Mary J Murphy Journalist, author and broadcaster with Vivian Nesbitt, actress from hit US TV show Breaking Bad, at Oscar Wilde Festival, Galway 2014.
Mary J Murphy, author of Achill’s Eva O’Flaherty – Forgotten Island Heroine giving a presentation on the connection between Eva O’Flaherty and Oscar Wilde, 5th September 2014
Mary J Murphy & Vivian Nesbitt
Achill Historical and Archaeological Society
Lecture on
MR DARRELL FIGGIS
late of Achill
By
Dr EDWARD KING
At
TED LAVELLE’S
Cashel,Achill,Co Mayo
Friday 27th March
Darrell Figgis was a friend of Emily’s, and was one of the founding members of Scoil Acla.
Kinvara, the hometown of John Burke
John Burke Emily’s paternal grandfather was born about 1776, possibly in the Kinvara area of Co. Galway. When his son William John was born in 1805, he held land there, which extended to the surrounding areas and employed farm labourers.
John Burke and his wife had at least three children, Patrick, William John and a daughter. From the scant records left from the time, the Burkes seemed to be well respected pillars of the community. In 1820 John Burke was a witness to a lease agreement between landowners and the Catholic Church in Kinvara. He would later contribute to towards the building of St, Colman’s Church, where unknown to him at the time, his son William John would become the administrator of the same church many years later.
To fully understand Emily’s background and maybe even her character it is necessary to travel back two generations on both sides of her family. Under what would be considered normal circumstances of their times, her parents would never have met, and certainly not married.
Her mother, Emily McArthur was born in 1827 to Richard Mcarthur a bookseller, who had moved to Dublin, from Co. Down, and his wife Mary Graisberry. Mary was a member of the Graisberry family who were the official printers of Trinity College for several generations. Emily, was born in Co Down, but the family moved back to Rathmines, Dublin When she was about a year old.
Emily’s paternal grandfather, John Burke was a farmer, from the Kinvarra area of County Galway. He owned quite a bit of land in the surrounding area, and employed labourers. A man of substantial means, he had the ability to educate his children. His second son William John, Emily’s father, was a promising student, coming out of school with top marks. He was readily accepted in to St Patrick’s seminary, Maynooth, to train as a priest. In 1822 at the age of seventeen, he began his training for the priesthood. In 1831 he was ordained, and sent to his first parish in Clare. For the next thirteen years he served in several different parishes in the West of Ireland.
In 1843, in Kilfenora, Co Clare his course of destiny changed. He left the Catholic priesthood, to become a Protestant minister. This change of heart can be attributed to a few different factors, that will be the subject of later posts.
Had he stuck to his original plan, he would not have met and married Emily’s mother nor would she have been born. An unusual set of circumstances brought William John Burke and Emily McArthur together, had events not unfolded the way they did it would have been highly unlikely that their paths would ever crossed.
The formation of the Grainne Mhaol (called afterGrace O’Malley, the Pirate Queen of Mayo) branch of the Gaelic League of Lower Achill and the founding of Scoil Acla, Emily Weddall had found her calling in life, but there was more to come. Little did she or comrades know that in the years that followed that the Gaelic League and other organisations would become highly politicised and that she and her friends would get swept up in that whirlwind.
This blog tells of that and the other events of of Emily Weddall’s extraordinary life.
