seamus dubhghaill

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Birth of Jeremy Henderson, Anglo-Irish Artist & Painter

Jeremy Henderson, an Anglo-Irish artist and painter, is born at Lisbellaw, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, on December 25, 1952. He was Artist-in-Residence at Kingston University, with art exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts and National Art Collections.

Henderson is born to James Douglas Alexander Henderson, who manages the family business of Henderson & Eadie, and Doris Josephine (née Watson). He attends Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, where the art master, Angus Bryson, spots him as an exceptional student.

From 1972 to 1973 Henderson studies an Arts Foundation course at Ulster University. From 1973 to 1976 he studies Fine Art at Kingston University, London, achieving a Bachelor of Arts first class honours degree under the tutelage of Terry Jones, returning in 1977 as Artist-in-Residence. In the same year he becomes the first recipient of the Stanley Picker Fellowship Award in Painting. Between 1978 and 1979 he completes a MA postgraduate in Fine Art at Chelsea School of Art under the tutelage of the artist John Hoyland.

In 1980, Henderson starts his professional artistic journey, developing abstract techniques, creating large canvases with complex layers of overlaid and inter-worked paint. He lives and paints in London for twenty years before relocating back to Ireland. In the mid-1980s he works in a studio adjacent to the house he shares with his partner, Jenni Stone, with whom he has a daughter named Emerald.

During the mid-1980s Henderson’s work becomes recognised by private and public collectors, including Bono, leader of the Irish rock band U2. During this period he sells his first work to the National Art Collection (1986). Cuilcagh Under A Renaissance Sky is purchased for Fermanagh County Museum with a grant from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland during his first solo exhibition “Around a Border” in Ireland. This is followed by three more acquisitions via the Arts Council during the 1980s, who continue to support his work into the new millennium acquiring If Hobbema had Seen Ireland (1989) in 2004 via Art Fund with support from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. His work is exhibited by Arts Council England.

In 1990 Henderson moves to the Cooperage Studio, Brick Lane, London, sharing the top floor with sculptor David Fusco and artist Bryan Benge, a friend from Kingston University. Benge says “Every summer the studios in the East End became part of the open studios programme. . . . . He was an intelligent and incredibly accomplished Painter.” It is here, separated from his partner and virtually penniless, he devotes himself entirely to his work, living in a tent, donated by Benge’s parents, inside the studio.

Henderson begins Palinurus in Soho in 1991, a series of twelve paintings depicting night time rooftop scenes across London, painted from an attic in Kingly Street. Exhibited at the Anna Bornholt Gallery in 1992, ten of the series are acquired by a single private collector.

Around 2000, Henderson becomes more influenced by Greek and Irish symbolism, in particular White Island, the Book of Kells and Sheela na gig, reflected in much of the art produced from this time onward. In 2001, he creates a set of enamel manuscripts for The Clinton Centre in Enniskillen, inaugurated by U.S. President Bill Clinton in 2002, in commemoration of the Remembrance Day bombing of 1987. He is interested in enameling because of the possibilities that it offers to him as a colourist and in the behaviour of gestural mark-making. The process is made possible when he is introduced to Andrew Morley, the authority on enamel sign making.

Henderson’s artistic influences include Hans Hofmann, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and John Hoyland. Frequently associated with Samuel Beckett and Jack Butler Yeats, he is influenced by his homeland; his early environment, growing up around weaving, yarns and dyeing, the regions political turmoil, symbolism, and in later life his chronic illness, expressed in his more sombre paintings.

John Hutchinson, critic and director of the Douglas Hyde Gallery writes in the Sunday Independent that Henderson’s paintings “demonstrate the fruitfulness of the no man’s land between abstraction and representation,” and “His images deliberately evoke the picturesque and romantic landscape conventions that originated in the late 18th century…..as well as the expressionist subjectivity of painters such as Jack B. Yeats.” Due to Henderson’s disinterest in the commercialisation of his work, he is sometimes referred to as Ireland’s Invisible Genius.

Henderson describes the evolution of his work, after returning to Ireland in 1993, saying, “Since returning to Ireland my work has become less concerned with resting landscape painting in a cultural context more appropriate to our times, but has come full circle towards an internalised organic abstraction which characterised my more intuitive approach until the early eighties.”

Henderson is married once, in 1995 to the actress Patricia Martinelli with whom he subsequently has a daughter in 1997, Bella-Lucia. He remains married, living in the remote village of Boho, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, until his death, brought on by a brain tumour, on April 28, 2009. He remains a prolific artist throughout his life.

Henderson’s work is held in the private collection of the entrepreneur Vincent Ferguson, owner of Fitzwilton and Independent News & Media PLC. His work is also held in the Smurfit Art Collection of Smurfit Kappa Group.


