IS BONO MY COUSIN ?

Me & Bono in Marlay House
Clck on any image for a larger version

It all started with a tinkle as an email from a Scot named Rankin working in London dropped into my inbox.

"I think we're both related to Bono" says he.

"Jesus", thought I, "what next?".

"Please God not", I thought, the panic rising rising within me.

You know when you wake up from an awful nightmare and haven't quite gathered your faculties sufficiently to determine whether or not it is real and still happening?

The basis for positing this unexpected and unwelcome relationship was thin at best but stranger things have happened. My great grandmother was a Rankin as was Bono's mother.

I tell you, it didn't take long for me to swing into action. Off to the BMD office to trace Bono's maternal ancestry.

Imagine the relief when I found his Rankins were Protestants from Belfast while mine were Catholics from Laois.

The name is of Scottish origin and sure we might just have a common ancestor somewhere along the line to Adam and Eve, but then haven't we all.

Click on the image for a readable version

However, I did come across an interesting snippet along the way. Bono's parents had been twice married (to each other !). First in a Protestant church in Drumcondra and then in a Roman Catholic church in Dolphin's Barn six months later.

A cursory glance at the documentation above suggests some discontent among both families at this mixed marriage. This may be only part of the story as, at the time, the Roman Catholic side would be forbidden by their church to attend the Protestant wedding and the Protestant side may have been kept in ignorance of, or been unwelcome at, the second one.

It is only due to the erroneous civil recording of the second marriage combined with the later digitisaton of the records that this anomaly has come to light.

I do have some connections with Bono, however weak these may be.

John & Tess Burgess

Some of my people lived within two doors of his mother's family off Aughrim Street and there was contact between the two families. Bono's father, Bob Hewson, a Roman Catholic, lived on the same estate. I was told that Bono's mother, Iris, was a looker and that the Catholic boys were told to leave her alone because she was a Protestant. Clearly Bob paid no attention to this piece of sectarian advice.

A second connection is also geographical. Bono, the proud Northsider, eventually succumbed to the charms of the deep Southside and got himself a magnificent mansion in Killiney. This residence is within the catchment area of what was my mother's newspaper shop in Ballybrack, though it would not have been on my paper round. This was before the arrival of the immigrant Bono, nevertheless I am sure there are those who would treasure even such a weak connection to celebrity.

Anyway, as I said at the outset, thankfully Bono is not numbered among my people.

BLOOMSDAY 2017

Click on any image for a larger version

It's that time of the year again and on last Friday (16/6/2017) Dublin erupted into a thousand Bloomsday events. But none were as special as that held at the Martello Tower on Killiney Hill Road. No, this is not "Joyce's Tower" albeit in sight of the same snot green sea.

This is the magnificent restoration of Martello Tower No.7. Dublin South, by Niall O'Donoghue, a feat recognised as special by the Europa Nostra jury in 2014.

Sandycove is welcome to its annual splash, initiated by Myles na gCopaleen and a few others in 1954. Commemoration of James Joyce on Bloomsday there has now become a habit. But this is only the second Bloomsday commemoration at the Killiney Tower. It was initiated by the late David Hedigan in 2014 and it is a most exclusive affair - invitation only.

As you can see above, this year's celebration was novel in its conception. Felix M Larkin was giving us a miscellany of thoughts on Joyce with particular reference to the Freeman's Journal in Ulysses. Darren Mooney was recreating the drawing room atmosphere which is the background to some of Joyce's work, not forgetting that Joyce himself was no mean tenor and had written a series of love songs under the title Chamber Music.

Felix M Larkin

Felix, who is a former director of the prestigious Parnell Summer School, kicked off by reminding us of Joyce's attitude to Parnell. He puts Joyce firmly the Irish constitutional tradition and makes it clear he rejected any form of militant republicanism and narrow cultural nationalism.

I am a desperate one for connections, however tenuous. Felix tells us that Joyce's republican character, Michael Davin, in the Portrait of the Artist is based on George Clancy, who went on to become Sinn Féin mayor of Limerick and was murdered by crown forces on 6 March 1921, shortly after his election as mayor.

And the connection? Niall O'Donoghue's grandfather had been with Clancy just before his murder and you can read that true story here.

