Friday, February 3, 1984
The red-haired Dubliner is recalled with music, words and tears
The town he loved so well says farewell to Luke
By KEN CURRAN and TONY O'BRIEN
THE emotion-charged funeral Mass for ballad singer Luke Kelly ended with many people in tears as his coffin was wheeled from the church to the strains of ‘The Auld Triangle.'
The true Dubliners swapped stories with stars of show business and the stage as they bid farewell yesterday to their favorite son.
A medley of The Dubliners' best-known songs touched the hearts of the people in an overflowing Whitehall Church - and reduced the composer of The Town I Loved So Well, Phil Coulter, to tears.
Hundreds of neighbours from Luke's birthplace, the East Wall, sat with friends from the entertainment world as Barney McKenna, John Sheehan, Jim McCann. John Cannon, Eamonn Campbell, Finbarr Furey and Nigel Warren-Green played the songs that made Luke famous throughout the world.
His widow, Deirdre O'Connell, sisters Betty and Mona, brothers John, Jimmy and Paddy and his friend Madeline Seller wept as the Mass opened with the lament ‘Roisin Dubh'.
The musicians later played a tune written by John Sheehan for Luke, ‘The Prodigal Son' followed by the two songs identified most with him, Patrick Kavanagh's ‘Raglan Road' and ‘The Town I Loved So Well'.
Later Phil Coulter played another of his songs ‘Scorn Not His Simplicity' on the organ.
"Whether he played in the Albert Hall, the Sydney Opera House or at an old folks' party in Dublin. Luke and the boys brought the same attention and talent and gave without holding back" said the chief celebrant Father Michael Clearv.
The Dublin priest told of last hearing Luke sing for nearly an hour in Bantry last June. "He did it even though he wasn't asked".
"Ireland, Dublin and all of us are better by the fact that Luke Kelly spent 44 years among us," Father Cleary continued.
On a lighter note he said, "I can well imagine Luke commenting on the Garda escort he got from the Richmond Hospital to the church. He would probably say, ‘Father Mick you would never get a congregation like that at any of your services'."
Noel Pearson, the man who put the group on the road to success, had flown overnight from New York to be there. He led the prayers of the faithful followed by the sombre Ronnie Drew who had accepted condolences from the entire congregation.
Among the congregation were Fianna Fail leader Charles Haughey, former Coalition Minister Frank Cluskey, Workers'
Party leader Tomas Mac Giolia, Deputy Albert Reynolds and Senators Donie Cassidy and Des Hannifin.
Assisting at the Mass were Father Joe Coulter, a brother of the Deny songwriter Phil Coulter; Father Pat Whelan, Father Tom Stack, Father Donal O'Mahony, Father Dan Breen and Father Brian D'Arcy.
Soccer friends Arsenal goalkeeper Pat Jennings, Ireland's team manager Eoin Hand, former international Ray Treacy and sports commentator Jimmy McGee also attended.
Musicians present included George Furey Derek Warfield, Pete St. John, Liam Clancy, Tommy Makem, Joe Dolan, Liam O'Reilly and many others from" folk groups and bands on the Irish circuit.
Luke's three brothers, John, Jimmy and Paddy, bore the coffin from the church with the help of Dubliners Barney McKenna, John Sheehan and Sean Cannon as Earl Gill and his band played the touching last farewell of The ‘Auld Triangle'.
Even before the hearse began the short journey to Luke's final resting place in Glasnevin Cemetery, hundreds of people had gathered at the gates to pay their respects.
At the graveside waited a forlorn Ciaran Bourke, himself the victim of a tragic illness that cut short his musical career with The Dubliners while they were in their prime. Surrounded by his family and leaning on a stick the melancholic figure said farewell to a dear friend.
One man at the graveside was so overcome with emotion that he took a handful of clay from the graveside and clenched it tightly throughout the ceremony in memory of the departed musician.
After prayers by Father Tom Stack the coffin was lowered by Luke's brothers into his grave side by side with his father and mother.
The man who cast fire upon his songs
Liam O Murchu recalls the colourful minstrel
THERE was an apocalyptic phrase going round in my mind at the Mass for Luke Kelly yesterday as I listened to the other Dubliners playing his songs in a last farewell.
It says, and I may be misquoting: "I have cast fire upon the earth, wherewith shall it be ignited?"