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Birth of Charles Agar, 1st Earl of Normanton

Charles Agar, 1st Earl of Normanton, an Anglo-Irish clergyman of the Church of Ireland, is born in Gowran Castle in Gowran, County Kilkenny, on December 22, 1736. He serves as Dean of Kilmore, as Bishop of Cloyne, as Archbishop of Cashel, and finally as Archbishop of Dublin from 1801 until his death.

Agar is the third son of Henry Agar of Gowran and his wife Anne Ellis, daughter of the Most Reverend Welbore Ellis, Bishop of Meath. His brothers include James Agar, 1st Viscount Clifden, and Welbore Ellis Agar, a notable art collector. Welbore Ellis, 1st Baron Mendip, is his maternal uncle.

Agar is educated at Westminster School in Westminster, London, and Christ Church, Oxford, where he matriculates on May 31, 1755, aged 18. He graduates BA in 1759, promoted by seniority to MA in 1762. On December 31, 1765, he is created a Doctor of Civil Law.

Agar is known to have held particularly marked Calvinistic positions. He serves as Dean of Kilmore from 1765 to 1768, and then as Bishop of Cloyne until 1779.

In 1776, Agar marries Jane Benson, a daughter of William Benson, of Downpatrick, County Down. In 1779 he is appointed as Archbishop of Cashel and also joins the Privy Council of Ireland. In 1784, while he is in office, the new St. John’s Cathedral, Cashel, is completed, and two years later its important Samuel Green organ is built.

In 1794, Agar is raised to the Peerage of Ireland as Baron Somerton. In 1801, he is translated to become Archbishop of Dublin and is created Viscount Somerton. In 1806, he is further honoured when he is made Earl of Normanton. These titles are all in the Peerage of Ireland. He remains as Archbishop of Dublin until his death in 1809, and from the beginning of 1801 onward, sits in the House of Lords as one of the twenty-eight original Irish representative peer, following the Acts of Union 1800 which unites Ireland and Great Britain.

Agar dies on July 14, 1809, aged 72, and is succeeded in his secular titles by his son Welbore Ellis Agar. He is buried in the north transept of Westminster Abbey. His widow Jane, Countess of Normanton, is buried alongside him following her death in 1826. His tomb dates from 1815 and is created by John Bacon.


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Birth of Ciarán Mac Mathúna, Broadcaster & Music Collector

Ciarán Mac Mathúna, broadcaster and music collector, is born on November 26, 1925, in Limerick, County Limerick. He is a recognised authority on Irish traditional music and lectures extensively on the subject. He travels around Ireland, England, Scotland and the United States collecting music.

According to Sam Smyth in the Irish Independent, Mac Mathúna is “on a mission to collect songs and stories, music, poetry and dance before they were buried under the coming tsunami of pop music.”

Mac Mathúna presents the radio programme, Mo Cheol Thú, for 35 years. Upon his retirement in 2005, the managing director of RTÉ Radio, Adrian Moynes, describes him as “inseparable from RTÉ Radio.” Upon his death in 2009, the Irish Independent describes him as “a national treasure.”

Mac Mathúna spends his early years in Mulgrave Street in Limerick. He is schooled at CBS Sexton Street, and later graduates from University College Dublin (UCD) with a BA in modern Irish and Latin. Subsequently, he completes an MA in Irish.

After college Mac Mathúna works as a teacher and later at the Placenames Commission. In 1954, he joins Radio Éireann where his job is to record Irish traditional musicians playing in their own locales. This entails visiting such places as Sliabh Luachra, County Clare and County Sligo, and the resulting recordings feature in his radio programmes: Ceolta Tire, A Job of Journeywork and Humours of Donnybrook.

Director General of RTÉ Cathal Goan later recalls that Mac Mathúna interviewed him for his first job at the station. He assists in the organisation of Mac Mathúna’s music collection for the RTÉ Libraries and Archives.

Mac Mathúna’s long-running Sunday morning radio series, Mo Cheol Thú (You are my music), begins in 1970 and continues until November 2005, when he retires from broadcasting. Each 45-minute programme offers a miscellany of archive music, poetry and folklore, mainly of Irish origin. It is one of radio’s longest running programmes. The last episode is broadcast on November 27, 2005, at 8:10 a.m.

Mac Mathúna wins two Jacob’s Awards, in 1969 and 1990, for his RTÉ Radio programmes promoting Irish traditional music. He receives the Freedom of Limerick city in June 2004. He is also awarded honorary doctorates by NUI Galway and the University of Limerick. In 2007, he receives the Musicians Award at the 10th annual TG4 Traditional Music Awards.

Joe Kennedy in the Sunday Independent in 2007 compares Mac Mathúna to “an amiable rock, rolling gently along, still picking up some moss and morsels of music that he may have missed.”

