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.

Sunday Independent 21 January 2007

Tributes from Fr Tom Stack and Ruth Dudley Edwards

I remember, some years ago, after the funeral of the historian the late Máire de Paor, I noticed a woman in the church approaching Seán Mac Réamoinn, who had read a lesson during the memorial mass. His reading had been the renowned passage from St Paul, in which he lyrically counsels and affirms the primacy of love in the life of all Christians.

Guessing that the lady who had spoken to him might have been somewhat fulsome in her praise, I remarked to Seán that she had surely been complimenting him on his rendition of St Paul's famous Letter to the Corinthians.

"Yes," he replied smilingly. She had indeed expressed her admiration for his performance, and then he added with a coy twinkle: "And do you know she then said to me: 'Dr Mac Réamoinn, I take it that you also composed those lines as well.'"

He was clearly pleased with his new fan's outlandish, though well-meaning gaffe.

Seán Mac Réamoinn was, in his own way, nothing short of an institution during his long and varied life span. He represented a galaxy of varied gifts to different people. In so many ways he was a figure larger than life.

He was equally at home in the company of Irish-language enthusiasts, visiting scholars of every description, young traditional musicians and theologians.

A litany of his anecdotes and bons mots have passed into the folkore of his huge circle of acquaintances drawn from the worlds of scholarship, broadcasting, entertainment and ordinary citizenry.

The shining thread that ran through his engagement with whatever audience happened to be at hand was humour; both exuberant and wry. Invariably, people of all stripes left his company smiling, and often eager to pass on to posterity the roguishly profound puns or deliciously irreverent yarns which Seán had fashioned for their delight. This would be true whether the venue had been the Tower Bar in Henry Street (near Radio Eireann) or Madigan's of Donnybrook (near RTE), St Peter's Square in Rome or in an obscure country churchyard.

In addition to all that, as a broadcaster his gravelly gravitas was a familiar experience for generations of Irish radio listeners, whether Seán was covering on air a solemn state occasion or tentatively dissecting the finer points of some abstruse philosophical radio discussion, with the likes of the late communications guru Marshall McLuhan or the theologian Hans Kung.

For the aficionado of the Cumann Merriman Summer School in particular, Seán Mac Réamoinn will be fondly remembered from many Co Clare resorts, for his traditional annual introductory lecture entitled Scoil Merriman: Its Cause and Cure.Born in 1921 in Birmingham, of an insurance executive father from Boolavogue, Co Wexford, Seán Mac Réamoinn was educated at the Galway Jesuit school Coláiste Iognáid, and later at UCG, where he studied French and Irish, graduating with a master's degree in the latter.

He wrote scripts for Taibhdhearc theatre productions, including its annual Irish-language pantomimes, which were reputed to have been unfailingly witty and ingenious, as he transposed the stories of Irish saga literature into latter-day political satire and his own special brand of knowing fun.

Notably in the Sixties, he reported on the Second Vatican Council from Rome, conveying his well-researched conviction that the potential of this singular event could bring to birth a fresh and exciting vision for the life of the church in the world, as it finally buried the former culture of that institution, within which, as he memorably quipped (perhaps a little in caricature), "everything was forbidden, except what was compulsory".

May Seán Mac Réamoinn's gifted soul rest in peace, as he departs our company ar shlí na firinne.

Fr Tom Stack

I didn't share Irish, or God, or politics with Seán Mac Réamoinn: I just adored the fun, the wonderful talk, the breadth of his interests and his joie de vivre - not to speak of his cuddliness.

He insisted on buying me champagne for breakfast the day I was to receive my D Litt, told me a priceless story about an embarrassing youthful experience of the president of UCD and tried to persuade me to whisper the punchline to the pres as he gave me the parchment (I wimped out).

Seán's use of language was a joy. He was the true begetter of the response to "How are you" that has been claimed by others: "I'm like the census: broken down by age, sex and religion."

Listening with distress to a cross friend railing against a difficult colleague, he responded with his customary compassion: "She may be a cow, Aideen, but she's not all cow."

