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Tag Archives: Ballylongford (County Kerry)


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Death of Malachi Martin, Irish American Catholic Priest

Malachi Brendan Martin, also known under the pseudonym of Michael Serafian, Irish-born American Traditionalist Catholic priest, biblical archaeologist, exorcist, palaeographer, professor, and writer on the Catholic Church, dies in New York City on July 27, 1999.

Martin is born on July 23, 1921, in Ballylongford, County Kerry, to a middle-class family in which the children are raised speaking Irish at the dinner table. His parents, Conor and Katherine Fitzmaurice Martin, have five sons and five daughters. Four of the five sons become priests, including his younger brother, Francis Xavier Martin.

Martin attends Belvedere College in Dublin, then studies philosophy for three years at University College Dublin (UCD). On September 6, 1939, he becomes a novice with the Society of Jesus. He teaches for three years, spending four years at Milltown Park, Dublin, and is ordained in August 1954.

Upon completion of his degree course in Dublin, Martin is sent to the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, where he takes a doctorate in archaeology, Oriental history, and Semitic languages. He starts postgraduate studies at both the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the University of Oxford. He specializes in intertestamentary studies, Jesus in Jewish and Islamic sources, Ancient Hebrew and Arabic manuscripts. He undertakes additional study in rational psychology, experimental psychology, physics, and anthropology.

Martin participates in the research on the Dead Sea Scrolls and publishes 24 articles on Semitic palaeography. He does archaeological research and works extensively on the Byblos syllabary in Byblos, in Tyre, and in the Sinai Peninsula. He assists in his first exorcism while working in Egypt for archaeological research. In 1958, he publishes a work in two volumes, The Scribal Character of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Martin’s years in Rome coincide with the beginning of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), which is to transform the Catholic Church in a way that the initially liberal Martin begins to find distressing. He becomes friends with Monsignor George Gilmary Higgins and Father John Courtney Murray.

In Rome, Martin becomes a professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, where he teaches Aramaic, Hebrew, palaeography, and Sacred Scripture. He also teaches theology, part-time, at Loyola University Chicago‘s John Felice Rome Center. He works as a translator for the Eastern Orthodox Churches and Ancient Oriental Churches Division of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity under Bea. He becomes acquainted with Jewish leaders, such as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, in 1961 and 1962. He accompanies Pope Paul VI on a trip to Jordan in January 1964. He resigned his position at the Pontifical Institute in June 1964.

In 1964, Martin requests a release from his vows and from the Jesuit Order. He receives a provisional release in May 1965 and a dispensation from his vows of poverty and obedience on June 30, 1965. Even if dispensed from his religious vow of chastity, he remains under the obligation of chastity if still an ordained secular priest. He maintains that he remains a priest, saying that he had received a dispensation from Paul VI to that effect.

Martin moves to New York City in 1966, working as a dishwasher, a waiter, and taxi driver, while continuing to write. He co-founds an antiques firm and is active in communications and media for the rest of his life.

In 1967, Martin receives his first Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1970, he publishes the book The Encounter: Religion in Crisis, winning the Choice Book Award of the American Library Association. He then publishes Three Popes and the Cardinal: The Church of Pius, John and Paul in its Encounter with Human History (1972) and Jesus Now (1973). In 1970, he becomes a naturalized U.S. citizen.

In 1969, Martin receives a second Guggenheim Fellowship, allowing him to write his first of four bestsellers, Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Living Americans (1976). In the book, he calls himself an exorcist, claiming he assisted in several exorcisms. According to McManus Darraugh, William Peter Blatty “wrote a tirade against Malachi, saying his 1976 book was a fantasy, and he was just trying to cash in.” Darraugh also says that Martin became “an iconic person in the paranormal world.”

Martin serves as religious editor for the National Review from 1972 to 1978. He is interviewed twice by William F. Buckley, Jr. for Firing Line on PBS. He is an editor for the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Martin is a periodic guest on Art Bell‘s radio program, Coast to Coast AM, between 1996 and 1998. The show continues to play tapes of his interviews on Halloween.

Martin’s The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Capitalist West is published in 1990. It is followed in 1996 by Windswept House: A Vatican Novel.

The Vatican restores Martin’s faculty to celebrate Mass in 1989, at his request. He is strongly supported by some Traditionalist Catholic sources and severely criticized by other sources, such as the National Catholic Reporter. He serves as a guest commentator for CNN during the live coverage of the visit of Pope John Paul II to the United States in October 1995.

On July 27, 1999, Martin dies in Manhattan of an intracerebral haemorrhage, four days after his 78th birthday. It is caused by a fall in his Manhattan apartment. The documentary Hostage to the Devil claims that Martin says he was pushed from a stool by a demonic force.