Mac Mathúna‘s wife, Dolly MacMahon (using the English version of her surname), is a singer of traditional songs. She comes from Galway and meets her husband in 1955. He has two sons named Padraic and Ciarán, one daughter named Déirdre, and four grandchildren at the time of his death: Eoin, Colm, Conor and Liam.

Mac Mathúna dies in St. Gladys nursing home, Harold’s Cross, Dublin, on December 11, 2009. His funeral on December 15, 2009, is attended by hundreds of people, including aides-de-camp of the President and Taoiseach, RTÉ Director-General Cathal Goan, poet Seamus Heaney and others.

Musicians performing at the ceremony include Peadar Ó Riada, Cór Cúil Aodha and members of The Chieftains and Planxty. The corpse is then taken to Mount Jerome Crematorium. Journalist Kevin Myers says Mac Mathúna’s legacy will be the “rebirth of Irish music,” adding, “Well, if Ciarán Mac Mathúna can die, I suppose anyone can. Actually, I had always thought that he was immortal. He certainly appeared to have all the ingredients.”


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Death of Josephine McNeill, First Irish Female Diplomat

Josephine McNeill, Irish diplomat, dies in Dublin on November 19, 1969. She is the first Irish female diplomat appointed to represent Ireland abroad in a ministerial capacity.

McNeill is born Josephine Ahearne on March 31, 1895, in Fermoy, County Cork, the daughter of shopkeeper and hotelier, James Ahearne, and his wife Ellen Ahearne (née O’Brien). She attends the Loretto Convent, Fermoy, and goes on to graduate from University College Dublin (UCD) with a BA,  H.Dip.Ed. in French and German. With this she begins a teaching career, at St. Louis’ Convent, Kiltimagh, at the Ursuline Convent, Thurles, and at Scoil Íde. Scoil Íde, the female counterpart to St. Enda’s School, had been established by her friend, Louise Gavan Duffy. She is fluent in the Irish language and takes an active part in the cultural elements of the Irish independence movement, such as literature and music. She is a member of Cumann na mBan, serving as a member of the executive committee in 1921.

McNeill becomes engaged to Pierce McCan, but he dies of influenza in Gloucester Gaol in March 1919. She marries James McNeill in 1923, while he is serving as Irish High Commissioner in London. Despite her reservations, she becomes a noted hostess, both in London and later in Dublin when her husband becomes the Governor-General of the Irish Free State from 1928 to 1932.

After the death of her husband in 1938, McNeill becomes the honorary secretary of the council of the Friends of the National Collections, as well as serving as chair of the executive committee of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association until 1950. As a member of the Department of External Affairs advisory committee on cultural relations, she writes on economic, social and cultural issues. She represents Ireland at the UNESCO general assembly in Paris in 1949.

McNeill is an active member of Clann na Poblachta from its foundation in 1946. She is appointed the minister to the Netherlands in 1950 by Seán MacBride, making her the first Irish female diplomat to represent the Republic of Ireland abroad in a ministerial capacity. This appointment is not well received by diplomats in the Department of External Affairs. Her reports from The Hague focus on the issues the Netherlands faces with decolonisation. In 1955, she becomes the minister to Sweden, going on to hold the joint appointment to Austria and Switzerland from 1956 to 1960, after which she retires. While serving in Switzerland she puts aside the resentment she feels towards Éamon de Valera based on how he had treated her husband, to sit with him during a convalescence while de Valera recovers from an eye operation.

McNeill is an amateur pianist and collects paintings and porcelains. In 1933, she publishes the Irish language book, Finnsgéalta ó India.

McNeill dies in St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, on November 19, 1969. She is buried in Kilbarrack Cemetery. Her papers are held in the UCD Archives.


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Birth of Liam Ó Muirthile, Poet, Writer & Journalist

Liam Ó Muirthile, prominent Irish language poet and journalist who also writes plays and novels, is born in Cork, County Cork, on November 15, 1950. He originally comes to the fore as a member of a group of poets from University College Cork (UCC) who collaborate in the journal Innti in the late 1960s.

Ó Muirthile is educated at cork, taking a BA in Irish and French at UCC. His Irish is acquired at school and from sojourns in the Gaeltacht of West Kerry. He is a member of a group of poets at UCC in the late 1960s who choose Irish as a creative medium and are closely associated with the modernist poetry journal Innti, founded by fellow poet Michael Davitt. They are influenced by the work of Cork poet Seán Ó Ríordáin, by the musician and composer Seán Ó Riada, and by popular American culture.

Greg Delanty, writing for Poetry International, claims that a fundamental achievement of Ó Muirthile and other members of the Innti group was to adapt the language to a contemporary urban landscape in a way that reflected the counterculture of the sixties.

