"OUT OF the South Circular Road she came, a most improbable social outlaw, a galleon sweeping across the canals in high heels, fashion labels and lipstick . . . then up the stairs to Margaret Gaj's on Monday nights she walked, one of the 12 founding members of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement in the 1970s."
Thus did an emotional Nell McCafferty remember her fellow feminist, author and journalist June Levine, who died last Tuesday morning at the age of 76.
Addressing a large congregation at a humanist service in Mount Jerome Crematorium, Harold's Cross, McCafferty remembered a time "when we were young and possibly foolish, but there were some things that were bad": when the use of contraception was punishable by penal servitude; when women had to resign from work on marriage; when single mothers depended on the charity of a social welfare officer.
June Levine, she said, faced murder when she took Lyn Madden under her protection against a violent pimp; she faced jail when she took the contraceptive train; she "troubled the waters" by picketing the Dáil and taking calls at the Rape Crisis Centre. "And after that, she'd take you home and draw you a bath, with bubbles and precious oils . . . then lead you to a bed of fresh linen and in the morning, bring you breakfast in bed."
The writer Colm Tóibín said two words described her: justice and beauty. "Her sense of justice made her one of the most influential figures in Irish society in the last 50 years . . . There was nothing she would not do for someone in trouble . . . " She also had a fervent belief in doing justice to her own beauty and to her surroundings: "The rooms she made in the house in Ranelagh had an astounding beauty."
She and her husband, Ivor Browne, "allowed their spiritual lives to become their daily lives, which gave her an astonishing aura, a sort of wholeness of being. In all those years when I knew her," he concluded simply, "it worked wonders."
Mary Finan, her friend of almost 40 years, recalled a fiercely loyal, funny, feminine, playful, abundantly hospitable woman with a passion for her husband, "the love of her life", family and friends - and shopping. "When she became your friend, she didn't just love you but all who came with you."
Family members also spoke, including her son Mike, who described a "joyful thread of light" that raced him home after her death in the early hours of Tuesday, which he interpreted as "my mother set free . . . now a gleeful young girl running with the wind in her hair".
Earlier, after a Garda escort from her Ranelagh home to Mount Jerome, her coffin was borne into the crematorium by six women - including her daughter, sister-in-law, two daughters-in-law, and two of her grand-daughters - to the musical accompaniment of the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves. A guard of honour, veterans of the Margaret Gaj meetings, was there to meet her, bearing yellow roses: Mary Maher, Nell McCafferty, Mairin Johnston, Máirín de Burca, Marie McMahon and Mary Sheerin.
At the finish, as the curtains closed across the coffin, her husband stood close, playing The Cualann on the whistle.
"We have not yet completed the golden city on the hill which she dreamed of," Nell McCafferty said earlier. "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav, June. Next year, June, in Jerusalem. Farewell, brightness. Goodnight, sister dear."
Among the large attendance were former chief justice Ronan Keane, Gay Byrne, Alice Leahy, Tom and Mary Murphy, Sebastian and Alison Barry, Emer Philbin-Bowman, Derek Speirs, Janet Martin and Pat Brennan.