From that first night at John Molloy's concert in the Gate in 1962, fire is what Luke Kelly cast upon his songs. Fire, passion, conviction. He didn't just sing them, he burned his way into them.
Kenneth Tynan once said that the question you should ask about that great misshapen play of Eugene
O'Neill's, "Long Day's Journey Into Night", was what did it cost him in terms of human
suffering to write it? That is true of any great writer. It is true of great performers too.
I hesitate to use the word "artist", a word debased by too many phoneys. There was not an iota of the phoney about Luke Kelly. He sang from the heart and he had a great deal of heart and it was from the heart of his audience that he got response.
When a sharp-faced Dublin lad, with a shock of red hair came forward on the Gate stage that night and struck the banjo cord that grabbed attention for Ewan McColl's songs - we all knew that a new powerful voice had arrived.
Over in Joe Groome's afterwards I said to him he would have to learn some of the great song in Irish: about the Connery brothers condemned to penal servitude for life in New South Wales; Maire Bhui Ni Laoghaire's great song about the Tithe War, "Cath cheim an Fhia"; or "Sliabh na mBan", from the 1798 Rising, which O Riada had immortalised in "Mise Eire".
Luke understood instantly they were his songs, it was his people who made them, he had the fire and passion in his blood for them and that is why Finbar Furey spoke for us all yesterday when he played the great "Sliabh na mBan" on the uileann pipe. That was our farewell prayer.
So the strong young bud has grown and burst into lovely flower and now is gone. Through all the great years he never lost that core of innocence and truth.
We thank him for the courage he gave us, the heart, the fire cast upon the earth. We saw him down right and I think, no-nonsense Luke would have liked the bunch he bad around him.
"Child, you have the nature", was a phrase my own mother would use when one of us did a good turn for her. Luke had the nature. The sod rest lightly on him for it, for that and for all the quiet innocence that was really in his heart:
"I'll go home to my parents, repent what I've done.
"And I'll ask them to pardon their prodigal son.
"And when they've caressed me as oft times before,
"I never will play the Wild Rover no more".
Our grief is a falling leaf at the dawning of his new day. But Luke would laugh his hard laugh at that to see us all so glum. It was on the eve of La le Bride he died. She was a loyal Irish woman and would not let a decent man down. Faoi choimirce Bhride tu. Luke. Go dte tu, a Mhuirnin Slan.
The red-haired Dubliner is recalled with music, words and tearsThe town he loved so well says farewell to Luke
By KEN CURRAN and TONY O'BRIEN
THE emotion-charged funeral Mass for ballad singer Luke Kelly ended with many people in tears as his coffin was wheeled from the church to the strains of ‘The Auld Triangle.'
The true Dubliners swapped stories with stars of show business and the stage as they bid farewell yesterday to their favorite son.
A medley of The Dubliners' best-known songs touched the hearts of the people in an overflowing Whitehall Church - and reduced the composer of The Town I Loved So Well, Phil Coulter, to tears.
Hundreds of neighbours from Luke's birthplace, the East Wall, sat with friends from the entertainment world as Barney McKenna, John Sheehan, Jim McCann. John Cannon, Eamonn Campbell, Finbarr Furey and Nigel Warren-Green played the songs that made Luke famous throughout the world.
 |
| Ronnie Drew reads the lesson at Luke Kelly's funeral. |
The musicians later played a tune written by John Sheehan for Luke, ‘The Prodigal Son' followed by the two songs identified most with him, Patrick Kavanagh's ‘Raglan Road' and ‘The Town I Loved So Well'.
Later Phil Coulter played another of his songs ‘Scorn Not His Simplicity' on the organ.
"Whether he played in the Albert Hall, the Sydney Opera House or at an old folks' party in Dublin. Luke and the boys brought the same attention and talent and gave without holding back" said the chief celebrant Father Michael Clearv.
The Dublin priest told of last hearing Luke sing for nearly an hour in Bantry last June. "He did it even though he wasn't asked".
"Ireland, Dublin and all of us are better by the fact that Luke Kelly spent 44 years among us," Father Cleary continued.
On a lighter note he said, "I can well imagine Luke commenting on the Garda escort he got from the Richmond Hospital to the church. He would probably say, ‘Father Mick you would never get a congregation like that at any of your services'."