Ó Muirthile has been described as a poet of immense formal and musical mastery who reads deeply into the classical and neo-classical poetry of the Irish language. He studies French literature as a student and this influences his work. He translates poetry by Guillaume Apollinaire, François Villon, Jacques Prévert and Anne Hébert.

Ó Muirthile’s first collection of poetry is Tine Chnámh (1984). This receives the Irish American Cultural Institute’s literary award and an Oireachtas prize for poetry. He subsequently publishes a number of other collections. In 1996, he receives the Butler Award for his novel Ar Bhruach na Laoi. Several plays by him have been staged. From 1989 to 2003 he writes a weekly column, “An Peann Coitianta,” for The Irish Times. Poems by him have been translated into English, German, French, Italian, Hungarian and Romanian.

Two of Ó Muirthile‘s poems, Meachán Rudaí and Áthas, have been put to music by the Irish/American group The Gloaming and featured on their third studio album The Gloaming 3.

Ó Muirthile dies peacefully in St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, on May 18, 2018. A Requiem Mass is held in Holy Family Church, Kill of the Grange, County Dublin, on May 21. This is followed with prayers and music in St. Gobnait’s Church, Cúil Aodha, County Cork, which precedes his burial in Reilig Ghobnatan, Ballyvourney.


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Death of Agnes O’Farrelly, Professor Of Irish at UCD

Agnes Winifred O’Farrelly (Irish: Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh), academic and Professor of Irish at University College Dublin (UCD), dies in Dublin on November 5, 1951.

O’Farrelly is born Agnes Farrelly on June 24, 1874, in Raffony House, Virginia, County Cavan, one of five daughters and three sons of Peter Dominic Farrelly and Ann Farrelly (née Sheridan), a family with a traditional interest in the Irish language. After her articles Glimpses of Breffni and Meath are published in The Anglo-Celt in 1895, the editor, E. T. O’Hanlon, encourages her to study literature. Graduating from the Royal University of Ireland (BA 1899, MA 1900), she is appointed a lecturer in Irish at Alexandra College and Loreto College. A founder member in 1902, along with Mary Hayden, of the Irish Association of Women Graduates and Candidate Graduates, to promote equal opportunity in university education, she gives evidence to the Robertson (1902) and Fry (1906) commissions on Irish university education, arguing successfully for full co-education at UCD. Appointed lecturer in modern Irish at UCD in 1909, she is also a member of the first UCD governing body and the National University of Ireland (NUI) senate (1914–49). In 1932, on the retirement of Douglas Hyde, she is appointed professor of modern Irish at UCD, holding the position until her retirement in 1947. She is also president of the Irish Federation of University Women (1937–39) and of the National University Women Graduates’ Association (NUWGA) (1943–47).

One of the most prominent women in the Gaelic League, a member of its coiste gnótha (executive committee) and a director of the Gaelic press An Cló-Chumann Ltd, O’Farrelly is a close friend of most of its leading figures, especially Douglas Hyde, Kuno Meyer, and Eoin MacNeill. One of Hyde’s allies in his battle to avoid politicising the league, she is so close to him that students at UCD enjoy speculating about the nature of their friendship. She advocates pan-Celticism, but does not get involved in disputes on the matter within the league. A founder member, and subsequently principal for many years, of the Ulster College of Irish, Cloghaneely, County Donegal, she is also associated with the Leinster and Connacht colleges and serves as chairperson of the Federation of Irish Language Summer Schools.

Having presided at the inaugural meeting of Cumann na mBan in 1914, espousing its subordinate role in relation to the Irish Volunteers, O’Farrelly leaves the organisation soon afterward because of her support for recruitment to the British Army during World War I. A close friend of Roger Casement, in 1916, along with Col. Maurice Moore she gathers a petition that seeks a reprieve of his death sentence. She is a member of a committee of women which negotiate unsuccessfully with Irish Republican Army (IRA) leaders to avoid civil war in 1922, and is heavily defeated as an independent candidate for the NUI constituency in the general elections of 1923 and June 1927. In 1937 she is actively involved in the National University Women Graduates’ Association’s campaign against the constitution, seeking deletion of articles perceived as discriminating against women.

Popular among students at UCD, O’Farrelly has a reputation as a social figure and entertains frequently at her homes in Dublin and the Donegal Gaeltacht. A founder member (1914) and president (1914–51) of the UCD camogie club, she persuades William Gibson, 2nd Baron Ashbourne, to donate the Ashbourne Cup for the camogie intervarsities. She is also president of the Camogie Association of Ireland in 1941–42. A supporter of native Irish industry, she is president of the Irish Industrial Development Association and the Homespun Society, and administrator of the John Connor Magee Trust for the development of Gaeltacht industry. A poet and writer in both Irish and English, often using the pseudonym ‘Uan Uladh’, her principal publications in prose are The reign of humbug (1900), Leabhar an Athar Eoghan (1903), Filidheacht Segháin Uí Neachtáin (1911), and her novel Grádh agus crádh (1901); and in poetry Out of the depths (1921) and Áille an domhain (1927).

