the famous, often forgotten figures from the North at Glasnevin Cemetery – The Irish News

THOUSANDS of visitors come to Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin each year to visit many of the famous revolutionaries killed, including Michael Collins, Éamon de Valera, Countess Constance Markievicz, Roger Casement, Cathal Brugha, Harry Boland, Kevin Barry, Helena Moloney, Elizabeth O’Farrell and many more.

Established in 1832 by Daniel O’Connell as an interdenominational cemetery, the cemetery now covers 140 acres and is the resting place of people of 25 different faiths and creeds, as well as people of no faith. It is a place where capitalists and socialists, Protestants and Catholics, nationalists and unionists rest side by side.

The cemetery offers visitors the opportunity to learn about the history of the island of Ireland over the last two centuries in many different ways. I applied to be a tour guide at the cemetery in late 2015 as part of the ongoing centenary decade and to my surprise, the Dublin Cemeteries Trust offered me the opportunity to tell visitors the stories of some of the most significant graves in the cemetery – a role I consider a privilege and one I continue to do to this day.

During that time I have learned of many overlooked legacies and over the past four years I have been trying to select the people I want to write about in my book on Glasnevin, So Once Was I. With a million and a half candidates, some narrowing down was necessary.

However, there are also some personalities from the North whose history has been neglected or forgotten and who deserve more attention.

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Perhaps the most overlooked Northern figure buried at Glasnevin is Ernest Blythe (Earnán de Blaghd), who lies in the garden section of the cemetery. Born in 1889 in Magheragall, near Lisburn in County Antrim, he was the son of a Presbyterian and Unionist family. Over the course of his life he was many things and had many different roles.

At the age of 21, he joined the Newtownards District Orange Lodge in 1501 and was also a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Dublin. He worked as a journalist, was a lover of the Irish language, Minister of Finance and later Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, Senator in the House of the Oireachtas, hunger striker and manager of the Abbey Theatre.

Blythe was also an outspoken supporter of the Army Comrades Association, even suggesting the colour of their shirts, which earned them the nickname ‘Blueshirts’. He is remembered by some simply as the Chancellor of the Exchequer who cut the old age pension from 10 to 9 shillings a week in June 1924.

Despite all this, his legacy has been lost in more popular narratives about the revolutionary period of 1916–1923. Until 2019, there was no complete biography of the multifaceted character Ernest Blythe.

Another strong voice from the North who rests in Glasnevin is Joseph Locke. The ashes of the famous singer from Derry, born Joseph McLaughlin (1917-1999), now lie in the Glasnevin Crematorium, next to the grave of Charles Stewart Parnell.

A famous tenor singer and entertainer with a powerful voice similar to that of Count John McCormack, he served as a policeman and sang initially with the Irish Guards before becoming famous in the 1940s through performances in London and a long-term engagement in Blackpool.

His best known recordings include “Hear My Song,” “Violetta,” and “Blaze Away.” Later in life, his career faltered due to tax problems and he was forgotten for a time. An unexpected revival with the success of the 1992 semi-fictional film “Hear My Song,” starring Adrian Dunbar and James Nesbit, brought his name back into the public consciousness.

Near the Gravediggers cemetery entrance (John Kavanagh’s pub) you will find the grave of Sir James Murray, the medical pioneer who was born near Maghera in Derry in 1788. He invented the liquid of magnesia, now better known as ‘milk of magnesia’, and was appointed Ireland’s first Inspector of Anatomy in 1832.

This job involved outlawing grave and body robbing. Thanks to Dr. Murray’s work, the practice of desecration of the dead by “resurrectionists” was greatly curtailed. Although he accomplished much in his life and contributed to both science and medicine, his greatest legacy is unfortunately usually attributed to the American John Callen and the Englishman Charles Henry Phillips, who patented the extremely popular antacid and laxative that was renamed “milk of magnesia” in 1873.

Beneath an ornate Celtic cross in the Old Chapel Circle, near Dr Murray’s gravestone, lies the “Mistress of the Macabre”: Belfast-born author Rosa Mulholland is now one of the cemetery’s most forgotten literary figures.

Charles Dickens was a great supporter of Rosa and published some of her works in his monthly magazines. Her works focused heavily on a love of the countryside, its superstitions, its folklore and an understanding of the extreme poverty that existed at the time.

She was particularly known for her ghost stories. In her story “Not to be Taken at Bedtime” (1865), she wrote: “The lonely graveyard is far away, and the dead are hard to raise.” She published over 40 novels during her lifetime, but is largely forgotten today.

Rosa married the distinguished historian William T. Gilbert and was better known as Lady Gilbert until her death in 1921. On the centenary of her death in April 2021, I went to her grave and saw a memorial book with some of her publications on it, weighted down with some small stones. It was nice to know that someone had thought of Glasnevin’s Mistress of the Macabre.

They say you die twice: once when you die, and a second time when people say your name for the last time. Stories like this remind us that amidst the splendour of Glasnevin’s famous monuments lie thousands of forgotten lives waiting to be rediscovered.

It also makes you think: how will future generations remember and honour us? Even though times may change, Glasnevin is a testament to how valuable each individual’s story is.

“So Once Was I” is out now and is published by Merrion Press.