Above – Antrim’s All Ireland winning team from 1967, Lily Scullion is in the middle of the back row
BACK during Covid the Irish News told the story of a lady who grew up on a farm in Ahoghill and now is effectively the CEO of a large miscanthus, green energy farming initiative in County Waterford.
No huge story there, you might say, except that she is now a nun in her 80s and very much active on the farm!
Along the way Sr Lily Scullion played in four All-Ireland senior camogie finals 1964-73 with her goal-scoring exploits the stand-out headline from 1967 when Antrim collected their fifth O’Duffy Cup and Ulster won the Gael Linn inter-provincial title for the first time. It would take another four decades before they would add a second title.
Lily is also the only player to have won Ulster club camogie titles with two different clubs – her native Ahoghill in 1969 and then with St Bridget’s Newry six years later.
Career-wise Lily was a farmer after she left school, before entering Gallaher’s factory in Ballymena and then moving on to youth work in both Newry and Ballymurphy in the late 1970s.
Her mother had died after a brief illness when Lily was still in her teens and this had led to “rebellion and anger against God”. While working in Newry “I was led by an inner spirit to the Cathedral… It was here, like St Paul, that my conversion took place.”
When she told her friends in 1980 that she was going to become a nun, they were astonished. Then she announced that she was joining an enclosed order. As a notorious prankster on camogie trips and someone with a huge zest for life and company, they thought that it was another of her elaborate hoaxes.
However 45 years ago this month she entered St Mary’s Abbey, Glencairn in Waterford and has been there since.
For the last couple of decades she has been managing the order’s 250 acre farm and has moved the focus from dairy to dry stock and now miscanthus, an energy crop that she began growing 2010.
A few years ago Sr Lily was persuaded to put her remarkable life story to print. The result “From Croke Park to Glencairn” was launched in Waterford a couple of weeks ago and the Antrim launch will take place on Wednesday 29th October in the Acorn centre on the Crosskeys Road in Ahoghill.
It’s a remarkable read following a remarkable lady through her remarkable life.
Her childhood memories are told in the voice of an innocent child finding out about the world around her, growing up as a Catholic in a predominantly unionist area and wondering why her neighbours change their behaviour around July, why all children don’t go to the same school or church.
Her camogie memories are all covered in the form of anecdotes, the friendships she made through sport, the “devilment” she got up to.
The reader is also taken on her inner journey with its twists and turns, from her rejection of God to his total embrace.
In her forward to the book, Sr Ekaete Ekop of the Medical Missionaries of Mary sums up the work:
“Her narrative is brutally honest …. This woman, whose vocation in life is nurtured by her love for nature and farming has lived a life that is at once inspirational and grounded in the mystery of dailiness. In her chronicles, you will find a piece of yourself.”