O’Farrelly retires from UCD in 1947, and lives at 38 Brighton Road, Rathgar. An oil portrait by Seán Keating, RHA, is presented to her by the NUWGA on her retirement. She dies on November 5, 1951 in Dublin. Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and President Seán T. O’Kelly attend her funeral to Dean’s Grange Cemetery. She never marries, and leaves an estate valued at £3,109.


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Birth of Helena Concannon, Historian, Writer & Politician

Helena Concannon (née Walsh), Irish historian, writer, language scholar and Fianna Fáil politician, is born in Maghera, County Londonderry, on October 28, 1878.

Concannon is educated by the Loreto nuns in Coleraine, County Londonderry. In 1897, she studies modern languages at the Royal University of Ireland on a three-year scholarship. She studies abroad during these years as in 1899, she travels to Germany and studies German in Berlin University accompanied by her friend, Mary Macken. She then travels to France to study French at Sorbonne University. In 1900, she graduates Bachelor of Arts with first class honours and goes on to study Master of Arts in 1902 at the Royal University of Ireland. She is fortunate to being one of the first generation of educated women.

In 1906, Concannon marries Tomás Bán Ó Conceanainn, who she met in 1900 when he arrived home from the United States. They settle down in County Galway where they share the same love for the Irish language and write many Irish texts. They have no children. In Galway, she is a professor at University College Galway where she teaches history, which mainly involves the history of Irish women. In 1909, she is offered a lectureship at University College Dublin, in Italian, but the offer is then withdrawn before she can accept it, so she decides to pursue a writing career.

Concannon produces over twenty books, including works on religion, the history of Ireland and Irish women’s history. Her works are highly impacted by her political and nationalist views. Her analyses of Irish history is based on Catholicism and patriotism. She is also an advocate of Irish language restoration. Her first writings are love poems to her husband. These poems are ”simple, sensuous and passionate.”

Concannon also produces a number of imaginative historical text for children. She uses her married name for her publications and her first book, entitled A Garden of girls, or the famous schoolgirls of former days, is published in 1914. It is about “school life and education of real little girls” Her next well known piece is the Life of St. Columban in 1915, which is a study about the Irish ancient monastic life and a biography of a sixth-century saint.

Two of Concannon’s books, Daughters of Banba (1922) and St. Patrick (1932), receive the Tailteann Medal for Literature, and The Poor Clares in Ireland (1929) wins the National University Prize, a D.Litt. higher doctorate degree for historical research.

Concannon’s most common publication, Women of ‘Ninety Eight, is dedicated to all the dead women and all the living ones who have given their loved ones. This book emerges on the ideologies of Catholicism and patriotism “praising the devotion of Irish nationalist women while emphasising the centrality of women’s spiritual and domestic role in the home to the well-being of the nation.” As this work is written during the time of the Irish War of Independence, she stresses the importance of women help during the rebellion as “they acted as messengers and intelligence officers,” and in some cases, they fought as any men.

Concannon was elected to the 8th Dáil for Fianna Fáil at the 1933 Irish general election for the National University of Ireland constituency, serving from February 8, 1933 until June 14, 1937.

Concerning the Land Purchase (Guarantee Fund) Bill 1935, which according to George Cecil Bennett will negatively impact the rural middle class of which he is a representative, Bennett accuses Concannon and her fellow Dublin men of not caring about the people of the country. Concannon goes on to vote that the Dáil should disagree with the Seanad Éireann-proposed bill with 71 others.

Though Concannon is a TD as a university representative, she votes with her party to remove university representation from the Dáil, leading one TD to say, “I am very much surprised to see such a distinguished scholar and such a great contributor to Irish literature as Deputy Mrs. Concannon voting for the disfranchisement of the University that she has so well and so ably represented.”

Concannon speaks on behalf of Irish women in the Dáil in 1936. She speaks on how Irish women play a fundamental role in Ireland’s agricultural economy and therefore more money should be put toward educating these women.

Concannon is one of the minority voices against the role appointed to women in Éamon de Valera‘s constitution. She does not contest the Dáil election of 1937.

After the adoption of the Constitution of Ireland in 1937, the National University of Ireland constituency is reconstituted in the new Seanad Éireann. The first election takes place in 1938, and Concannon is elected. She is a popular figure and is re-elected each election in the Seanad until she dies in office on February 27, 1952.