I treasure the memory of an episode with a mutual gay friend, whom I will call Louis. When Louis saw a message in Irish in a library toilet, he rang Seán for a translation, and so began Louis's wall-correspondence with a Finnish Irish-speaking gay, which involved daily calls to Seán for translations back and forth.

Despite his rising embarrassment at the increasingly intimate nature of the messages, and his own bewilderment that any man could sexually prefer men to women, it was not in Seán's nature to disoblige a friend, so with much grumbling and laughter, he meticulously transformed the aspirant lover Louis's prose into mellifluous Irish poetry.

It was in the same spirit that this devout but relaxed Catholic ("His Holiness's loyal opposition") fought for ecumenism. "You lily-livered Protestants," he once bellowed during a meeting, "will you never stand up for your rights?"

Seán knew hundreds of often filthy but always hilarious limericks, many of which contained his mix of earthiness and lightly-worn erudition. The limerick he concocted with a group of Irish theologians about Jayne Mansfield's attempt to smuggle her chihuahuas in her bra was a classic testament to Seán's ability to subvert any gathering.

He also enjoyed challenging people to finish 'listowels' (the first two lines of a limerick - Listowel being smaller than Limerick): "I once knew a bastard like you/ He was caused by a hold-up at Crewe," was a favourite.

The last time he stayed with me in London, when he went to the bank he knocked his leg and, because of a side-effect of his steroids, he bled copiously. When he finally hobbled back to my house, he immediately composed a (clean) thank-you limerick for the young cashier who had mopped him up and generally mothered him.

Today, though, I especially remember him sitting with a group of my dazzled English friends when someone asked if he were afraid of death.

"Why should I be?" asked Seán simply. "Won't I be with my beloved Jesus?" And his tone was so simple and sincere that even the atheists were moved.

Ruth Dudley Edwards

Irish Times obituary 20 January 2006

Broadcaster inspired generations with love of Irish culture
Sat, Jan 20, 2007

Seán Mac Réamoinn, who has died at the age of 85, was an extraordinary member of a generation of Irish public servants that was in itself marked by exceptional talent and breadth of vision: he was passionately devoted to Ireland and things Irish, intolerant of stereotypes and skin-deep patriotism, polymathic, witty in several languages, and the embodiment of a conviviality always adorned with good manners and a sheer sense of fun.

He cast a kind of a spell, especially upon younger people for whom he opened up avenues of delight in the Irish language, in Irish history and folklore, and in the highways and byways of a country in which - paradoxically - he had not even been born. In fact, he was born to emigrant parents in Birmingham on November 27th, 1921, returning to Ireland as a child and to education in Dublin, Clonmel and Galway.

Even if he had not become, at an early age, a fluent Irish speaker and a dedicated student of everything pertaining to the land of his parents' birth, physiognomy alone would have marked him out as Irish. The family resemblance to the Wexford Redmonds, to whom indeed he was distantly related, is striking. The conjunction of square head and square body led the late sculptor Séamus Murphy to remark of Mac Réamoinn that he was not a human being at all, but "a small piece of Norman architecture on wheels".

The Jesuits in Coláiste Iognáid helped to instil in him his love of Irish, which was further fostered at University College Galway. His contemporaries included many of that generation for whom the public service beckoned as a career, not least - but by no means only - because of their command of Irish.

Seán Mac Réamoinn was, however, never a bookworm, but threw himself into Galway's many delights with a gusto that was to become his trademark. It was said of him, sometimes by people who did not intend it exactly as a compliment, that he was the only student Siobhán McKenna's father would permit to walk her home.

His first berth was in the Department of External Affairs. Under the late Joseph Walshe in the late 1940s it was not, however, an environment that encouraged bohemianism, and Mac Réamoinn was glad to escape in 1947 to the infinitely more congenial surroundings of Radio Éireann, then undergoing massive expansion.

One of the fruits of that expansion was the Outside Broadcast Unit. Mac Réamoinn and Séamus Ennis, armed with massive tape recorders that almost required two men to carry, travelled the roads and lanes of the country recording music and speech as if the world was going to end next Tuesday. In the process, he familiarised himself with his country and its inhabitants to a degree few other Irishmen have done before or since.