Felix goes on to illustrate the extent to which Ulysses is rooted in actuality by considering the opening sequence of the ‘Aeolus’ episode which is set in the offices of the Freeman’s Journal newspaper in North Prince’s street, Dublin – beside the GPO. But in setting the scene, and remembering that Felix is himself a historian, he reminds us, bluntly it has to be said, that the historian should be a kind of ‘bullshit detector’, with zero tolerance – and that is the spirit in which Joyce approaches his material.

It is at this point that Felix really gets into his stride. He is the historian of the Freeman's Journal and it is a recurring theme in his writings. Woe betide the audience that lets its mind wander and its attention flag at this point.

Preparations have been made to ensure strict attention and wakefulness and if the smaller cannon proves an insufficient threat to the inattentive ...

... then the eighteen pounder on the crown of the tower can be readied in forty-five minutes, somewhat along the lines of Saddam Hussein's rockets as recounted in the Dodgy Dossier. Just for the avoidance of doubt among the uninitiated, that work of fiction was not from the pen of Mr. Joyce.

But if Joyce sets the Aeolus chapter of Ulysses in the offices of the Freeman's Journal it is not out of respect for that newspaper. In fact Joyce held the Freeman and its staff in some disdain. Moreover, he seems to have held most, if not all, journalists in the same disdain, describing them as as ‘weathercocks’ – he writes: ‘One story good till you hear the next’.

We are told that Joyce’s final sneer at the Freeman in Ulysses occurs in the ‘Circe’ episode, set in Dublin’s nighttown: the title of the newspaper and that of its weekly compendium edition, the Weekly Freeman, are transmogrified into the ‘Freeman’s Urinal and Weekly Arsewiper’.

I have to interject here for the benefit of my younger readers who may be familiar with toilet tissue or even toilet rolls for doing the needful. These are a product of what to me is the modern age. They were preceded by medicated toilet paper whose properties led more to the spreading than the absorption of the remnants of No.2.

But before all that it was the practice, at least among the working classes, to cut the previous day's newspaper into small squares, pierce one corner, thread them with twine, and hang them on the lavatory wall. So many a paper in my day would have qualified for the title arsewiper not out of disrespet but out of necessity.

In our house that honour went to the Irish Press.

In his peroration Felix points out that Mr Bloom did not carry Joyce's disdain for the Freeman to its logical conclusion. When he visits the privy behind his home in Eccles Street, he did not use the Freeman to wipe himself clean but instead relied on the popular English magazine, Titbits.

Now there were some knowing giggles among the audience at this last bit. But this reveals a certain temporal problem in the cursory reading of Joyce.

In my day, Titbits was a soft porn magazine, a sort of titillator. In Joyce's time it presented a diverse range of tit-bits of information in an easy-to-read format. It didn't get its first pin-up until 1939.

If you're interested in the serious scholarly version of all this you can read Felix's full paper which he has generously put up on his website.

Darren Mooney

Now it's on to the second phase of the day's event, the music.

Joyce himself was musical. He had a fine tenor voice and, from memory, I think he won a few Feis prizes. There was also music around him. Moore's melodies, for example, were popular at social functions of the day. So Moore's melodies from tenor Darren Mooney were entirely appropriate to this particular commemoration.

Darren is from just down the road in Newtownmountkennedy in Co. Wicklow - somewhat beyond the range of the tower's cannon, but never mind. He charmed the audience so there will be no firing today. A singer whose abode is very much in range of the cannon is Bono, but that's for another day.

Darren's performance led us very nicely into that aspect of Joyce's life that we hear so little of. In fact Moore's melodies had gone somewhat out of vogue in the face of the great trad musical revival of the 1970s.

But, as Darren reminded us, they were the pop songs of their day. And they have some beautiful melodies along with decent lyrics. Even if the melodies were stolen, or recycled, Moore must be given credit for spreading them around and keeping them alive.

Darren had put together a nice selection and there was something very appealing in listening to a tenor out in the open and without electronic amplification half way up Killiney Hill.

If you're curious you can hear Darren sing Mio Caro Ben on his website. Not a Moore's melody but one with strong Irish connections if its claimed authorship is to be believed.

Jillian Saunders

A special mention for Jill.

There are two sorts of accompanists: true accompanists and soloists. Too many of the latter try to pass themselves off as also the former. but you cannot be both at the same time.

Not so Jill - a discreet empathic accompanist and a wonderful complement to the singer's performance. A great pleasure.