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Birth of Pádraig de Brún, Catholic Priest & Linguist

Pádraig de Brún, also called Patrick Joseph Monsignor Browne, a Roman Catholic priest, linguist, Classicist, and Celticist, is born in Grangemockler, County Tipperary, on October 13, 1889. With regard to his contribution to modern literature in Irish, he, who Louis de Paor terms in 2014 “one of the most distinguished literary figures of his time,” is also a writer of Irish poetry in the Irish language and the literary translator of many of the greatest works of the Western canon into Modern Irish. He serves as President of University College, Galway (UCG), and is known in friendly and informal circles as Paddy Browne.

De Brún is the son of a primary school teacher, Maurice Browne. He is educated locally, at Rockwell College, Cashel, and at Holy Cross College, Drumcondra, Dublin (at both he is tutored in mathematics by Éamon de Valera). In 1909, he is awarded a BA from the Royal University of Ireland. He is awarded an MA degree by the National University of Ireland, and wins a traveling scholarship in mathematics and mathematical physics, enabling him to pursue further studies in Paris. He is ordained as a Catholic priest at the Irish College in Paris in 1913, the same year he earns his D.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Paris under Émile Picard.

After a period at the University of Göttingen, de Brún is appointed professor of mathematics at St. Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth, in 1914. In April 1945, he is elected by the Senate of the National University of Ireland to succeed John Hynes as President of University College, Galway, an office he holds until his retirement in 1959. His friend Thomas MacGreevy refers to de Brún as, “Rector Magnificus,” and praises his, “Olympian capacity to appreciate the most exalted works of art and literature, ancient and modern.”

The School of Mathematics, Mathematical Physics and Statistics is based in Áras de Brún, a building named in de Brún‘s honour. He subsequently becomes Chairman of the Arts Council of Ireland, a position he holds until his death in 1960. He also serves as chairman of the Council of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS).

De Brún is close friend of 1916 Easter Rising leader Seán Mac Diarmada and is deeply affected by the latter’s execution.

De Brún was a prolific writer of Irish poetry in the Irish language, including the well-known poem “Tháinig Long ó Valparaiso.” He further translates into Modern Irish many great works of the Western canon, including Homer‘s Iliad and Odyssey, Sophocles‘ Antigone and Oedipus Rex, and Plutarch‘s Parallel Lives, as well as French stage plays by Jean Racine and Dante Alighieri‘s Divine Comedy. With regards to his importance to modern literature in Irish, he is recently termed “one of the most distinguished literary figures of his time.”

The French Government awards de Brún the title of Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur in 1949, and in 1956, the order Al Merito della Repubblica Italiana is conferred on him by the President of Italy. He is created a Domestic Prelate (a Monsignor) by Pope Pius XII in 1950.

De Brún purchases land at Dunquin in the Dingle Peninsula Gaeltacht. In the 1920s, he also builds a house there known as Tigh na Cille, where his sister and her children often visit and stay at length. Through his literary mentorship of his niece, the future poet Máire Mhac an tSaoi, he has been credited with having an enormous influence upon the future development of modern literature in Irish.

After suffering a heart attack at his house at Seapoint, Dún Laoghaire, into which he had recently moved, de Brún dies on June 5, 1960, in St. Vincent’s nursing home, Leeson Street, Dublin.


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Birth of Cahal Daly, Archbishop of Armagh

Cahal Brendan Daly KGCHS, a Roman Catholic cardinal, theologian and writer, is born Charles Brendan Daly on October 1, 1917, in Ballybraddin, Loughguile, a village near Ballymoney in County Antrim.

Daly serves as the Catholic Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh from late 1990 to 1996, the oldest man to take up this role in nearly 200 years. He is later created a Cardinal-Priest of San Patrizio by Pope John Paul II in the papal consistory of June 28, 1991.

Daly is the third child of seven born to Charles Daly and Susan Connolly. His father is a primary school teacher originally from Keadue, County Roscommon, and his mother a native of Antrim. He is educated at St. Patrick’s National School in Loughguile, and then as a boarder in St. Malachy’s College, Belfast, in 1930. The writer Brian Moore is a near contemporary.

Daly studies Classics at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). He earns his BA with Honours and also the Henry Medal in Latin Studies in 1937 and completes his MA the following year. He enters St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth and is ordained to the priesthood on June 22, 1941. He continues studies in theology in Maynooth, from where he obtains a doctorate in divinity (DD) in 1944. His first appointment is as Classics Master in St. Malachy’s College (1944–45).

