The new game of soccer had special needs to be seen to. It required suitable grounds to be played on and a group of people, or committee, to run and manage the team. Committees ushered into local prominence a group of people who hitherto had been left out in the cold by the two bodies that mattered and effectively run the country – the civil and the ecclesiastical authorities.

For the first time, a group of people without any formal training for the job at hand was suddenly entrusted with the organisation of the team, and in many instances, of a purposely-built premises or club. The layman, without any particular profession or without being specifically skilled in any particular subject, finally found that he too had a leading role to play in society.

Prior to these committees, the professionals and the clergy used to run the whole show in towns and villages, with devout laymen carrying out the odd jobs and pieces mercifully given to them by the elite among them.

From humble beginnings, these all-lay clubs gained in stature and mo­mentum and came to produce men with great civic initiative and also served as training grounds for many budding politicians. The club committee opened the door for ordinary men and put them at par with the clergy and professionals, another silent and un­foreseen consequence of the introduction of the game of football in Malta.

This new trend in all-lay organisations with their very own clubs and premises was further strengthened in the latter half of 19th century British Malta with the introduction of that new phenomenon – the philharmonic band clubs that mushroomed all over the island. These band clubs brought in those village people who might not have been interested in the more energy-demanding pastime of football. There was then a place for every man in the village to belong to any one of these all-lay associations.

We all agree, without reservations, or qualifications, that the game of soccer and philharmonic marching bands are authentic 19th-century crea­tions introduced to our islands through the Anglo-Irish soldiers serving in the British forces. Britain, reputedly the home of football, organised the game through the establishment of the Football Association in 1863.

The external festivities in honour of the parish patron as we know them in their present format may well be of Irish origin

Philharmonic and military parades were routinely executed in places like the Palace Square, Valletta, Floriana Parade Ground, and along the route the military bands took before and after each parade to their barracks. Solemn church services and the many anniversaries and funerals of distinguished Maltese and British personalities also attracted huge crowds in the squares in front of the cathedrals in both Valletta and Mdina.

As night follows day, it was in­evitable for the islanders to be enticed by all the excitement that football matches and philharmonic bands diffused in everyone, and consequently, in a matter of years, the Maltese made football and civic bands theirs.

The new template revealed and unveiled by the Anglo-Irish soldiers had a huge impact on our social life. It brought in the profane and the secular, written unashamedly large and in bold letters. It gave the village people a free-standing platform and complete freedom in devising and taking charge of their own free time.

Entertainment and music became decentralised and democratised. They slipped out of the hands and monopoly of the local Church, the elite and the litterati.

Let it be clearly stated: these northern, Anglo-Irish people did not invent or bring entertainment and music to our shores. The Maltese rightly prided themselves in being able to enjoy the very best that the world of music could offer at that time. They had a gem of a theatre. The Manoel Theatre, built in the 1730s, was the envy of many a continental capital. The Maltese were very familiar with operas and arias. By no stretch of the imagination could the Maltese be considered as suffering from any musical deficit.

Furthermore, we all know that football, music and art have folk roots and could trace their beginning to the age of cavemen. But the music played at the Manoel did imply a certain elitism.

Classical music typically evolves in a stable society where a wealth of connoisseurs had sponsored its creation by professionals. Music was then more suited and tuned to the ears of the quiet, sedentary music lovers. They liked to listen to music in comfortable surroundings for which good money had been paid.

In a similar manner, men had, since the dawn of time, gathered and met in circles and gatherings. But it was the Church that organised and gave them some form of discipline. Thus, up to early 19th century, the Maltese islands were awash with male-dominated fraternities, archconfraternities, brotherhoods, benefit societies of the mutuo soccorso type which met periodically in a church sacristy, and all proceedings were held under the watchful eyes of a clergyman. Outside these meetings, the only other place for men to gather on an evening was in the colourful Ta’ Kurun type of bars made famous by Ġorġ Zammit’s Wenzu u Rozi.