Noel Pearson, the man who put the group on the road to success, had flown overnight from New York to be there. He led the prayers of the faithful followed by the sombre Ronnie Drew who had accepted condolences from the entire congregation.
 |
| A widow's grief…Deirdre O'Connell, Luke's wife, at Glasnevin Cemetery yesterday. |
Assisting at the Mass were Father Joe Coulter, a brother of the Deny songwriter Phil Coulter; Father Pat Whelan, Father Tom Stack, Father Donal O'Mahony, Father Dan Breen and Father Brian D'Arcy.
Soccer friends Arsenal goalkeeper Pat Jennings, Ireland's team manager Eoin Hand, former international Ray Treacy and sports commentator Jimmy McGee also attended.
Musicians present included George Furey Derek Warfield, Pete St. John, Liam Clancy, Tommy Makem, Joe Dolan, Liam O'Reilly and many others from" folk groups and bands on the Irish circuit.
Luke's three brothers, John, Jimmy and Paddy, bore the coffin from the church with the help of Dubliners Barney McKenna, John Sheehan and Sean Cannon as Earl Gill and his band played the touching last farewell of The ‘Auld Triangle'.
Even before the hearse began the short journey to Luke's final resting place in Glasnevin Cemetery, hundreds of people had gathered at the gates to pay their respects.
At the graveside waited a forlorn Ciaran Bourke, himself the victim of a tragic illness that cut short his musical career with The Dubliners while they were in their prime. Surrounded by his family and leaning on a stick the melancholic figure said farewell to a dear friend.
One man at the graveside was so overcome with emotion that he took a handful of clay from the graveside and clenched it tightly throughout the ceremony in memory of the departed musician.
After prayers by Father Tom Stack the coffin was lowered by Luke's brothers into his grave side by side with his father and mother.
The man who cast fire upon his songs
Liam O Murchu recalls the colourful minstrel
THERE was an apocalyptic phrase going round in my mind at the Mass for Luke Kelly yesterday as I listened to the other Dubliners playing his songs in a last farewell.
It says, and I may be misquoting: "I have cast fire upon the earth, wherewith shall it be ignited?"
From that first night at John Molloy's concert in the Gate in 1962, fire is what Luke Kelly cast upon his songs. Fire, passion, conviction. He didn't just sing them, he burned his way into them.
|
| Finbar Furey of the Furey Brothers consoles composer Phil Coulter as "The Town I Love So Well", the song he wrote for Luke Kelly, is played at the funeral Mass. Pictures: Tom Burke and Liam Mulcahy |
I hesitate to use the word "artist", a word debased by too many phoneys. There was not an iota of the phoney about Luke Kelly. He sang from the heart and he had a great deal of heart and it was from the heart of his audience that he got response.
When a sharp-faced Dublin lad, with a shock of red hair came forward on the Gate stage that night and struck the banjo cord that grabbed attention for Ewan McColl's songs - we all knew that a new powerful voice had arrived.
Over in Joe Groome's afterwards I said to him he would have to learn some of the great song in Irish: about the Connery brothers condemned to penal servitude for life in New South Wales; Maire Bhui Ni Laoghaire's great song about the Tithe War, "Cath cheim an Fhia"; or "Sliabh na mBan", from the 1798 Rising, which O Riada had immortalised in "Mise Eire".
Luke understood instantly they were his songs, it was his people who made them, he had the fire and passion in his blood for them and that is why Finbar Furey spoke for us all yesterday when he played the great "Sliabh na mBan" on the uileann pipe. That was our farewell prayer.
So the strong young bud has grown and burst into lovely flower and now is gone. Through all the great years he never lost that core of innocence and truth.
We thank him for the courage he gave us, the heart, the fire cast upon the earth. We saw him down right and I think, no-nonsense Luke would have liked the bunch he bad around him.
"Child, you have the nature", was a phrase my own mother would use when one of us did a good turn for her. Luke had the nature. The sod rest lightly on him for it, for that and for all the quiet innocence that was really in his heart:
"I'll go home to my parents, repent what I've done.
"And I'll ask them to pardon their prodigal son.
"And when they've caressed me as oft times before,
"I never will play the Wild Rover no more".
Our grief is a falling leaf at the dawning of his new day. But Luke would laugh his hard laugh at that to see us all so glum. It was on the eve of La le Bride he died. She was a loyal Irish woman and would not let a decent man down. Faoi choimirce Bhride tu. Luke. Go dte tu, a Mhuirnin Slan.
