As Ireland celebrates its best ever Olympic Games at Paris, 2024, it is a good time to ask what happened at the Paris Olympics 100 years ago, when Ireland won its first medals in Arts categories that no longer exist. The story brings together some of Ireland’s most famous writers and artists as well as the story of a revival of Ireland’s ancient Tailteann Games, often compared to a native version of the Olympic Games.
The Tailteann Games had their roots in ancient times and were held around Lúnasa, an annual festival held in honour of the pagan god Lugh. He gives his name to the modern Irish name for the month of August, which is Lúnasa. You can read more about this in the Lúnasa blog. https://harrylongculture.ie/2021/08/01/lunasa/ In 1924, the government of the newly independent Ireland revived the ancient Tailteann Games and the history of this event became intertwined with the story of Ireland’s very first Olympic medals.
Although Irish people participated in the Olympic Games before independence, Paris 1924 was the first time that they represented their own, newly independent country. From 1912 to 1948, Art featured in the Olympics and was broken down into five categories: painting, literature, music, sculpture and architecture. All entries had to be on a sporting theme and in Paris, 1924, the painter Jack B. Yeats (1871-1957) and the writer Oliver St. John Gogarty (1878-1857) both entered and won medals. These were the first medals won for Ireland at the Olympics and the only ones won by Irish competitors in the 1924 games. Yeats won a silver medal in the mixed painting event for a painting then simply called ‘Swimming’ but now permanently on display in the National Museum of Ireland as ‘The Liffey Swim’ (1923). One of Yeats’ most famous paintings, it captures not just the physicality of the swimming race itself in Dublin’s river, but the whole atmosphere of the crowded city centre quaysides.
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Gogarty won a bronze medal in the mixed literature event for a poem called ‘Ode to the Tailteann Games’. Like the Olympics at that time, the Tailteann Games included Arts and Crafts events as well as sports. For this first modern revival of the ancient Irish Tailteann Games in 1924, Jack B. Yeats’ brother, the poet W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) served on the committee that awarded the literary prizes. Gogarty won a prize for his latest poetry collection. He was also asked to compose song lyrics for the opening ceremony of the Tailteann Games, which was performed by the Tailteann Choir at Croke Park, Dublin to music by Liam O’Brien. These were the same lyrics that, later that summer, won him an Olympic medal in Paris.
In the last year that the Olympics included the Arts events, 1948, the games were held in London. The artist Letitia Marion Hamilton (1878-1964) became the first woman to win a medal for Ireland. She won bronze with a painting called ‘Meath Hunt Point-to-Point Races’. Her native county of Meath had, by a strange coincidence, been the home of the ancient Tailteann Games.