As the 1800s progressed, a tailor-made culture of entertainment and music that suited those who felt that they belonged to no respectable, particular group, found sanctuary in the new way of life brought about by Irish soldiers in our midst. Mass, free and popular entertainment was now to be had right in the village centre, in the main streets and squares, in the newly formed all-lay band clubs or at football grounds just on the outskirts of the village. No need to go to Valletta to watch the parade or attend a gala evening at the theatre.

In the same fashion, music was no longer constrained to the precincts of the church or theatre. A new type of less formal and solemn music adapted to be enjoyed as people and families moved about in the street evolved thanks to the military bands present on the island, which made full use of the progress and development of the keyed trumpet and the saxhorn – a 19th century musical innovation.

Besides soaking in the wonder and mystery of Gregorian chant in church or the idyllic romances played out at the theatre, a new vibrant kind of music was created which suited the less formal, less sombre man in the street. Indeed, sacred music in church and classical music in the theatre was somewhat upstaged by the mobile, crowd-embraced band march.

Band marches brought in a new feature to our social life: the flamboyant, the spectacular and the colourful – traits that are not always favourably looked upon by either the clergy or the professionals who regarded these features as ‘too loud outbursts’, ‘too disrespectful’ and ‘too plebeian’. They were often seen as causing rowdiness that led to uncontrolled crowd behaviour.

The Establishment looked upon them with some apprehension. In the true tradition of the British military bands, discipline and order were the order of the day, not least where music was concerned. British regiments prided in their ‘colours’, which were carried with all dignity due.

As was the case with the military, colour and standards were always part and parcel of Church liturgy. They were a significant part of in the Church’s outdoor festivities. Primary colours and banners bearing sacred connotations and images of the saints were the norm.

The Irish begged to differ. When they translated the discipline of military marches to a civic version the Irish denuded marches and parades of their ecclesiastical, stately and military solemnity and austerity, particularly when it came to colour and banners.

It is about time that this disrespectful omission and denial of our Irishness is rectified and acknowledged in our country’s history

The first large-scale parades in New York, Boston and Philadelphia owe their birth to the Irish and the celebration of the feast of St Patrick. These Irish ‘outdoor festivities’ born out of the Church’s ‘indoor festivities’ soon took on an overtly profane and secular character. The large banners carried out in parades were mainly all green – symbol of the Irish Catholics. No religious symbols or connotation was allowed on flags, just plain green. To this day St Patrick’s Day parades are celebrated worldwide in a very secular, all-lay fashion. Their feature everywhere is ‘the wearing of green’.

It seems that this way of celebrating was seized upon and completely embraced by local band clubs. The external festivities in honour of the parish patron as we know them in their present format may well be of Irish origin.

In Britain, feasts of patron saints are, at best, ignored. In the first place, honouring saints is simply not Protestant practice. Secondly, the State likes to keep firm control of proceedings and it finds that this is best done when the organisation of these public feasts is completely left in the safe hands of State officials. The prevailing view is that the populace is not to be entrusted with dignified ceremonies, and that law and order are to be received from above.

The Irish way of celebrating would have nothing of this. The people are in complete charge of organising these popular events. They took over the running of ‘outdoor’ celebrations.

On our island, there is also this tradition that the wearing of the club’s colours comes uppermost among its ardent supporters and large banners rarely carry any sacred image or symbol. Prior to the introduction of the philharmonic band, the local church complimented the feast activities inside the church with ‘appropriate’ outdoor events with banners featuring only the primary colours and images like those of the Virgin Mary and the Sacred Heart. There was no way the Irish would adhere to such a regime. To them, marches and parades were people’s property – organised by a lay entity for a lay audience.

The ‘wearing of the green’ on St Patrick’s Day was also assimilated into Maltese culture. In our case, it was translated into ‘the wearing of the club’s colours’. The locality of Żabbar brings out the strength of the small but determined Irish community living in Il-Misraħ. The inhabitants in this area must have been impressed by the Anglo-Irish going-ons on their very doorstep – Żabbar Gate Barracks.

