Pat Howley TV comment

History through the eyes of a daughter and wife IT only seems like yesterday since, around this time of year, tell-tale columns of smoke in the distant sky would mark another significant turning of the great seasonal wheel â€â€ only I didn't notice any smoke during these lovely June evenings â€â€ nor have I, in recent years. It's too late now because Saturday evening last was St John's Eve or Bonfire Night, as we used to know it, the observance of which, in common with many other traditions of a forgotten Ireland, has all but vanished. Attaching great significance to the hours of darkness, the ancient Celts always commenced their commemorations at sunset on the previous evening but they'd have been a few days out this year as the solstice occurred on the previous Wednesday. One way or the other it's now official â€â€ summer has returned to Ireland and, with it, the evening midges, the uninspiring television schedules and all we're waiting for now is fine weather. It didn't have much by way of competition but the most diverting television offering of recent days was the half-hour documentary When Ruairí met Máire screened byTG4 on Thursday evening to mark the passing last month of Máire MacSwiney Brugha, aged 94, the only child of Terence MacSwiney, former Lord Mayor of Cork who in October 1920 died on hunger strike in Brixton prison. Máire was the widow of former Fianna Fáil TD Ruairí Brugha, who was the son of Cathal Brugha, hero of the Easter Rising and the War of Independence, killed in action at the height of the Civil War in 1922. Máire's fascinating memoir History's Daughter made her the talk of many a dinner table when it was published in 2005 and, in her own words, it told of her extraordinary upbringing and of her long happy marriage to Ruairí Brugha until his death at the age of 88 in 2006. Thursday's documentary had a more limited canvas but had the advantage of having Máire on hand to lay special emphasis, or set the record straight, on the many twists and turns of her long and eventful life. Originally broadcast on RTÉ about ten years ago, the documentary is thoroughly engaging but, as mentioned earlier, it suffers to some extent from attempting to pack in so much from a crowded life that it was sometimes difficult to follow. It would have best served those with a good knowledge of the 1920s and 1930s in Ireland or, better still, those who had read Máire's memoir which offers an exceptional insight, complete with remarkable photographs and letters, into the most traumatic period of modern Irish history, which continues to define us. The documentary was captivating on many levels and none more so than when Máire described the first time her father saw her in 1918 when she was a baby of about three months and he a political prisoner in Belfast. Her mother was a daughter of the Murphy family of the famous Cork distillery, one of the wealthiest Cork families. As Máire described it, they were surrounded by luxury, with a full staff, from butler to housemaid and a nursemaid specially for little Máire. She was born in Cork on June 23, 1918, but her arrival was a big disappointment when the word got around that she was 'only a girl' when the family had been confident in their expectation of a boy. Accompanied by her sister-in-law Annie MacSwiney, her mother took Máire to Belfast to see her father in Crumlin Road jail and, on their arrival at the end of a very long and tiring journey, her mother immediately told the prison attendants to go and heat the baby's bottle, which they did and in double-quick time. Máire's explanation was that because her mother had an imperious manner and a pronounced Oxford accent, the attendants jumped to it because the order had been given in a manner to which they were accustomed. Her father was delighted to see her, so much so that he wrote a poem Máire in her honour. It obviously meant the world to her all through life, to judge by the rapt attention she paid to every line as it was read to her on the documentary by a young woman I took to be one of her grandchildren. Máire had no recollection of her father, as he died when she was two, but her mother often told her that he would always ask to speak to her in his many phone calls home each day from his office in Cork. Baby, baby, sweet and wise, Deeper than the morning skies Is the wonder of your eyes And there's more â€â€ but in an overloaded documentary there was no more, because the story had to move on. Within a year or so of her father's death, her mother departed Ireland for Germany, taking Máire with her, and there followed an extraordinary ten years during which the child was moved from one accommodation to another with only infrequent visits by her mother. Presumably, that was why her father had arranged in his will for his sister Máire MacSwiney to be the child's co-guardian and when the young Máire eventually rebelled at being packed off to yet another address in Germany, her aunt arrived from Cork within days and took her home to Ireland. Am I mistaken in assuming that Máire never had much to do with her mother from then on, and wasn't much put out by it either? Máire would have been in her 80s at the time of the making of the documentary, in which she came across as a most engaging personality. Excelling at her studies, she won a scholarship to UCC and following her graduation, taught for a short time before moving to Dublin to study for an MA. That was when she met Ruairí Brugha and immediately they became college sweethearts. It was to be a lifelong love affair and following their marriage in 1945, Máire became a full-time housewife, as was the norm at the time. They had four children, a girl and three boys, and while Máire always said she was happy and content with family life, she expressed some regrets in her later years that she hadn't pursued an academic career. The documentary tried and failed to squeeze a quart into a pint pot and Máire's tale was only the half of it. The story of her husband's family is of blockbuster proportions and, in better times, the BBC regularly turned a lot less into multi-episodic award-winning sagas. Little wonder we have such an inferiority complex about our own Irish heroes. In this telling, Máire's husband Ruairí didn't get much of an innings as his story was overshadowed by that of his father Cathal â€â€ another tale of epic proportions. Ruairí was the fourth child and only son of Cathal Brugha and, like his wife, had few memories of a father who rarely lived at home because of the troubles of the time and who was killed in action at the height of the Civil War in 1922 when his son was only a four-year-old child. His father's death left his wife and her six small children in poor financial circumstances and what was most surprising about the documentary was the ambivalence of Ruairí about whether it was better for a revolutionary, such as his father, to die for Ireland, or to surrender when the battle was lost and live for Ireland and for his wife and young family. I'd have liked more along those lines rather than the death and glory stuff which is the usual line, but which, to Ruairí's credit, was not on offer.