In 1945, Daly is appointed Lecturer in Scholastic Philosophy at Queen’s University, Belfast, retaining the post for 21 years. In the academic year 1952–53 QUB grants him sabbatical leave, which he spends studying at the Catholic University of Paris where he receives a licentiate in philosophy. He returns to France at many points, particularly for holidays. He persists with his studies well into his retirement. He is a popular figure with the university and fondly remembered by his students. He is named a Canon of the Cathedral Chapter of Diocese of Down and Connor in 1966.

Daly is a peritus, or theological expert, at the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) to Bishop William Philbin during the first session of the Council and to Cardinal William Conway for the rest of the council. He dedicates himself to scholarship for 30 years, and publishes several books seeking to bring about understanding between the warring factions in Northern Ireland.

Daly is appointed Reader in Scholastic Philosophy at QUB in 1963, a post he holds until 1967, when he is appointed Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise on May 26.

Daly converts his forename Charles into Cahal ahead of his episcopal consecration in St. Mel’s Cathedral, Longford, on July 16, 1967, from Cardinal William Conway, with Archbishop Giuseppe Sensi and Bishop Neil Farren serving as co-consecrators.

Daly spends 15 years as bishop in Longford and is diligent about parish visitation and confirmations gradually assume a greater national profile. From 1974 onward, he devotes himself especially to ecumenical activities for the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. His pastoral letter to Protestants, written in 1979, pleads for Christian unity.

Daly succeeded William Philbin as the 30th Bishop of Down and Connor when he is installed as bishop of his native diocese at a ceremony in St. Peter’s Cathedral, Belfast, on October 17, 1982.

On November 6, 1990, Daly is appointed Archbishop of Armagh and, as such, Primate of All Ireland. His age makes him an unexpected occupant of the post. Despite this it is requested that he stay in the role for three years before usual age of episcopal retirement at 75. Cardinal Daly takes a notably harder line against the Irish Republican Army (IRA) than his predecessor, Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich.

Daly is respectful of Protestant rights and opposes integrated education of Catholics and Protestants. This policy is criticised by those who see segregated education as one of the causes of sectarianism in Northern Ireland, but is seen by the Catholic clergy as important for passing on their faith to future generations. He is utterly orthodox in opposing divorce, contraception, abortion, the ordination of women and any idea of dropping clerical celibacy.

Daly is heckled by the audience on live television during a broadcast of The Late Late Show on RTÉ One on the topic of pedophilia in the 1990s. After his retirement in 1996, he makes no public statement on the issue.

Daly retires as Archbishop of Armagh on his 79th birthday, October 1, 1996, and subsequently suffers ill health. Although it is announced that he will attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II, he stays home on the advice of his doctors. His age makes him ineligible to participate in the 2005 conclave that elects Pope Benedict XVI.

Daly is admitted to the coronary unit of Belfast City Hospital on December 28, 2009. His health has already been declining, leading to prayers being ordered for him. He dies in hospital in Belfast on December 31, 2009, aged 92. His family are at his bedside at the time. His death brings to an end a two-year period during which Ireland has, for the first time in its history, three living Cardinals.

Daly lay in state in Belfast and then his remains are taken to Armagh. Pope Benedict XVI pays tribute at this stage. Large numbers of people travel from as far as County Westmeath to attend Mass at Armagh on January 4, at which Monsignor Liam McEntaggart, the former parish priest of Coalisland, says, “When the history of peace making in Ireland comes to be written, the contribution of Cardinal Daly will be accorded a high place.” Monsignor McEntaggart himself dies on August 22, 2010, aged 81, less than eight months after Cardinal Daly’s passing.

Daly’s funeral is held on January 5, 2010, and is attended by the president Mary McAleese and Taoiseach Brian Cowen. Daly is buried in the grounds of St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, Armagh, next to his three predecessors in the see, Cardinals Ó Fiaich, Conway and D’Alton.


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Death of Leslie Daiken, Copywriter, Editor & Writer

Leslie Herbert Daiken, an Irish advertising copywriter, editor, and writer on children’s toys and games, dies in London on August 15, 1964.

Born Leslie Yodaiken into a Russian–Jewish family in Portobello, Dublin, Daiken is the son of Samuel and Rosa Yodaiken. His father is a dealer in rubber and scrap metal, with premises in Dublin and Glasgow, and he is educated at two independent fee-paying schools, St. Andrew’s College and Wesley College, and then in 1930 he enters Trinity College Dublin. In his first year, one of his lecturers in French literature was Samuel Beckett. He is an active member of the Dublin University Socialist Society and a founding member of the college’s Gaelic Society.

In 1932, and again in 1933, as Yodaiken he wins the Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for English Prose, and while at Trinity, he publishes short stories and verse in Choice, The Dublin Magazine, and The New English Weekly.