Martin’s funeral takes place in St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in West Orange, New Jersey, before burial at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, in Hawthorne, New York.


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Birth of Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener of Khartoum and Broome in Kent, British Army officer and colonial administrator, is born on June 24, 1850, at Gunsborough Villa, north of Listowel, County Kerry.

Kitchener is the second son of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Horatio Kitchener and his first wife, Frances Anne (née Chevallier), daughter of clergyman John Chevallier. Col. Kitchener resigns his commission in 1849 and purchases Ballygoghlan House estate near Tarbert, County Kerry, in early 1850 under the provisions of the Encumbered Estates Act of 1849. Ballygoghlan House is in a state of disrepair, however, and the family lives in Gunsborough Villa until the end of 1850. In 1857, Col. Kitchener purchases Crotta House, near Kilflynn, County Kerry, and the Kitcheners divide their time between the two residences. While innovative and successful in his agricultural methods, Col. Kitchener is harsh towards his tenants and, after carrying out many evictions, becomes extremely unpopular in the area. He is a rigid disciplinarian and occasionally punishes his son severely.

Although Kitchener attends Ballylongford village school, his education is largely neglected. When examined by his cousin Francis Elliot Kitchener, fellow of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), he is found to have only the most rudimentary knowledge of grammar and arithmetic. Education by private tutors follows. In 1864, his father sells his Irish estates and moves to Switzerland for the sake of his wife’s health. After further private tuition, he passes into the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in 1868, and is commissioned into the Royal Engineers in December 1870.

Kitchener begins his career on survey missions and carries out such work in Palestine (1874–78) and Cyprus (1878–82). He then enters the Egyptian Army and takes part in the Sudan campaign of 1883–85, organised to relieve Genral Charles George Gordon. Subsequent appointments include governor of Suakin (1886–88), adjutant-general of the Egyptian Army (1888–92), and Sirdar (Commander-in-Chief) of the Egyptian Army (1892–96). After the Dongola Expedition in 1896, he is promoted to major-general. He commands the Khartoum Expedition of 1898, defeating Mahdist forces at Atbara and Omdurman, and is raised to the peerage.

At the outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899, he is appointed chief of staff to Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts, and assumes total command, with the rank of lieutenant-general, in 1900. While acting as commander-in-chief in South Africa he reorganises the British forces and, using new tactics, manages finally to defeat the Boers. He is severely criticised in the world press for the conditions in the concentration camps where Boer families are confined, but is made a viscount, promoted to general, and awarded £50,000 by parliament at the end of the war.

Kitchener serves as commander-in-chief in India beginning in 1902, is promoted to Field Marshal in 1909, and is a member of the Committee of Imperial Defence (1910) and consul-general in Egypt (1911–14). At the outbreak of World War I he is made Secretary of State for War and begins to reorganise the British Army, an immense achievement, raising 1,700,000 men in service battalions by May 1915, creating an army of volunteers to reinforce the depleted regular army in Belgium and France. An archconservative, he totally opposes Home Rule for Ireland, and initially blocks plans by John Redmond for the formation of a southern Irish division from members of the National Volunteers. Convinced that an all-Irish brigade or division would be a security risk, he rejects Redmond’s suggestions in a meeting of August 1915 and originally proposes dispersing Irish recruits through the numerous regiments in the army. Impressed by Redmond’s persistence, and impelled by the recruiting crisis of late 1915, he finally reverses his decision and sanctions the establishment of the 16th (Irish) Division.

On June 5, 1916, Kitchener is making his way to Russia on HMS Hampshire to attend negotiations with Tsar Nicholas II when in bad weather the ship strikes a German mine 1.5 miles (2.4 km) west of Orkney, Scotland, and sinks. He is among 737 who perish. He is the highest-ranking British officer to die in action in the entire war.

Although he only spends his early years in Kerry, Kitchener occasionally returns to Ireland. While on leave in June 1910 he goes on a tour of County Kerry, visiting places connected to his childhood. There are numerous portraits and memorials to him in England, including a marble effigy by W. Reid Dick in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and a statue by John Tweed in Horse Guards Parade, London. There is a commemorative bible in the Church of Ireland church at Kilflynn, County Kerry, where he regularly attended Sunday service as a boy. There are some Kitchener letters in the John Redmond papers in the National Library of Ireland.

(From: “Kitchener, Horatio Herbert” by David Murphy, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Death of Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, Irish-born senior British Army officer and colonial administrator, drowns in the sinking of the HMS Hampshire west of Orkney, Scotland, on June 5, 1916. He wins notoriety for his imperial campaigns, especially his scorched earth policy against the Boers, his expansion of Lord Roberts‘ internment camps during the Second Boer War and his central role in the early part of World War I.

