Chosen Stops

Galvin

The Galvins of Connaught Street were childhood friends of the Killeens of Norfolk Road. In the mid 1960s I was idly watching a group of  people assembling at the shopping centre in Phibsborough, when Mr Galvin (Mícheál Ó Gealbháin) asked me would I march with him. What is the march for? I asked. Mr Galvin said it was the Old IRA marching to Glasnevin Cemetery. None of his sons were available, so I could stand in for Rooney, who was about the same weight and height. I said I didn't support the IRA, but he confirmed that this was nothing to do with the current IRA, but the veterans of the War of Independence. So I joined the march with him. Before he died he chose a site for his grave up beside de Valera. Michael Galvin was Captain of the 3rd Battalion of the Kerry Brigade of the IRA, 1919 - 1922. (Click on the picture for a larger view).

Neligan

Kevin Neligan of Connaught Street was a contemporary of mine and a classmate some of the time.  Kevin's dad, like mine, joined the Garda Síochána in the early years of the new state, c. 1925. While my father had left school at 12 years of age and had been a joiner/ coach-builder, and was assigned to tough, inner-city stations, Mr Neligan was more educated, mild-mannered and refined. He was assigned to Garda headquarters in the Phoenix Park, and had a very promising career, until de Valera entered government in 1932, sacked the head of the Police and brought in his own man, Eamon Broy. Broy brought his own gang of anti-treaty men into the force in top positions and the career of the older guards was blighted. Neligan rose no further than Sergeant in the new set-up. His grave is found, not up beside de Valera like Galvin, but within the Collins area, quite close to  the grave of sacked Garda Commissioner, Eoin O'Duffy.

Killeen

Frank Killeen, my father, is also found in the Collins' area. I remember he was attending consultant cardiologist Dr T. J. Ryan for his progressive arterio-sclerosis, when, after one particular visit, he came home announcing that he had been advised to put his affairs in order, as his time was running out. He made his Will and went up to Glasnevin to purchase a grave. Not too surprising that he chose a site as close as he could get to Michael Collins. (Dr Ryan was also a smoker and actually beat my father to the grave).

John Stanislaus Joyce

"O father forsaken
Forgive your son!"
(James Joyce)

James Joyce's father chose a location beside his hero Charles Stewart Parnell (also in the shadow of the tower built in memory of Daniel O'Connell, the Liberator, a relation of Joyce's ancestor). John Stanislaus Joyce was a drunkard (but a great story-teller and singer in the pubs of Dublin) and profligate. When John's wife died, Joyce forsook his father and eloped to Europe with Norah Barnacle. His sister, Margaret, took over the job of houskeeping, but eventually emigrated to become a nun in Australia. Joyce's brother, Stanislaus, and two sisters followed him to Trieste. Joyce wrote the poem "Ecce Puer," noting the death of his father and the contemporaneous arrival of his grand-son.

Jack Ennis

This is not a headstone, or a grave. This years' great wallflowers remind me of  Jack Ennis' plot among the City Council's allotments by the Finglas Road, where Clareville Lawns and Clareville Park now stands. The allotments were opened during the Emergency (i.e., WW2) to enable citizens to provide themselves with vegetables, and remained there until the mid 1960s. If you were travelling on a bus bound for Finglas, and took a seat on the upper level, looking out the window over the allotment wall you would see, at this time of the year, a whole field of flowering wallflowers. Jack Ennis had a stall in Rowans' seed and miscellaneous shop on Capel Street. He grew wallflowers on his plot and harvested the seeds for sale on his stall. He is not buried here, but out in Lusk.

View from de Valera's grave: