Meathman's Diary: Mother of all the Behans

I had the pleasure recently of seeing the fabulous Imelda May in her recent one woman production 'Mother of All the Behans', having squeezed into one of the last seats at the Olympia Theatre at the end of the successful run of the show.

The story of Kathleen Behan was written by her third son, Brian, and adapted and directed by Peter Sheridan, with additional material by Rosaleen Linehan, and Sean Gilligan as musical director.

Kathleen was born in a Dublin tenement in 1889 to a family of passionate socialists and nationalists, and her upbringing was steeped in Irish culture, with evenings filled with Irish conversations and patriotic ballads.

The show opens with Kathleen reminiscing, and belting out a few bars of 'The Red Flag', the workers' song written by Kilskyre man Jim Connell.

But that is not the only Meath connection. Even though I had read Brian Behan's book some 25 years ago, I had forgotten that Kathleen Kearney Behan's roots were in Meath – Slane to be exact. 'We saw the two days, one wet, one fine' says the opening of chapter one on 'Childhood', with the introduction saying: “Kathleen Kearney was born in Dublin, at the end of the 1880s, to parents who both came from relatively prosperous farming stock. With the death of her father in 1894, however, her comfortable early childhood came to an abrupt halt: her mother, unable to support the family at home, had to send Kathleen and her sisters to an orphanage.”

In her opening chapter, Kathleen says her grandparents had a farm, at Rathmaiden, Slane, where she used to go on her holidays regularly. “Mother had a brother called John McGuinness – he inherited; he came into the farm, she didn't.”

She says she learned the ballads on the farm when she was a young girl.

“The people would gather in the night for a chat around the fire. There would be about 20 there, but no Gaelic speakers. They would talk about the farms, the animals and all that, and sing songs. Some were about the hard life they led.”

She said the people that used to come in at Rathmaiden were very happy. “They would talk about things – times that were past – and then they would say a big long rosary with a long trimming. I'd think it would never end.”

Kathleen said that after her uncle died at the age of 36, the family all left and the farm was eventually sold. The Kearneys, her father's side, were from Rosybrook in County Louth. Her brother, Peadar, wrote the soldier's song which became Ireland's National Anthem. Kathleen married twice, first to Jack Furlong, a printer, who died in 1918, a year after their son, Rory, was born, and secondly, to Stephen Behan, and they were to have five children, the eldest of which, Brendan, became the celebrated author and playwright. The Mother of All the Behans died in 1984.