Mayo history: Marking the 117th anniversary of the death of Michael Davitt

By Tom Gillespie

TUESDAY last (May 30) marked the 117th anniversary of the death of Mayo’s greatest patriot, Michael Davitt, and we produce hereunder a slightly edited report of his obsequies which was published in The Connaught Telegraph of June 9, 1906, the week after his death, and which, no doubt, will prove of widespread interest to our readers:

On Saturday the remains were removed from Dublin to Straide in this county and despite the fact that the funeral was by special desire private, the sympathy of the people could not be restrained, and there were many and touching manifestations of sorrow.

Public bodies were not officially represented but the general public turned out in large numbers and the cortege which followed the remains from St. Teresa’s Church, Claredon Street, Dublin, on Saturday morning to the Broadstone Terminus was representative of all classes and sections of the community.

At 11 o’clock the train steamed out, bearing the great patriot on his last journey he will ever take to his native Connaught.

Slowly by the surging crowds on the platform and along the railway line the funeral train moved into the summer fields hedged with hawthorn and lit with the golden sun of the June afternoon.

Nature makes its poignant contrasts and this scene of death amidst glorious life deepened the sense of tragedy among those who had come to accompany Michael Davitt’s body back to the scene from amidst which he sprung.

Old comrades of the Fenian days, the remains of the band that had helped to form the Land League, the leaders of the parliamentary party, young men with all their labour of life in front who had already learned from Michael Davitt to admire unselfishness and fearless honesty, made that guard of honour to the dead.

There were other matches, too. Away on the rising grounds in the lonely fields along the embankments of the railway, by every wayside station, on almost every bridge under which the train passed stood silent peasants and workmen come out merely to see the train pass, to raise their hats and bless themselves and say a prayer for the soul of the dead and then turn sadly away. It was perhaps the most touching of all the pathetic demonstrations of the popular grief that had followed the passing of the people’s friend.

At Enfield and Killucan the number who had gathered to see the funeral pass was notable. The first stop was at Mullingar where the platform was thronged by a silent, reverent crowd, including a number of clergymen.

Athlone, the gate to his native province, seen pastors and people to receive the dead and keep a pious watch during the brief stay.

Then away through the west. Then nearer and nearer as he came to his own the testimonies of affection and sorrow grew.

Almost every little farmstead and cottage in the fields had its group patiently waiting.

Old women and the little grandchildren caught by the hand pointed towards the train. Then the Sign of the Cross was made and the genuflection told of the murmured ‘Hail Mary’ for the rest in peace of the soul that was gone.

These little groups principally composed of woman and children - the men and boys had all gone to the railway station to salute the body as it passed - gave with their cheap red cotton gowns almost the only touch of colour to the bleak bogland of Mayo as we grew nearer and nearer to Foxford.

Roscommon had repeated the salutations of Mullingar and Athlone. Claremorris station was crowded by representative deputations and the clergymen come to attend a funeral.

At Manulla Junction another crowd had gathered and every head was bared as the train went slowly through. Punctually at the appointed hour the train drew up at Foxford. The road to the village was lined with country vehicles of all descriptions, with horsemen and with waiting crowds. Then the station was thronged and the travellers found it difficult in making their way across the track.

Then humble kinsmen claimed the sad privilege of being the bearers of the coffin to the hearse.

They had also, it was said, insisted too that to them belonged the honour of digging Michael Davitt’s grave. Then the characteristic Irish funeral was formed.

Then before the hearse and around it walked the groups of simple peasants. Many of them old men whose years far outnumbered Michael Davitt’s own, and who must have remembered well the terrible years that sent him and his wife wandering for work and bread, had walked many weary miles to be present and to accompany the funeral to Straide. Then for over a mile the cars and horsemen stretched.

The village of Foxford was silent as the dead. Every shop and every little cabin was crowded, blinds tightly drawn, children silent and sad. At every crossroads fresh contingents joined the cortege. Many young men on cycles came from long distances.

The talk among the peasants as they walked along was of the man they had lost, and of the love of the old folk that his choice of a grave so eloquently told. Sad it was and not without of note of apprehension.

For Michael Davitt was gone and while thousands had gathered the fruits of his labours the remnants of the race that knew his father’s was still unredeemed.

Through the broken country of bogs and outcropping rocks, amid which they had huddled, the road to Straide passes a land of terrible forebodingness where still they managed to live.

Across the River Moy and over the uplands that marked the river basin and the ruins of the castle and abbey of Straide came into view.

Massive and delicate in their ruin, they still explain the change of landscape, a change that had its results on Michael Davitt’s life and in the life of the peasants that inhabited the land when Michael Davitt was born.

For the ruins speak of labours long ago that made the land more fertile and this very fertility doomed the peasants to Michael Davitt’s fate.

In the centre of the empty plain lies the grave of Michael Davitt. But the hamlet was thronged and the great ruined walls of the abbey were filled as the hearse drew up with its sad burden.

Many priests had come to assist the pious pastor of the parish, Fr. Hunt, at the last sad obsequies. Fr. O’Hara from Kiltimagh; Canon Lyons from Castlebar; Davitt’s old friend, Fr. O’Connor, with whom he worked in Achill; Fr. Humphreys from distant Tipperary, and many others.

The ruins were filled with the chant of the ‘Missrere’ and the sobs of the old peasant women who remembered the day when Michael Davitt was held over the font in the little post-penal chapel that lies under the shadow of the great Catholic ruin, and who came to tell his sons, in the broken accents of the day, how sorry they were for their sorrow and how the silent, new grave should not lack for prayers.

In the grave of his grandfather they buried him amid the dust of the coffinless victims of the Famine years, whose relics had made the sepulchre holy ground in the dead man’s memory.

From the graveside one may see a little to the east, just over a green, a rolling slope behind which the dawn will creep up to light the tomb, the tops of the ash trees that are all that is now left of the homestead where he was born.

The path over which peasants come to Mass from the fields to the north passes close by his grave.

A big ash tree rises from the stones that according to the local custom covers all the graves around and shelter it.

When the ‘Benedictus’ had been chanted and the beautiful strains of the ‘Ego Sun Resurrection Et Vita’ had died away the grave was closed.

The people still waited. “Let us kneel now,” said Fr. Hunt when the last work had been done. Silently they knelt and said the ‘Our Father’. “May he rest in peace,” a broken “Amen.”

The clay was covered with flowers and the people came away.