In 1933, Daiken is present at the house of Charlotte Despard in Eccles Street, Dublin, also used as a Workers’ College, when it is attacked by a mob of Blueshirts. He leads the immediate defence of the building, which is saved on that occasion by the intervention of Irish Republican Army (IRA) men posing as the police.

In 1934, as Yodaiken, he graduates with a BA from Trinity in English and French Literature, with a Second Class degree. After graduating, Daiken works briefly as a schoolteacher in Dublin. In April 1935, his short story “Angela” is published in The New English Weekly under the pen name of Ned Kiernan. That year, he migrates to London.

Soon after his arrival in London, Daiken is one of the three founders of a duplicated publication called Irish Front, together with two other poets, Charles Donnelly and Ewart Milne.

In England, Daiken starts to shorten his surname from Yodaiken to Daiken, for his publications, but he does not make this change formally until doing so by deed poll in 1943.

In December 1935, The Irish Times reviews a production in Camden Town of Ireland Unfree, a stage version by Daiken of Patrick Pearse’s poem “The Rebel.” It states that “Mr. Daiken carries Pearse’s theme beyond his idealistic conclusion to the revolutionary viewpoint of the Irish workers.”

Daiken keeps up his links with leftist Irish writers and dissidents and edits the collection of working-class political verse Goodbye Twilight: songs of the struggle in Ireland (1936), illustrated by Harry Kernoff. The Irish Press describes this as “forty young poets with blazing eyes and clenched fists.” In another review, Louis MacNeice calls the book a “collection of proletarian poems – some communist, some Irish republican, and all written in a defiant spirit of opposition … a violent reaction against Yeats and all that he stood for.”

Daiken does not go to fight in the Spanish Civil War, although his Irish Front colleague Charles Donnelly does, and is killed; but he is active in fundraising for the Connolly Column, the Irish section of the International Brigades. He is also a contributor to the branch of Republican Congress in London, an Irish republican and Marxist-Leninist pressure group which aims to engage Irish emigrants working in the city on socialist issues.

In 1939, Mairin Mitchell is highly critical of the Irish leftists, and in particular Daiken, for their views on the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and writes to Desmond Ryan in September, “Brian O’Neill, Bloomsbury, and Daiken will sing Russia right or wrong.”

In October 1939, at the time of the wartime National Registration Act, Daiken is living in a studio at Old Castle Wharf, Twickenham, and describes himself as “Script-writer and advertising copywriter.”

During World War II, Daiken enlists in the Corps of Signals of the Irish Army, a neutral force, and also works for Reuters as a correspondent on education. In 1944, he edits They Go, the Irish, a collection of essays, including one from Seán O’Casey. In 1945, a collection of his verse is published under the title Signatures of All Things. In the summer of that year, Samuel Beckett gives Daiken his unpublished novel Watt, in the hope that he can find a publisher for it, but he fails to do so. They continue to write to each other and meet in London and Paris in the 1950s. He also keeps up with another friend from Trinity, Con Leventhal.

After he becomes a father in 1945, Daiken’s main interest moves on from political activism to children’s games and toys, and by 1951 the basement of his London home has become a toy museum. He writes on the subject and makes television and radio programmes for the BBC about it. His film One potato, two potato, a compilation of children’s street rhymes, wins the Festival Mondial du Film prize in 1958. His radio play The Circular Road is about a Jewish-Irish child.

In the 1950s Daiken founds the National Toy Museum and Institute of Play, today part of the Toy Collection at Hove Museum of Creativity.

Daiken returns to Ireland many times as a visitor. In the early 1960s he completes a radio play about the Jewish community of Dublin in the 1920s, which is broadcast on RTÉ.

In October 1963, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, recruits Daiken as a lecturer in education, and not long before his death he makes a film called The Piano about teaching white and black children in a school in Africa. He dies on August 15, 1964, while spending the summer vacation at home in London, leaving an estate valued at £3,865. He is cremated. His widow survives him until 1981.

In a tribute to Daiken, his 1930s communist associate Brian O’Neill writes, “He was always busy, always with a half dozen irons in the fire, always trying to give a hand to some Irish writer who needed it.”

In the early 1990s, Katrina Goldstone interviews Daiken’s brother, Aubrey Yodaiken, and later reports: “I was left with a faint sense of melancholy, as my interviewee had become distressed speaking about his brother, Leslie Daiken, and recalling his irrepressible and exasperating personality, his many projects, half-started novels…”

Aubrey Yodaiken is distressed by the lack of appreciation of his brother’s many cultural efforts and by the fact that his “scattershot literary endeavours” seem to have come to naught.

The National Library of Ireland holds a collection of Daiken’s papers, in particular his publications and correspondence, presented to it in 1995 by his elder daughter, by then Melanie Cuming, and his younger brother, Aubrey Yodaiken. The papers are mostly in English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Hebrew, and Irish.