We ended up with an unexpected sing along version of Molly Malone when, ignoring the day's script and presumably somewhat over-enthused by the occasion, a Molly presented herself from among the audience and Darren was suitably gallant in his response.

Photo: Maeve Breen

An unexpected duet from Patricia Dolan and Darren Mooney to tie up the musical phase in style.

Family solidarity, Niall's sisters Maeve & Emer
Photo: Sovay Murray

Susan Hedigan

In the course of his performance as a wandering minstrel among the audience, Darren presented Susan with a bloom. This was Susan's birthday and the first time she had been back at the tower since her late husband's great performance here on Bloomsday 2014.

Ingrid & Rob Goodbody, Niall O'Donoghue

Niall had a bad fall a short while before and he was not completely recovered. He is one of those people who does not understand the word convalescence and, despite the possibility of having broken, or at least seriously damaged, some ribs he was out on site at 4am lugging stuff around.

But enough is enough and he was running out of steam. So he deputed Rob Goodbody to convey his appreciation to the participants and to thank the audience for coming, not to mention the caterers, whose catering we were about to sample. Some individuals had actually brought food to share, including lavender biscuits and succulent blueberry muffins.

Maghera Point from the Tower on the Day

I then laid aside the camera and proceeded to wind up the formal presentations by outlining the strong French connections between Killiney and France, carefully avoiding mentioning my own experience as an au pair boy.

The towers were built in 1804/5 to repel an expected French seaborne invasion. Thy owed much of their actual positioning in the Bay to the French Major La Chaussée who surveyed its military vulnerability in 1797. In the event, Napoleon never turned up, though the French appeared briefly elsewhere on the island.

Maghera Point, above, was the largest of the nine defensive emplacements in the Bay. It consisted of a tower and two batteries. It eventually fell victim to coastal erosion but was by then well beyond its use by date. Unlike Ozymandias, whose bits are still being discovered, it is gone forever.

You can also see in the picture where Edward Ball, having murdered his mother with a hatchet in Booterstown. dumped her body in the sea. But that too is a story for another day.

Myself reading from Joyce's Chamber Music
Photo: Sovay Murray

Back to La Chaussée, who went on to better things and became a financial intermediary between the British Government and the French Royalist rebels attempting to restore the monarchy and get rid of Napoleon. La Chaussée was involved in financing an unsuccessful attempt on Napoleon's life by the rebels, for which the perpetrators where duly executed.

So in this way, Killiney had connections with the highest level of the Government of France in the Napoleonic era.

Philippe Milloux

And there's more.

In attendance on the day was Philippe Milloux, Director of the Dublin Alliance Française. I didn't know it when I spoke, but the previous evening Philippe had been knighted by the French Government and was now a Chevalier de l'Ordre national du Mérite.

Short of an appearance of the full complement of the Knights of the Round Table, what more could be wished for to nicely cap the day.

Mark and Diana Richardson had earlier arrived in true vintage style in their 1918 Model T Ford. They were great to let guests have their photos taken in this precious relic of a bygone era. Lovely people.

Des Fahey
Photo: Sovay Murray

Niall's grandsons Matthew & Simon
Photo: Sovay Murray

After the refreshments and loads of chat, time came for us all to wend our weary way homeward. But for some the day was not yet over and Mark and Diana were leaving to participate in the rival ceremonials in Sandycove.

A real Model T Ford, in any colour you like as long as it's black, but complete with hooter.

BIPOLAR WORLD

Click on any image for a larger version

I grew up in a bipolar world.

There were the Catholics, who might eventually get to Heaven if they successfully jumped the many hurdles of life, a lot of which were put in their way by their own church.

And there were the others, who ended up elsewhere, unless they somehow managed to contrive a deathbed conversion, accompanied by repentance for the perverse life they had lived and a firm purpose of amendment. This last bit would not, by then, be partcularly relevant.

The Protestants next door, while admittedly very nice people, were heading in the wrong direction. Adherents of the heretic Luther and followers of the serial adulterer Henry VIII, on whose bollix their church had been founded. Nice people but delusional.

As for the Jews. Well they crucified Christ so what could they reasonably expect in the next life.

And the rest of the world which worshipped false gods or none. Well, the less said the better.

And within the Catholic church it was the "sacrament" of confession which kept you morally afloat in this sea of troubles called life. The slate had to be periodically wiped clean of your horrendous crimes like missing mass or taking pleasure in the odd dirty thought, not to mention the other thing.