Kitchener is born in Ballylongford near Listowel, County Kerry, son of army officer Henry Horatio Kitchener and Frances Anne Chevallier, daughter of John Chevallier, a priest, of Aspall Hall, and his third wife, Elizabeth. The family moves to Switzerland when he is young, where he is educated at Montreux, then at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He joins a French field ambulance unit in the Franco-Prussian War but is returned to England after he comes down with pneumonia.

Kitchener is credited in 1898 for winning the Battle of Omdurman and securing control of the Sudan for which he is made Baron Kitchener of Khartoum. As Chief of Staff (1900–1902) in the Second Boer War he plays a key role in Lord Roberts’ conquest of the Boer Republics, then succeeds Roberts as commander-in-chief, by which time Boer forces have taken to guerrilla warfare and British forces imprison Boer civilians in concentration camps. His term as Commander-in-Chief (1902–09) of the Army in India sees him quarrel with another eminent proconsul, the Viceroy Lord Curzon, who eventually resigns. He then returns to Egypt as British Agent and Consul General.

In 1914, at the start of World War I, Kitchener becomes Secretary of State for War, a Cabinet Minister. One of the few to foresee a long war, lasting for at least three years, and with the authority to act effectively on that perception, he organises the largest volunteer army that Britain had ever seen, and oversees a significant expansion of materials production to fight on the Western Front. Despite having warned of the difficulty of provisioning for a long war, he is blamed for the shortage of shells in the spring of 1915, one of the events leading to the formation of a coalition government and is stripped of his control over munitions and strategy.

On June 5, 1916, Kitchener is making his way to Russia on HMS Hampshire to attend negotiations with Tsar Nicholas II. At the last minute, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe changes the HMS Hampshire‘s route on the basis of a misreading of the weather forecast and ignoring (or not being aware of) recent intelligence and sightings of German U-boat activity in the vicinity of the amended route. Shortly before 7:30 PM the same day, steaming for the Russian port of Arkhangelsk during a Force 9 gale, HMS Hampshire strikes a mine laid by the newly launched German U-boat U-75 and sinks 1.5 miles west of the Orkney. Only twelve men survive. Amongst the dead are Kitchener and all ten members of his entourage. He is seen standing on the quarterdeck during the approximately twenty minutes that it takes the ship to sink. His body is never recovered.


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Death of Michael Joseph O’Rahilly

michael-joseph-o-rahilly

Michael Joseph O’Rahilly, Irish republican and nationalist known as The O’Rahilly, dies in Dublin on April 29, 1916, during the Easter Rising. He is a founding member of the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and serves as Director of Arms. Despite opposing the rising, he takes part and is killed in a charge on a British machine gun post covering the retreat from the General Post Office (GPO) during the fighting.

O’Rahilly is born in Ballylongford, County Kerry to Richard Rahilly, a grocer, and Ellen Rahilly (née Mangan). He has two siblings who live to adulthood, Mary Ellen “Nell” Humphreys (née Rahilly) and Anno O’Rahilly, both of whom are active in the Irish revolutionary period. He is educated in Clongowes Wood College (1890–1893). As an adult, he becomes a republican and a language enthusiast. He joins the Gaelic League and becomes a member of An Coiste Gnotha, its governing body. He is well traveled, spending at least a decade in the United States and in Europe before settling in Dublin.

In 1913 O’Rahilly is a founding member of the Irish Volunteers, who organize to work for Irish independence and resist the proposed Home Rule. He serves as the IV Director of Arms. He personally directs the first major arming of the Irish Volunteers, the landing of 900 Mausers at the Howth gun-running on July 26, 1914.

O’Rahilly is not party to the plans for the Easter Rising, nor is he a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), but he is one of the main people who trains the Irish Volunteers for the coming fight. The planners of the Rising go to great lengths to prevent those leaders of the Volunteers who are opposed to unprovoked, unilateral action from learning that a rising is imminent, including its Chief-of-Staff Eoin MacNeill, Bulmer Hobson, and O’Rahilly. When Hobson discovers that an insurrection is planned, he is kidnapped by the Military Council leadership.

Learning this, O’Rahilly goes to Patrick Pearse‘s school, Scoil Éanna, on Good Friday. He barges into Pearse’s study, brandishing his revolver as he announces, “Whoever kidnaps me will have to be a quicker shot!” Pearse calms him down, assuring him that Hobson is unharmed and will be released after the rising begins.