In 1953, the cautious liberalisation of the broadcasting system began under Erskine Childers. In 1957, Mac Réamoinn went to Cork for a year, to work in the new radio studios there, but Dublin was his first and best love, and throughout his working life he used it as a springboard for forays into the hinterland that would leave his companions gasping in his wake.

His love for the Irish language, deep and sure, led him to participate in all sorts of enterprises: in Comhar, that brilliantly irreverent journal; in Gael Linn, where he was involved in the production of the early records of Irish music and song; and in Tuarascáil in this newspaper. He was a prime mover in the development of the Merriman Winter School, which was devoted to the Irish language in its many aspects.

At the Merriman Summer School, from which this had sprung, he regularly acted as a sort of pied piper to devoted bands of foreign students who followed him much as others must have followed Dr Johnson around the Highlands. Not just in Irish and English, but in Welsh, French or Italian, as the occasion required, he would deliver himself of bon mots that sounded as if they had been prepared hours or even days before, but were actually freshly minted. How else could one explain his instant response to a French visitor who asked him what the word "crubeen" meant? "Think of it", the bemused Frenchman was instructed, "as the patois of tiny feet". When he was robed as a bard at the national Eisteddfod in Caernarvon in 1979 it was no more than his due.

His other great love was Christianity. His faith was both simple and the result of deep reflection and wide reading.

He combined an unwavering loyalty to Catholicism and a love of good liturgy with a deep detestation of Roman triumphalism, and was an apostle of the ecumenical movement in Ireland long before many people had even heard the word. He was the only Irish journalist to report on every session of the Vatican Council; and, when he switched his tape-recorder off, the theological discussions went on far into the Roman nights, lubricated by so many of the good things of life for which Italy is justly famous. After the council, he participated to the full in the work of aggiornamento carried out at Glenstal and Ballymascanlon, and numbered lay and clerical members of every denomination in Ireland among his close friends.

For a man who worked in one of the most technologised of professions, his own approach to technology was problematic.

He never drove a car - but read voraciously on the bus journeys between RTÉ and his home in Goatstown. He sometimes seemed to have difficulty in plugging his tape-recorder into the wall - but some of the documentaries he produced are classics. He spurned the typewriter - but produced an extraordinary volume of stylish prose pieces in Irish and English for a bewildering range of newspapers and periodicals, written in his beautiful, regular script, and mostly delivered by hand two or three minutes before the deadline to editors who had all but given up hope. They were pieces always worth waiting for.

His later years saw him assume more substantial administrative responsibilities as controller of radio programmes and director of external relations at RTÉ; but programme-making on both radio and television, and journalism, was where his heart really stayed. He threw himself into retirement with a renewed sense of energy which surprised even those who knew what he was capable of achieving.

Unfazed by occasional illness and by mobility problems that would have daunted lesser men, he remained productive until the last, and cast a shadow that is, in real as in metaphorical terms, one to remember.

He is survived by his wife Pat, whom he married in 1952, and by his daughters Seona and Laoise, and his son Brian.

Seán Mac Réamoinn, born November 27th, 1921; died January 17th, 2007.

© 2007 The Irish Times

Irish Independent report 20 January 2007

Politicians, media, say goodbye to broadcaster Sean Mac Reamoinn

Saturday January 20th 2007


POLITICAL, broadcasting and journalism figures turned out in Dublin last night for the removal of Sean Mac Reamoinn .

Among those who paid condolences to his widow Pat, daughters Seona and Laoise and son Brian at the Church of the Holy Cross, Dundrum, were former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald, Justice Minister Michael McDowell, and Labour's Ruairi Quinn and Liz McManus.

Mr Mac Reamoinn, one of the country's best known broadcasters and an ardent Irish language enthusiast, died earlier this week in St Vincent's Hospital after a long illness. He was 85.

