How a blue ribbon became the Kilmessan club colours

MEATHMAN'S DIARY

Following on from last week’s Diary, in which we wrote of Christy Moore’s connections with Ardmulchan and Yellow Furze through his mother, Nancy Power and her family, we were reminded that Christy records on the Yellow Furze record label, named after his mother’s homeplace.

We also mentioned the lady who encouraged Nancy Power’s love of music and singing, her school teacher in Yellow Furze, Julia Elmes, a member of the Sheridan family of Johnstown, which produced many teachers. She was an aunt of Rathkenny Revels founder, Fr Michael Murchan, and the recently deceased Moynalty teacher, Paddy.

Julia’s sister, Mary, is another lady whose legacy lives on today in a way that is probably not even thought about in 21st century Kilmessan. The local GAA clubs, the Kilmessan hurling and camogie clubs, are wearing blue and white jerseys because of Mary’s – Mrs Reynolds’ - early design of their colours.

In 1904, Mary Sheridan succeeded her aunt, Bridget McCabe, as principal of the Girls National School in Kilmessan (there were two separate schools then in the old two-storey premises in the village).

Born in 1879, her parents taught at Johnstown National School and the school inspector writes in 1904 that ‘Miss Sheridan promises to be a very useful teacher’. She was trained at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick.

A couple of years later, she married James Reynolds who ran a butcher’s stall at Dunsany Stores, where he was set up by co-operative movement founder, Horace Plunkett, as well as at Dunshaughlin and Ratoath. Around this time, he also bought a butcher’s business in Trim.

Mary Reynolds travelled to Kilmessan daily by train. Her son, Jim, author of ‘A Life by the Boyne’, recalled travelling to school with his mother on the quarter to nine train from Trim in the mornings, and the 4.15 train from Kilmessan in the evenings.

Around this time, the Kilmessan hurling team was playing in white jerseys. Mrs Reynolds sewed a blue ribbon around each individual jersey, thus creating the blue and white colours of the club. The colours have evolved over the years to the current jersey in which the blue dominates the white, and Mrs Reynolds could hardly have foreseen that her colours would dominate the Meath hurling championship and over the past decade, the camogie championships as far as an All-Ireland club title.

James and Mary Reynolds’ grandson, also James, later developed their Trim farm into the famous Butterstream Gardens on the Kildalkey Road, visited by Prince Charles in his historic visit to Ireland 1995. The gardens were later lost to development, but Jim’s touch can be seen in the restoration of the Ballyfin Demesne in Co Laois in recent years.