O’Rahilly takes instructions from MacNeill and spends the night driving throughout the country, informing Volunteer leaders in Cork, Kerry, Tipperary, and Limerick that they are not to mobilise their forces for planned manoeuvres on Sunday.

Arriving home, O’Rahilly learns that the Rising is about to begin in Dublin on the following day, Easter Monday, April 24, 1916. Despite his efforts to prevent such action, he sets out to Liberty Hall to join Pearse, James Connolly, Thomas MacDonagh, Tom Clarke, Joseph Plunkett, Countess Markievicz, Seán Mac Diarmada, Éamonn Ceannt and their Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army troops. Arriving in his De Dion-Bouton motorcar, he gives one of the most quoted lines of the rising – “Well, I’ve helped to wind up the clock…I might as well hear it strike!” His car is used to fetch supplies during the siege and later as part of a barricade on Prince’s Street, where it is burned out.

O’Rahilly fights with the GPO garrison during Easter Week. One of the first British prisoners taken in the GPO is Second Lieutenant AD Chalmers, who is bound with telephone wire and lodged in a telephone box by the young Volunteer Captain and IRB activist, Michael Collins. Chalmers later recalls O’Rahilly’s kindness to him. In a statement to a newspaper reporter, he says that he was taken from the phone box after three hours and brought up to O’Rahilly, who ordered, “I want this officer to watch the safe to see that nothing is touched. You will see that no harm comes to him.”

On Friday, April 28, with the GPO on fire, O’Rahilly volunteers to lead a party of men along a route to Williams and Woods, a factory on Great Britain Street, now Parnell Street. A British machine gun at the intersection of Great Britain and Moore streets cuts him and several of the others down. He slumps into a doorway on Moore Street, wounded and bleeding badly but, hearing the English marking his position, makes a dash across the road to find shelter in Sackville Lane, now O’Rahilly Parade. He is wounded diagonally from shoulder to hip by sustained fire from the machine-gunner.

According to ambulance driver Albert Mitchell in a witness statement more than 30 years later, O’Rahilly still clung to life 19 hours after being severely wounded, long after the surrender had taken place on Saturday afternoon.

Desmond Ryan‘s The Rising: The Complete Story of Easter Week maintains that it “was 2:30 PM when Miss O’Farrell reached Moore Street, and as she passed Sackville Lane again, she saw O’Rahilly’s corpse lying a few yards up the laneway, his feet against a stone stairway in front of a house, his head towards the street.”


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Birth of Michael Joseph O’Rahilly, Republican & Nationalist

Michael Joseph O’Rahilly, Irish republican and nationalist known as The O’Rahilly, is born in Ballylongford, County Kerry, on April 22, 1875.

O’Rahilly is educated in Clongowes Wood College. As an adult, he becomes a republican and a language enthusiast. He joins the Gaelic League and becomes a member of An Coiste Gnotha, its governing body. He is well travelled, spending at least a decade in the United States and in Europe before settling in Dublin.

O’Rahilly is a founding member of the Irish Volunteers in 1913, which is organized to work for Irish independence and resist the proposed Home Rule. He serves as the IV Director of Arms. He personally directs the first major arming of the Irish Volunteers, the landing of 900 Mausers at the Howth gun-running on July 26, 1914.

O’Rahilly is not party to the plans for the Easter Rising, nor is he a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), but he is one of the main people who train the Irish Volunteers for the coming fight. The planners of the Rising go to great lengths to prevent those leaders of the Volunteers who are opposed to unprovoked, unilateral action from learning that a rising is imminent, including its Chief-of-Staff Eoin MacNeill, Bulmer Hobson, and O’Rahilly. When Hobson discovers that an insurrection is planned, he is kidnapped by the Military Council leadership.

Learning this, O’Rahilly goes to Patrick Pearse‘s school, Scoil Éanna, on Good Friday. He barges into Pearse’s study, brandishing his revolver as he announces, “Whoever kidnaps me will have to be a quicker shot!” Pearse calms O’Rahilly, assuring him that Hobson is unharmed, and will be released after the rising begins.

O’Rahilly takes instructions from MacNeill and spends the night driving throughout the country, informing Volunteer leaders in Cork, Kerry, Tipperary, and Limerick that they are not to mobilise their forces for planned manoeuvres on Sunday.

Arriving home, O’Rahilly learns that the Rising is about to begin in Dublin on the next day, Easter Monday, April 24, 1916. Despite his efforts to prevent such action which he feels can only lead to defeat, he sets out to Liberty Hall to join Pearse, James Connolly, Thomas MacDonagh, Tom Clarke, Joseph Plunkett, Countess Markievicz, Seán Mac Diarmada, Eamonn Ceannt and their Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army troops. Arriving in his De Dion-Bouton motorcar, he gives one of the most quoted lines of the rising, “Well, I’ve helped to wind up the clock — I might as well hear it strike!”