At last night's removal, before a packed church ,the parish priest Father Donal O'Doherty said the former RTE Radio controller of programmes had great variety of gifts and talent, as seen from the days he collected his folklore and music to reporting on Vatican II. He also had a "a passionate love of the Church" and belonged "to the people of God (Dundrum branch)".

But he was always "honest, courageous and challenging" of the Church yet appreciative, encouraging and hopeful".

Others present included Col Declan Carberry, ADC to President Mary McAleese; Ciaran McMathuna, Dolly McMahon, and Liam O'Murchu.

Former RTE colleagues there included Vincent Finn, Bob Collins, Ed Mulhall, Padhraic O Gaora. John Sheahan and Eamonn Campbell of The Dubliners and Welshmann Dr Harry Pritchard Jones, a close friend of Sean's were also there.

The funeral Mass takes place at 11am, and the burial will be at Mount Jerome cemetery.

Frank Khan

Cumann Merriman tribute

Is cúis bhróin an‑mhór do Chumann Merriman bás an Dr. Seán Mhic Réamoinn, inniu 17 Eanáir 2007. Bhí sé ar dhuine de bhunaitheoirí an Chumainn, ball saoil oinigh agus ball den Choiste Acadúil ab ea é go dtí lá a bháis.

Fear é a thug treoir agus údar machnaimh don Chumann agus is cinnte gur chuir sé go mór le cáil agus le feabhas an Chumainn de bharr a fhlaithiúla is a roinn sé a mhóreolas agus mar gheall ar an domhaintuiscint a bhí aige ar shaol na hÉireann agus ar shaíocht na Gaeilge go háirithe.

Chuir a ghuth cinn sainiúil go mór leis na léamha breátha a rinne sé ag na hócáidí filíochta ar dlúthchuid iad de chlabhsúir Scoileanna Mherriman.

Suaimhneas síoraí go raibh aige.

Rabbitte pays tribute to Sean MacReamoinn

Issued : Wednesday 17 January, 2007
Statement by Pat Rabbitte TD
Labour Leader & Spokesperson on Northern Ireland

Sean MacReamoinn made his mark on Irish society as a thoughtful commentator, original writer at a critical time on the role of the Catholic Church in society, as a distinctive broadcaster and as a journalist.


A radical and provocative voice, he was a great raconteur in whose company I enjoyed many extraordinary hours. He will be sorely missed.

Sean made a huge contribution to Irish culture generally and particularly to the promotion and development of the Irish language.

On behalf of the Labour Party I wish to extend my sincerest sympathy to his wife, Pat, daughers, Seona and Laoise and son, Brian.

Gael Linn

Bhí ionchur suntasach ag Seán Mac Réamoinn in imeachtaí Gael Linn ó na 1950í i leith. Nuair a chuaigh Gael Linn i mbun ceirníní a dhéanamh i 1957, bhí Seán ina chomhairleoir ceoil in éineacht le daoine iomráiteacha eile mar Sheán Ó Riada, Ciarán Mac Mathúna agus Gearóid Mac an Bhua.

An gníomh ba shuntasaí ag Seán ó thaobh Gael Linn de ná na scriptanna a scríobh sé don dá scannán Mise Éire (1959) agus Saoirse? (1961). Rinne sé léiriú freisin ar cheirníní filíochta agus scríobh sé nótaí údarásacha do cheirníní le Seán Ó Riada agus Seosamh Ó hÉanaigh. Ba mhór againn go raibh Seán Mac Réamoinn linn ag imeachtaí chun Iubhaile Órga Gael Linn a cheiliúradh i 2003.

Ach ní féidir a thionchar a mheas i dtéarmaí nithe aonaracha. Pearsa ar leith ab ea é a chothaigh gean agus meas don chultúr gaelach mar gur léir do chách go raibh an dúchas go smior ann féin. Roinn sé a chuid saineolais go lách, fial agus bhí sé ina ionspioráid le barr feabhais a bhaint amach. Leaba i measc naomh Éireann go raibh aige.


Antoine Ó Coileáin

Príomhfheidhmeanach

Gael Linn