In the Lyric Feature on Sunday 26th February 2023, at 6 pm on RTÉ lyric fm, Olivia O'Leary presents Ellen's Walk, exploring the story of a poet, a poem and a long-forgotten walk.
Below, Olivia O'Leary tells the story behind Ellen's Walk...
For me, as a political reporter, Daniel O'Connell has always been Ireland’s greatest politician. A human rights champion, he believed in peaceful protest, in non-violence and knew more about the organising and financing of democratic politics than anyone else before him. However, he wasn’t the only one in his family who understood politics.
On regular visits to Derrynane House, Daniel O’Connell’s home in Kerry, I was always struck by a portrait in the dining room. It is of a teenage girl, the Liberator’s daughter, Ellen, whom he called 'My dearest Nell, my best of children.’ In the background is an Irish harp; in her hand the sheet music of Thomas Moore’s The Harp that Once Through Tara’s Halls. There are poetry books on the table. We get the message: this is an educated accomplished young woman who wrote poetry, an Irish chieftain’s daughter. She was also politically shrewd. Her long poem Darrynane in 1832 is an astonishing piece of soft focus marketing of her father that would have done any modern PR guru proud. (At the time, the house was called 'Darrynane'; these days it is called 'Derrynane'.)
I am a veteran of many general election campaigns and I knew that the 1832 general election was probably the most important of Daniel's life. Having forced the British government to bring in Catholic Emancipation and end the ban on Catholics in parliament, Daniel now needed to bring in his own team of Irish MPs. The Tory press vilified him as an evil rabble-rousing monster, living high off the poor. Ellen’s poem countered that by placing him in his beloved Derrynane with his family, his adored grandchildren, his dogs - a veritable 'At Home with Daniel O’Connell’ piece that could grace any Sunday supplement. That election was a triumph and Daniel brought in 39 like-minded MPs.
Forgotten for many years, the poem was rediscovered recently by Waterville poet, Paddy Bushe, who realised that it also revealed a long-forgotten walk around the Derrynane estate, a walk that the OPW is now restoring. I wanted to find out more about Ellen and her work, so I asked Paddy Bushe to come with me, using the poem itself to retrace that long lost way. In Ellen's Walk we revisit the sound of what Daniel called the 'everlasting waves’ on Derrynane beach; the O’Connell ghosts buried on Abbey Island; the music of the O’Connell family’s bard, Tomas Rua O Suilleabhain; the long lost woodland path along the stream up above the house. Known as the Meadow Walk, it is now being restored, the initial hard work of clearing the overgrown path having been carried out by seasonal workers Donie and Paul, and Derrynane’s Foreman, James O’Shea, overseeing the final stages, which will include the erection of two foot bridges over the stream.
I made my own discovery in making the programme - that I had for years worked in the same building as Daniel and Ellen’s direct descendant, Christopher Fitz-Simon, former Drama producer in RTÉ and former artistic director of the Abbey. Christopher tells us a wealth of family stories, and our programme ends in front of a sombre portrait which Christopher has donated to Derrynane House. Holding in her hand an open locket containing a picture of her father is an elderly Ellen O’Connell FitzSimon, faithful to the last. I have often wondered whether there is a look of disappointment on that face, In our age would Ellen herself have been the politician or, maybe even more important to her, would she have fulfilled her ambitions to be a great poet? Both those avenues were cut off to her because of attitudes to women at the time, as well as her duties as mother of 13 children and her duties as wife of one busy politician and daughter of another.
But even if she was thwarted in discovering her own potential, I’m grateful for what Ellen’s poem has revealed to me: a new understanding of the early days of Irish electoral politics; an intimate portrait of our greatest politician; and the pleasure of a newly-restored walk around my favourite historic house in all of Ireland: Derrynane.
Ellen's Walk, presented by Olivia O'Leary, is the Lyric Feature on Sunday 26th February at 6 pm on RTÉ lyric fm - listen to more from the Lyric Feature here.