Anecdotal hearsay has it that one of the local band clubs, St Michael, nicknamed Tal-Bajda (The Whites), on a particular occasion hoisted the club’s flag that had a white border. The club’s rivals seized on that colour and labelled St Michael’s supporters as Tal-Bajda – not a very complimentary name as it carries with it negative connotations of weakness and surrender.

It looks as if someone in Il-Misraħ immediately seized on this heaven-sent chance and came up with an alternative to the colour white. Green was proposed and adopted as the club’s colours.

It seems that at that time, the colour white suited St Michael. It certainly carried the church imprimatur. Primary colours were ecclesiastical favou­rites. Green is a secondary colour. In medieval times, as is still the practice today, St Michael was often dressed in white or in any primary colour but rarely in green. Green was, in equal measure, out of favour with the man in the street. The colour had sinister connotations of death, deceit and the devil. So the colour green was best left alone by the church, the laity and one and all.

But there was one section of the community that had certainly no qualms about this colour. Green was the very hallmark of what is Hibernia, Ireland, St Patrick and Irish Catholicism. The Irish had earlier managed to turn with impunity, the very Islamic green into a Catholic colour. The 1880s was the decade when green reigned supreme among the Irish faithful. Hibernian and Celtic were founded in Scotland in that decade and they donned that colour.

In Żabbar, the birth of St Michael Band Club in 1883 and the commissioning of a new statue of the saint in 1886 provided the Irish with a golden opportunity not to be missed. There was no running away from the stark Irish reality. Regardless of what anyone else thought, the statue of St Michael had to be green.

Green became the obligatory colour where the Irish were concerned. It seems that the elbowing out of white and its substitution by green could therefore have been the work of the strong Irish community in Żabbar. This locality, in a matter of a few decades, through its band, football clubs and colour, had indeed come to symbolise Little Ireland. This is all the more remarkable when one considers that a handful of decades earlier no one in Malta, and much less in Żabbar, had ever heard of or was interested in Ireland.

There is almost no need to provide figures and documents or delve in history archives to show the involvement of the Irish in our profane, secular culture. The writing on the wall cries out loud and is very clear to read. The circumstantial evidence is very compelling and stares one in the face. It goes beyond conjecture. It is tangible proof of a very strong Irish presence.

It is definitely not the result of the English influence in Malta. All the Irish names, colours and symbols of clubs and all the emotive words of Irish nationalism did not just happen, they were caused. It is a case whereby deeds are stronger than the written word.

The ‘documentation’ left by the Irish is strewn and carved in stone all along Cottonera and its neighbourhood. The southern part of the island is, in fact, inextricably linked to the Irish. If this is so, then most of the credit we give the English for introducing the Maltese to the profane and secular culture of football, bands and marches, colour and banners, the democratisation of music, of local and lay people sitting on committees to manage these out-of-the-temple festivities, should be given to the Irish.

The history of football clubs, indeed of football in Malta and of band clubs should, for the sake of giving credit where credit is due, have it clearly engraved and recorded that “In the beginning there were the Irish…” It is about time that this disrespectful omission and denial of our Irishness is rectified and acknowledged in our country’s history.

I fully endorse the sentiments expressed by King of Brobdingnag in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, who “gave it as his opinion that whosoever could raise the tone of, and give respect to those without gravitas, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to the country than the whole race of politicians put together”.

grazioellul@gmail.com

(Concluded)

Grazio Ellul graduated in History from the University of London and has conducted research at the State Archives of Palermo and Naples. He taught History at the then Upper Secondary, Valletta, and served as head of school for a number of years. He has lived in Dublin since 2005 and is a freelance writer.

Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the use of the website A History of the British Army in Malta – Talk Talk, in compiling this article.