The Welsh
Legend
Born
James Driscoll in the year 1880, one of five
children of parents Cornelius Driscoll and Elizabeth Burns. Flurence, the eldest
son, born 1873, followed by sisters Martha 1875, Mary Ann 1877 and Theresa 1878,
who died on the 18.12.1879, aged 1 year. Then came James Driscoll, on 15th
December 1880, only to be seen for just a few short months by his father
Cornelius who died tragically on the 6th August 1881.
Jim's
first home was 12 Ellen Street, Cardiff. This was the house where he was born
and probably took the first of his famous steps. It was a very modest terraced
dwelling like all the houses in what was then known as Irish town. Situated
close to the dock area and railroad, it was a stark reminder of life in the hard
lane of industrial Britain at the end of the Edwardian age. Irish town, as it
was so warmly called back in the 1800s, had been the settling place for migrant
Irish workers and their families, after spending nearly two months cramped
aboard sailing vessels bound for the Welsh coast. Ships such as the Wanderer,
out of Baltimore nr Skibbereen that
sailed on a Xmas eve back in 1846, a little ship holding in its staunch timbers
the lives of so many proud Irish migrants. One writer's description of these
terrible journeys called them the "voyage of tears".
It
was on such a ship that Jim's ancestors would have traveled, to escape the
famine of 1845 to 1850. His grandfather perhaps, Flurence Driscoll born circa
1830s, would have crossed that small strip of water aptly named the Irish sea,
with his family and all he possessed, to try to give them a chance for a better
future.
Irish
and Welsh names would ring out through the area of St Mary's in Cardiff, as both
cultures grew together, inter-married and struggled to keep the bailiffs from
their doors. It would be in these streets, with the people he had grown up with,
that Jimmy would first find his talents, and would always remember his roots.
The family moved a few doors down to number 3 Ellen street not long after Cornelius Driscoll died. Here, Elizabeth would struggle on parish relief until she was able to take back-breaking work on the wharf, loading potatoes or fish. It was to be this house that launched the champion into his career, and gave Wales a legend.
Malcolm
C. Jones