Sean's Funeral - Irish Times

My elder brother's gone, poetry is daunted; A stave of the barrel is smashed and the wall of learning broken.

Paying tribute at the funeral of Sean Mac Reamoinn at the weekend, Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney read from his own translation of the 15th-century poem in Irish by the bard Tadhg Og O hUiginn in memory of his elder brother and mentor, Fergal Rua.

"The poem laments not only the loss of a brother but it expresses what his loss meant to his community and to his culture and for that reason it also serves to express something of the loss we are all experiencing here now," Heaney told his fellow mourners at the Funeral Mass in the Church of the Holy Cross, Dundrum, Dublin.

Recalling his memories of the prominent broadcaster and journalist who died last week aged 85, Heaney said that: "Just to be in his company was to feel honoured and to feel endorsed. From the beginning, his kindness, his quickness, his critical esteem were all important to my own self-esteem and important to the self-esteem of this country."

Any time they met, Mac Reamoinn would address him as "Comrade", but this was not a political appellation. "The word brought you into the magic circle of his irony and his affection, it took for granted that you shared his sense of the good and the true, that you shared his passion for justice and his capacity for merriment, because as Yeats said:

For the good are always the

merry,

Save by an evil chance,

And the merry love the fiddle

And the merry love to dance.

Both the serious and the merry sides of Mac Reamoinn's personality were remembered by many speakers, including Welsh scholar Dr Harri Prichard-Jones who recalled how Sean "danced a jig down the Via Veneto" during the Second Vatican Council in Rome in the 1960s.

"His love of Wales went back to his childhood," Dr Prichard-Jones said. "And of course Welsh formed part of his university studies." When he was a senior RTE executive, Mac Reamoinn lent equipment to the fledgling radio service in Wales to get it started.

Journalist Mary Maher recalled that, shortly after she first arrived in Ireland from Chicago, she was receiving an unfriendly lecture at a party about the futility of ever hoping to be accepted by "the natives". Overhearing the conversation, Mac Reamoinn intervened decisively in his inimitable gravelly tones with the one word, "Blather!" Mac Reamoinn saw Ireland's ethnic diversity, past and present as a reason to rejoice. "His progressive views flowed naturally from his principles. And I remember too, very well, that he was a champion of women's rights," she said.

Former RTE director-general Bob Collins said: "Do shaibhrigh se saol gach einne a chuir aithne air (he enriched the life of everyone who knew him)." Mac Reamoinn had "an intuitive but utterly professional understanding of the power of the spoken word." Others who paid tribute included former taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald; Ireland's Ambassador to the Netherlands, Richard Ryan; broadcaster Ciaran Mac Mathuna; author and journalist Nuala O'Faolain; film-maker Louis Marcus; writer and editor Neil Middleton; former RTE chief librarian Diarmuid Breathnach and journalist John Horgan.

A bilingual Mass was concelebrated by Fathers Tom Stack, Donal O'Doherty PP and Bernard Treacey OP, with Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, and Presbyterian minister, Rev Terence McCaughey in attendance. The mourners were led by Sean Mac Reamoinn's wife, Patricia, daughters Seona and Laoise and son Brian.

Dressed in black, President Mary McAleese headed a large congregation of friends and former colleagues. Among those present were the Chief Justice John Murray; Mr Justice John McMenamin of the High Court; president of the Law Reform Commission Mrs Justice Catherine McGuinness; Senator Shane Ross; secretary-general of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Dermot Gallagher and former secretary-general Padraic McKernan; Liam O Dochartaigh and Úna NI Chuinn of Cumann Merriman; TK Whitaker; writers Colm ToibIn, Nell McCafferty, Terry Eagleton, Marie Heaney and Terence Brown; poets Eilean NI Chuilleanain, Macdara Woods, Gerald Dawe and Gabriel Rosenstock; Gaelic scholars Liam Mac an Iomaire and Eoghan O hAnluain; archivist CatrIona Crowe; actors Gerard McSorley and Donal Farmer; RTE director-general Cathal Goan; former editor of the Irish Independent Louis McRedmond; theologian Fr Enda McDonagh; singers Ronnie Drew and Dolly McMahon; Garech de Brun; former minister of state Eithne FitzGerald; broadcasters Ruth Buchanan, Brian Farrell, Proinsias O Conluain and Liam O Murchu. The editor of The Irish Times was represented by Eoin McVey, managing editor.