv), P. N. Fitzgerald (qv), and other IRB leaders. During the later 1890s his family lived in Dalkey. After John Redmond (qv) sold the Independent to an English firm in February 1899, Power became an editor with the Evening Telegraph and, together with his wife, established the Irish Farm Produce Company on 21 Henry St., a shop and restaurant (which also became their home) frequented mostly by Gaelic League and IRB enthusiasts, including Arthur Griffith (qv), John MacBride (qv), and Seán T. O'Kelly (qv), among many others. Always a well-known figure in Dublin nationalist and literary circles, Power was an active member of the Gaelic League (established 31 July 1893), served for several years as a member of the executive of Cumann na nGaedheal (established September 1900) and was an outspoken opponent of the royal visits of the early to mid 1900s, allegedly being the author of the popular Dublin expression, ‘kiss my royal arse’. A friend of James Joyce (qv), he was the basis of the character ‘John Wyse Nolan’ in Ulysses (1922).

As co-editor of the Evening Telegraph, he was also relied on to report the activities of the IRB veterans’ association, the Old Guard Union, and to write appreciative obituaries of the Fenian dead. Possibly for this reason, although Power did not join Sinn Féin or the Irish Volunteers, Thomas J. Clarke (qv) decided to have the 1916 proclamation signed in his home. He took no actual part in the rising (during which his house was shelled and destroyed by the British army), though his wife Jennie and daughter Nancy provided supplies to the men in the GPO. He was badly affected by his own declining health and by the death from asthma (19 July 1916) of his daughter Maura Wyse Power (qv), a distinguished scholar and teacher (later made the subject of a memorial plaque in University Church, St Stephen's Green), and thereafter he withdrew from journalism and public life. He died of pneumonia at his rebuilt home, 21 Henry St., on 29 May 1926, survived by his wife Jennie, a Free State senator, his daughter Nancy, a civil servant, and his son, Charles Stewart, a circuit court judge. His funeral mass at the pro-cathedral was attended by W. T. Cosgrave (qv), president of the executive council, and he was buried alongside his daughter in Glasnevin cemetery.

Minute book of the Young Ireland Society, NLI MS 16095; Ir. Independent, 1 June 1926; León Ó Broin, Revolutionary underground (1976); W. F. Mandle, The GAA and Irish nationalist politics (1987); Marie O'Neill, From Parnell to de Valera: a biography of Jennie Wyse Power (1991); Owen McGee, The IRB (2005)

***********************

April 29, 2010

LEADER EDITOR A FOUNDING MEMBER OF THE GAA

Leinster Leader 25th March 2010

 

Leader editor a founding member of the GAA


For two decades after it first rolled off the presses in 1880 the Leinster Leader was a campaigning newspaper, enthusiastically supporting the Land League and the Home Rule movement. Its first editor, Patrick Cahill, was imprisoned for his outspoken views in support of the Land League. However it was Cahill’s successor, the double-barrelled John Wyse Power, who was to connect the Leinster Leader with a nationalist movement as enduring as any – the Gaelic Athletic Association.  An urgency in the late 19th century to shape a particular kind of Irish identity was fuelled by the formation of a number of organisations including the Gaelic League, dedicated to reviving the Irish language; the Home Rule movement, which aimed to achieve an Irish parliament; and the GAA which set out to create a code for athletics and field games distinctive to an Irish setting. The prime movers behind this markedly Irish sporting ambition were Michael Cusack of Clare and Maurice Davin of Tipperary. They signed a circular convening a meeting scheduled for Thurles on 1st November 1884. According to reports of the time, the meeting was attended by seven men generally representative of nationalist opinion. A week later the Leinster Leader published an account of the meeting which in its level of detail looked to be from an ‘inside’ source. And so it was, as one of the seven in attendance at that foundation meeting of the GAA was the then editor of the Leinster Leader - John Wyse Power. The report represented something of a ‘scoop’ for the paper, even if its historical significance was not appreciated at the time.  Wyse Power was a man of many parts. A native of Waterford he had worked for a time in the Civil Service , but resigned because its English tone jarred with his radical nationalism. In police reports he was described as being a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and a prominent Fenian. He first came to Naas in late 1881 but not of his own free will – he was interned in Naas jail for protesting against landlordism in Baltinglass. He was released in March 1882 and resumed his work as a journalist contributing to the Freeman’s Journal, the leading home rule paper of its day. Baltinglass was to feature again in his life but in a happier context when in July 1883 he married Jennie O’Toole, a native of the Slaneyside town. It was a marriage which was to become a powerful political force in nationalist circles into the 20th century. Shortly before their wedding he returned to Naas (this time in a willing capacity) when he was appointed editor of the Leinster Leader in June 1883. It was a logical progression for a campaigning journalist, the Leader had been set up with an unequivocal nationalist agenda. It was during his time in the editor’s chair in Naas that he responded to Michael Cusack’s invitation to join in the inaugural meeting of the GAA. His ambition was such that he did not stay long with the Leader and by early 1885 he had moved to the staff of the Freeman’s Journal in Dublin. Nor did he stay long with the GAA leadership, parting over nuances of its approach to Irish nationalism.  However he left an important legacy being instrumental in the establishment of the association’s Dublin County Board. His dedication to nationalist activism continued; he joined the Irish Parliamentary Party and became a loyal disciple of its leader, Charles Stuart Parnell. So loyal that when the party ruptured over the ‘Parnell split’ he maintained steadfast to the hounded leader and became a spokesman for the pro-Parnell side of the divide. Even after Parnell’s death Wyse Power carried the torch and in June 1892 a report in the New York Times related how he accompanied John Redmond, by then leader of what remained of the Irish Parliamentary Party, on a visit to rally Irish-American support. Such was Wyse Power’s reputation across the Atlantic that the New York Times reported how a number of city journalists hosted a dinner in the prestigious New York Press Club to mark his arrival.  In later years he continued in journalism with the Irish Independent but his commitment to nationalism was transformed into support for his wife Jennie whose status, in a rare role reversal in a male dominated world, was to surpass that of her husband as an activist and leader across an array of nationalist organisations. Indeed such was her prominence that her career has been documented in book form. No book has been written about John Wyse Power but his role as a founder member of the GAA has been given enduring notice with the erection earlier this month of a commemorative plaque on the Leinster Leader premises at South Main Street, Naas. Series no: 170 (the knowledge of Mr. Stan Hickey, newspaper historian, is much appreciated).  

Liam Kenny in his regular feature 'Nothing New Under the Sun'  recalls John Wyse Power, a founder member of the GAA, who has been given enduring notice with the erection of a commemorative plaque on the Leinster Leader premises at Sth. Main St., Naas. 

  • Facebook Social Icon
  • Twitter Social Icon
  • Instagram

WYA Film Productions,
The Arch,
Barrack Street,
Waterford

© WYA Film Productions 2025

Screenshot 2025-01-09 111708.png
bottom of page