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 Seán Mac Réamoinn 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 Óg Ó 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 Réamoinn 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 Réamoinn's personality were remembered by many speakers, including Welsh scholar Dr Harri Prichard-Jones who recalled how Seán "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 RTÉ executive, Mac Réamoinn 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 Réamoinn intervened decisively in his inimitable gravelly tones with the one word, "Blather!"
Mac Réamoinn 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 RTÉ director-general Bob Collins said: "Do shaibhrigh sé saol gach éinne a chuir aithne air (he enriched the life of everyone who knew him)." Mac Réamoinn 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 Ciarán Mac Mathúna; author and journalist Nuala O'Faolain; film-maker Louis Marcus; writer and editor Neil Middleton; former RTÉ 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 Seán Mac Réamoinn'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 Pádraic McKernan; Liam Ó Dochartaigh and Úna Ní Chuinn of Cumann Merriman; TK Whitaker; writers Colm Tóibín, Nell McCafferty, Terry Eagleton, Marie Heaney and Terence Brown; poets Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Macdara Woods, Gerald Dawe and Gabriel Rosenstock; Gaelic scholars Liam Mac an Iomaire and Eoghan Ó hAnluain; archivist Catríona Crowe; actors Gerard McSorley and Donal Farmer; RTÉ director-general Cathal Goan; former editor of the Irish Independent Louis McRedmond; theologian Fr Enda McDonagh; singers Ronnie Drew and Dolly McMahon; Garech de Brún; former minister of state Eithne FitzGerald; broadcasters Ruth Buchanan, Brian Farrell, Proinsias Ó Conluain and Liam Ó Murchú. The editor of The Irish Timeswas represented by Eoin McVey, managing editor.