O’Rahilly fights with the General Post Office (GPO) garrison during Easter Week. On Friday, April 28, with the GPO on fire, O’Rahilly volunteers to lead a party of men along a route to Williams and Woods, a factory on Great Britain Street, now Parnell Street. A British machine-gun at the intersection of Great Britain and Moore streets cuts him and several of the others down. Wounded and bleeding badly, O’Rahilly slumps into a doorway on Moore Street, but hearing the English marking his position, makes a dash across the road to find shelter in Sackville Lane, now O’Rahilly Parade. He is wounded diagonally from shoulder to hip by sustained fire from the machine-gunner.

The specific timing of O’Rahilly’s death is very difficult to pin down but understanding can be gained from his final thoughts. Despite his obvious pain, he takes the time to write a message to his wife on the back of a letter he received from his son in the GPO. It is this last message to Nancy that artist Shane Cullen etches into his limestone and bronze sculpture. The text reads:

Written after I was shot. Darling Nancy I was shot leading a rush up Moore Street and took refuge in a doorway. While I was there, I heard the men pointing out where I was and made a bolt for the laneway I am in now. I got more [than] one bullet, I think. Tons and tons of love dearie to you and the boys and to Nell and Anna. It was a good fight anyhow. Please deliver this to Nannie O’ Rahilly, 40 Herbert Park, Dublin. Goodbye Darling.


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Birth of Brendan Kennelly, Poet & Novelist

Brendan Kennelly, Irish poet and novelist, is born in Ballylongford, County Kerry, on April 17, 1936. Now retired from teaching, he serves as Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College, Dublin until 2005. Since his retirement he has been titled “Professor Emeritus” by Trinity College.

Kennelly is educated at the inter-denominational St. Ita’s College, Tarbert, County Kerry, and at Trinity College, Dublin where he edits the student literary magazine Icarus. He graduates from Trinity and writes his PhD thesis there. He also studies at Leeds University. Brendan is married for 18 years to Margaret (Peggy) O’Brien, a colleague in the English Department at Trinity College. They live together in Sandymount, Dublin, with daughter Doodle for 12 years before separating. Brendan and Peggy remain friends and Peggy is now remarried. Peggy is a published poet and Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Kennelly’s poetry can be scabrous, down-to-earth and colloquial. He avoids intellectual pretension and literary posturing, and his attitude to poetic language can be summed up in the title of one of his epic poems, “Poetry my Arse.” A 400-page long epic poem, “The Book of Judas”, published in 1991, tops the Irish best-seller list.

A prolific and fluent writer, he has more than twenty books of poetry to his credit, including My Dark Fathers(1964), Collection One: Getting Up Early (1966), Good Souls to Survive (1967), Dream of a Black Fox (1968), Love Cry(1972), The Voices (1973), Shelley in Dublin (1974), A Kind of Trust (1975), Islandman (1977), A Small Light (1979) and The House That Jack Didn’t Build (1982).

Kennelly has edited several other anthologies, including “Between Innocence and Peace: Favourite Poems of Ireland” (1993), “Ireland’s Women: Writings Past and Present, with Katie Donovan and A. Norman Jeffares” (1994), and “Dublines,” with Katie Donovan (1995).

Kennelly has also written two novels, “The Crooked Cross” (1963) and “The Florentines” (1967), and three plays in a Greek Trilogy, Antigone, Medea and The Trojan Women.

Kennelly is an Irish language speaker, and has translated Irish poems in “A Drinking Cup” (1970) and “Mary” (Dublin 1987). A selection of his collected translations is published as “Love of Ireland: Poems from the Irish” (1989).

Language is important in Kennelly’s work – in particular the vernacular of the small and isolated communities in North Kerry where he grew up, and of the Dublin streets and pubs where he becomes both roamer and raconteur for many years. Kennelly’s language is also grounded in the Irish-language poetic tradition, oral and written, which can be both satirical and salacious in its approach to human follies.

Regarding the oral tradition, Kennelly is a great reciter of verse with tremendous command and the rare ability to recall extended poems by memory, both his own work and others, and recite them on call verbatim.

Kennelly has commented on his own use of language: “Poetry is an attempt to cut through the effects of deadening familiarity and repeated, mechanical usage in order to unleash that profound vitality, to reveal that inner sparkle. In the beginning was the Word. In the end will be the Word…language is a human miracle always in danger of drowning in a sea of familiarity.”