Eddie Daly: Road Bowls

life_journeys.jpg

Title

Eddie Daly: Road Bowls

Subject

Life History;

Description

Eddie plays road bowling. He talks about the sport, about how he became involved in it, and about some of the players and characters associated with it.
Eddie (born circa 1949) grew up in Cloghroe, where road bowling was popular and started playing when he was 11.
He briefly describes how the sport is played. Cork and Armagh (where it is called ‘bullets’) are the strongholds of the sport but it is being played a little elsewhere. There are underage teams and girls play too. Gambling is a big part of the sport and a player may have several backers who bet on him. He has been living in Carraig na Bhfear for 20 years and is involved in the sport there. He tells a story about player Mick Barry throwing a ball over a viaduct.

Date

16 June 1999

Identifier

CFP_SR00272_daly_1999

Coverage

Ireland; Cork; 1900s

Relation

Published Material:

Hunter, Stephen (1999), Life Journeys: Living Folklore in Ireland Today, Cork: The Northside Folklore Project.

Source

Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive

Rights

Cork Folklore Project

Language

English

Type

Sound

Format

.wav

Interviewee

Interviewer

Duration

19min 43sec

Location

NCE Ltd, Sunbeam Industrial Estate, Mallow Road, Cork

Original Format

Cassette

Transcription

The following is a short extract from the interview transcript relating to the audio extract above. Copyright of the Cork Folklore Project. If you wish to access further archival material please contact CFP, folklorearchive@gmail.com

L H: So em what's your interest in road bowling, it comes from your youth?

 

E D: That's right yea.

 

L H: Em was it due to friends or family?

 

E D: Due to friends really and ea you know we used to in our time in we had a very good couple of bowl players well they would be seeing us that time in Clohroe village we had two prominent very prominent men there em Paddy Cotter and his son Tony and Syril Horrigan was also a great bowl player.  In our village, they were living actually a couple of doors away from me.

 

L H: Right.

 

E D: So that's how we grew you know we got to follow the bowling, go out of a Sunday they would be playing scores and I used to go out with my Father watching um and famous roads I remember ea Waterloo and Berrings they were two very famous roads, that’s in my early youth in the 1958/59/60.

 

L H: To a person who is not that familiar with the game how would you describe it, what's the game of it or how is it carried out?

 

E D: Ea well it's basically it starts at one particular point a starting point and there's a finishing point and it's aim is to go to that finishing point in the least number of shots to your opponent.

 

L H: Right what's a score?

 

E D: The length of a score? Ea

 

L H: That's the distance between a and b or whatever?

 

E D: It could consist of a mile and a half it could be a mile and a half usually about 20 shots which would be a mile and a half of road.

 

L H: Even when you were younger would it have been a similar distance?

 

E D: Oh it would have been still the same distance as it is now.

 

L H: And would you have been playing with other kids around the area or would you have been?

 

E D: No we would have been playing with our own friends in the area you know at the time like.

 

L H: Would your own Father have played or?

 

E D: No he never played it, never played it, but followed it all his life yea.

 

L H: Right he would have gone out.

 

E D: Oh he would have gone out following it he would yea he would.

 

L H: And one thing I have come across is that Cork and Armagh seem pretty dominant places in Ireland for it, it's played very little anywhere else is there any reason behind that?

 

E D: Well no not really it started I suppose with the great famous scores between Armagh and Cork you had Danny Mc Farland and Mick Barry they were two famous names Danny Mc Farland was a famous name in Armagh at the time and ea actually it's not called bowels in Armagh it's called bullets they call it bullets in Armagh and I suppose it stent from there really you know going back to 1960s and early 70s, there was some famous all Irelands between Armagh and Cork but now it's getting into parts of eh, Dundalk.  Louth and Dublin there playing a bit of it in Dublin now as well but definitely the two famous places are Armagh and Cork.

Citation

Cork Folklore Project , “Eddie Daly: Road Bowls,” accessed March 29, 2024, https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/document/233.