But, amid the assortment of frayed shirts, medals and other exhibits, the most pervasive presence is that of Lory Meagher, who lived in the restored period home next to the museum until his death in 1973. "Over the bar says Lory Meagher," young Kilkenny hurlers were said to change whenever they scored. Over the bar - just like Lory used to do.
 

In Tullaroan, you find the deepest roots of Kilkenny's tradition. No club isolder or has wonmore. The legendary black and amber stripes were their original choice when they represented the county, and it was Tullaroan that pioneered Kilkenny's emergence as a force in the early part of the last century.

One of those who played with them was Dick Walshe, who lived wihin a mile of the Meaghers. He carries a stockpile of vivid memories from the period when Tullaroan ruled in Kilkenny and spawned a litany of household names.
 

To this day, I haven't seen a better striker, overhead or on the ground," states Dick, who won a Leinster medal for Kilkenny in 1945, of Meagher. "To take a placed ball or a free, oh, there's none to equal him yet. An Carey is good, there's some good ones - but they're not Meagher."
Walshe is jovial, sprightly 82-year old who becomes quite animated during some of his recollections - leaving his chair to convey a more dramatic picture of the tale he is relaying. His stories are wonderfully evocative and unvarnished. Meagher's most celestial moment, in Walshe's mind, was the 1935 win over Limerick achieved against the odds.
Walshe was in Croke Park, having attended his first All-Ireland final in 1931. He recokens he has missed no more than half a dozen since.
 

The heavens opened," he recalls theatrically, "Limerick were after waltzing through Munster and wiping the ground with Cork and Tipp. WIPING THE GROUND WITH THEM! I saw them in Thurles and I came home and said there's no stopping these Limerick chaps".
But there was. Central to the upset was Meagher's consummate performance. "He swept up a ball, slipped out between the two Ryans (Micka nd Tim) and jinked Mick Mackey, then struck the ball straight over the bar and it hit the top of the railway wall and came back out beyond the goal. Oh God, the shout that wen up for that!" Dick remembers.
It marked the only time that the McCarthy Cup was delivered by a Tullaroan captain - earlier club wins preceded the cup's donation. A young Dick Walshe helped gather tyres for the bonfire when they returned in '35. A few years later he would be playing alonside Meagher, but only for a couple of matches as Tullaroan's legend was on the brink of retirement.
Most of his memories of Meagher were as a sideline witness. In 1931, Kilkenny lost to Cork after a three-match triology, with Meagher missing the decisive third game because of a rib injury. Walshe says the opening match was the first broadcast locally on radio. The postman Bill Muldowney managed to build a radio set that could only be accessed by earphones. Walshe and others stood around him waiting for updates.
 

I said to a pal of mind, 'God, Meagher mustn't be hurling at all,' because he wasn't mentioning him. At half-time I heard the creamery manager had a new one - a box that gives it out itself - so we went up but we couldn't get into his yard with people."
For the replay he travelled by train to Dublin and that began a long series of trips, many with his late friend Stephen Kerwick. Meagher was captain in 1931 too, but had the consolation of winning the following two All-Irelands, and a third in '35. he was 35 then, "with the years" as Dick puts it.
 

He had big wide shoulders. And a very long back, and arms. He could snatch a ball out of the clouds and they all pulling at him. You'd think that he spoke to that ball. He had a drop puck that you don't see at all today and he'd strike it from his toes. You'd never see him hooked."
Meagher was ahead of his time in terms of preparation, often using a set of dumb-bells he found stored in a corn loft in the farmyard of his home. His brother Bill and Henry hurled with him against Cork in the 1926 All-Ireland final which they lost.
 

They were always disputing between himself and Ring and Mackey (as to whom was the greatest). But Meagher did things that no hurler will ever do...I suppose Ring did too."
Dick also hurled with Paddy Phelan, dubbed the hurling's Babe Ruth by a New York newspaper when Kilkenny visited America in 1934. Phelan was selected at left half-back on the Millennium team, bringing Tullaroan's representation to two. Dick is unequivocal on Phelan's merit.
 

He was a genius, you'd think he had the bloody ball on a strong; he was full of tricks. He let Jack Lynch rise every ball in '39 out in front of him and he took it like this (demonstrates) from the side of him - and never touched Lynch."
That was the 'Thunder and Lightning' final which Walshe attended. He remembers having tea in Clearys on the morning of the match when news that Britain had declared war on Germany came over the radio. "Well, you'd hear a pin drop. 'C'mon,' says someone after a few minutes, 'c'mon, we have to go to the All-Ireland!' That was all that was bothering him."
Later in life Dick met Jack Lynch, then serving as Taoiseach. "He came to Kilkenny and he asked me 'how is Paddy Phelan' and I said, 'you'll be sorry to hear that he is gone to England'. He had to go, it was in the hard times of the fifties. Lynch says, 'God, I must do something about that - the greatest hurler that I ever met.' That's as true as I am sitting here."
A winner of four All-Irelands, Phelan died in England and though money was raised to have his body taken home to Tullaroan for burial, his wife politely declined the offer. "She wrote saying 'if ye did that I'd have no one, I'd rather have him here near me," Dick recalls.
A memory stirs inside him now. The 1935 final against Limerick. "John and Mick Mackey made a woeful drive at Phelan to jam him between them, but he slipped away and the two of them bounced off one another. And (at the same time) he was driving the ball over the bar from the half-back line." Phelan, by all accounts was a natural performer who enjoyed playing immensely.
 

Selecting the best players of the century is an impossible task, Dick sighs. Lately, he was asked to help choose Kilkenny's finest and, as he acknowledges, 2there were a lot of hurlers in Kilkenny in the last 100 years." Of the national team recently selected he feels that Phelan's grand nephew, DJ Carey, should have been included.
There are few judges capable ofmaking such valid claims on a millennium selection. The first county final he witnessed was between Dicksboro and Tullaroan ad John Hennessy's field in Threecastles in 1925. He saw Sim Walton play that day, then well into his forties and the equally seasoned midfield colossus Paddy Clohessy.
 

Clohessy would go up for the ball but he wasn't very mobile by then so he had a terribly fast fella alongside him, John Bergin, from Tullaroan vilalge, who was a great 100 yards man. Clohessy would berak it and roar: 'G'wan Bergin!"
The names are too many to mention from Tullaroan's glorious past, but Walshe states that Sim Walton might have been considered as a Millinnium full-forward, given that he won seven All-Ireland medals and captained the 1911 team that won the second of three All-Irelands in succession. He lost a record-equalling eight to Tipp in 1916 but his attacking prowess was memorably honoured in verse:
 

And there goes Walton,
the posts assaultinig,
the green flag raises
for another score."
 

The birthjplace of Lory Meagher and home of 75 All-Ireland medals is less forbidding today, having yielded just two senior hurling titles in the last 50 years. Tullaroan still lead the charts, however, and in recent times the club has risen form a lengthy spell mired in junior rans to win another championship.
The earlier feats are remarkable when Dick, whose father Larry won an All-Ireland medal in 1911, tells you that Tullaroan is the second smalles parish in the Diocese of Ossory - the smallest being Clareen in Offaly, home of the Seir Kieran club and the Dooley brothers. The local population is around 700.
This is one part of Kilkenny, then, where to look bakc is anything but painful.