seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Summerhill (Dublin)


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Death of Sir Thomas Farrell, Irish Sculptor

Sir Thomas Farrell, Irish sculptor, dies at his home, Redesdale House, Stillorgan, County Dublin, on July 2, 1900.

Farrell is born in 1827 in Mecklenburgh Street (later called Railway Street) in Summerhill, Dublin, one of six sons of Terence Farrell, sculptor, and Maria Farrell (née Ruxton). He trains as a sculptor in his father’s workshops. In 1842 he enters the modelling school of the Royal Dublin Society, where he is awarded the prize for “Original design in clay” the following year. He is awarded premiums by the Royal Irish Art Union in 1844 and 1846. As a student he becomes acquainted with the neoclassical sculpture of John Flaxman and John Hogan. His first commission is a monument to Archbishop Daniel Murray in St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin.

One of the first works that make Farrell prominent is the bas-relief representing the last charge at Waterloo, designed for the Wellington Monument in the Phoenix Park. His work is accepted after public competition. Another of his early works is his memorial to Captain John McNeil Boyd in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. He enters the competition for the monument to Daniel O’Connell in 1864, but the commission is awarded to John Henry Foley.

His statue of William Smith O’Brien, the Young Ireland leader, formerly at the head of D’Olier Street, is now in O’Connell Street, as is another statue by him, that of Sir John Gray, the surgeon and politician who is instrumental in giving Dublin its water supply.

Throughout his career, Farrell remains actively involved in the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA). He is elected directly as a full member in 1860 rather than undergoing an initial phase of associate membership. He exhibits almost annually with the academy until his death. He holds a number of posts, including professor of sculpture and treasurer, before being elected president in 1893, being the first sculptor to be so honoured. His achievements are recognised with a knighthood in May 1894.

Farrell dies at his residence, Redesdale House, in Stillorgan, County Dublin, on July 2, 1900. He is a shy, retiring man, and his death is not announced to the public for three days, in keeping with his wishes to avoid any sort of elaborate display on his behalf. Intensely private, he never marries and lives a life immersed in his work. Contemporary accounts describe him as constantly dissatisfied with his work despite consistent public approval for it.


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Birth of John Keegan “Leo” Casey, the Poet of the Fenians

John Keegan “Leo” Casey, Irish poet, orator and republican known as the Poet of the Fenians, is born in Mount Dalton, County Westmeath on August 22, 1846. He is famous as the writer of the song “The Rising of the Moon” and as one of the central figures in the Fenian Rising of 1867. He is imprisoned by the English and dies on Saint Patrick’s Day in 1870.

Casey is born to a teacher during the height of the Great Famine of 1846. Eight years later he moves to Gurteen, near Ballymahon in County Longford, when his father is given the post of headmaster at the local school. His work would come to be closely associated with Ballymahon.

As a teenager Casey works as an assistant to his father and is expected to follow him into teaching. However, he is disillusioned by the insufficiently nationalistic nature of the curriculum and spends a great deal of time writing poetry. It is at this time, reputedly at the age of fifteen, that he writes his best-known song, “The Rising of the Moon,” which commemorates the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

Following the increasing popularity of his songs and ballads at nationalist gatherings, Casey moves to Dublin in the 1860s and becomes active in the Fenian movement. He is a major contributor to The Nation newspaper, for which he assumes his pen name of ‘Leo.’

In 1866, at the age of 20, Casey publishes a collection of poems, entitled A Wreath of Shamrocks. Most of the poems therein had already been published elsewhere, primarily in The Nation. The further fame engendered by the success of the book leads him to be sought after as a speaker. He addresses mass rallies in Dublin, Liverpool and London that year, in the lead up to the Fenian Rising in 1867.

When the uprising fails, Casey is imprisoned without trial for eight months in Mountjoy Prison. He is released on the understanding that he would leave for Australia and not return to Ireland. However, he chooses to stay on in Summerhill, Dublin in disguise, living as a Quaker and continuing to write and publish in secret.

Casey marries Mary Josephine Briscoe in January 1868 and they have a son Michael, who dies shortly after birth in October 1869. Casey’s health had been broken by the treatment he had received in prison. He falls from a cab on or near O’Connell Bridge in the centre of Dublin in 1870. He dies from his injuries on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1870.

Following his death, Casey is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. The newspapers report that between fifty and one hundred thousand mourners walk in his funeral procession.


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Death of Peadar Kearney, Composer & Irish Republican

peadar-kearney

Peadar Kearney, Irish republican and composer of numerous rebel songs, dies in Inchicore, Dublin on November 24, 1942. In 1907 he writes the lyrics to “The Soldier’s Song” (“Amhrán na bhFiann“), now the Irish national anthem. He is the uncle of Irish writers Brendan Behan, Brian Behan, and Dominic Behan.

Kearney was born on December 12, 1883, at 68 Lower Dorset Street, Dublin, above one of the two grocer’s shops owned by his father, John Kearney, originally from Funshog, Collon, County Louth. His mother, Katie (née McGuinness), is from Rathmaiden, Slane, County Meath. He is educated at the Model School, Schoolhouse Lane and St. Joseph’s Secondary C.B.S. in Fairview. He hears Willie Rooney give nationalist lectures on history in the Mechanics’ Institute. For a short time, he attends Belvedere College. Following the death of his father, he is left to support his mother and five younger siblings. He has various menial jobs for three years before being apprenticed to a house painter.

In 1901, the death of Willie Rooney prompts Kearney to join the Willie Rooney Branch of the Gaelic League. He joins the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1903. He teaches night classes in Irish and numbers Seán O’Casey among his pupils. He finds work with the National Theatre Society and in 1904 is one of the first to inspect the derelict building that becomes the Abbey Theatre. He assists with props and performs occasional walk-on parts at the Abbey until 1916.

Kearney is a co-founder of the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and takes part in the Howth and Kilcoole gun runnings in 1914. In the Easter Rising of 1916 he fights at Jacob’s biscuit factory under Thomas MacDonagh, abandoning an Abbey Theatre tour in England to take part in the Rising. He escapes before the garrison is taken into custody.

Kearney is also active in the Irish War of Independence. On November 25, 1920, he is captured at his home in Summerhill, Dublin and is interned first in Collinstown Camp in Dublin and later in Ballykinler Camp in County Down.

A personal friend of Michael Collins, Kearney at first takes the Free State side in the Irish Civil War but loses faith in the Free State after Collins’s death. He takes no further part in politics, returning to his original trade of house painting.

Kearney’s songs are highly popular with the Irish Volunteers (which later becomes the Irish Republican Army) in the 1913–1922 period. Most popular is “The Soldier’s Song.” He pens the original English lyrics in 1907 and his friend and musical collaborator Patrick Heeney composes the music. The lyrics are published in 1912 and the music in 1916. After 1916 it replaces “God Save Ireland” as the anthem of Irish nationalists. The Irish Free State is established in 1922 and formally adopts the anthem in 1926.

Other well-known songs by Kearney include “Down by the Glenside,” “The Tri-coloured Ribbon,” “Down by the Liffey Side,” “Knockcroghery” (about the village of Knockcroghery) and “Erin Go Bragh” (Erin Go Bragh is the text on the Irish national flag before the adoption of the tricolour).

Peadar Kearney dies in relative poverty in Inchicore on November 24, 1942. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.