Looking back on it all, it is hard to believe it ever existed in all its perversity. You could not explain it to the present generation of youth, though I'll grant you they have their own hurdles to jump, but not these particular ones.

The greatest scandal was probably the rift within Christianity. Bitter spiritual enmity between neighbours, sustained by adherence to outdated and misunderstood medieval theological concepts.

As a Catholic, you could not even enter a Protestant church lest your faith be contaminated. As for attending their services, God forbid. And marrying one of them, Jesus wept, though you might get permission from the Bishop in an emergency.

"Outside the Church there is no salvation".

Now, if I am losing your attention at this point, let me give you a concrete example which will keep you on your toes.

Bob Hewson and Iris Rankin on one of their wedding days

I was recently accused of being related to Bono, perish the thought. But it led me to chasing up his ancestors in a frantic rush to put down this calumny before it took root. This involved looking into births, marriages and deaths and carefully examining all sorts of certificates. I had to find out "who were his people?" and, more importantly, were they also my people.

In the course of pursuing this investigation I took a look at a few U2 websites and quickly realised that there had been some controversy over where and when his parents had married. Not that they hadn't, just the where and the when. The online discussion was finally put to bed by the production of a letter from the Rector saying that they had been married on the 19th of August 1950 in the Protestant church in Drumcondra.

In chasing up this particular marriage through the civil registration system I came across a serious anomaly. The Drumcondra marriage had only been their first. There was yet more to come.

Six months later they remarried in the Catholic church in Dolphin's Barn, on 20th December 1950.

So what does this tell you about the bipolar world of my formative years. I was six at the time and just approaching the age of reason.

Click on image for a larger version

Let's see what we can learn from the relevant marriage certs.

But first a bit of background. Both the Hewsons (Bono's father's family) and the Rankins (his mother's family) lived on the Oxmantown estate off Aughrim St. in Dublin's north inner city. The Hewsons were Catholic, the Rankins Protestant.

My own family, whose forbears had also lived on the estate, tell me that Iris was a looker but the boys were told to stay away from her because she was a Protestant. Clearly Bob Hewson took no notice of this edict and they ended up getting married.

So what do the certs tell us of the world they lived in? The first cert tells us that Bob was living at home but Iris wasn't. She gave her address as Melrose Avenue, in Fairview, a good walk from Oxmantown. Whether she was living there connected with her work or whether she had to leave home because of the impending marriage is not clear.

What is clear is that there do not appear to have been any Hewsons at the wedding. The normal practice would be for the best man and bridesmaid, witnesses to the marriage, to come one each from either side of the family. In this case it is Rankins only, Iris's siblings. I had originally thought that this signified Iris's rejection by the Hewson family but I was reminded of what I said earlier, that Catholics were not allowed inside Protestant churches and in any event might not have been welcome in those days.

Anyway, the happy couple moved in together in Haroldsville Avenue, Rialto, where they seem to have been discovered cohabiting by the local curate who recommended they regularise their relationship in the eyes of Mother Church as soon as possible. At least that's my take on it. There is no disputing the next step, however, and they were duly married, again, in the run up to Christmas in Dolphin's Barn church..

This time there don't appear to have been any Rankins present and the priest was so strapped for witnesses that he had to press his housekeeper into service.

But he did more than that. In those days the churches were authorised civil marriers and you simply signed the civil register in the vestry. So Father Muleady followed the normal practice and the marriage was duly civilly registered.

But it had already been registered via the Protestant church six month's earlier, and Bob and Iris were no longer bachelor and spinster respectively. So we have a false declaration and the same people married twice within the year.

I haven't yet found a single word to describe this. It's not bigamy, which requires a change of partner, but it must be bi- something, a shining example of the unintended consequences of the bipolar world I grew up in.

And, no, I'm not related to Bono, DG.

Bono's House

Click any image for a larger version

It's really all the fault of the Vico Road.

Everyone knows that the Vico Road is in Dalkey.
Bono lives on the Vico Road.
Therefore, Bono lives in Dalkey.

I'm fed up of reading that shite.

You see not all of the Vico Road is in Dalkey. Quite a substantial part of it is in Killiney and where Bono lives is in both the former urban district and current townland of Killiney.

Bono lives in Killiney. Enya lives in Killiney.

It's Pat Kenny that lives in Dalkey and who would want to end up in that neighbourhood.

Just so people will know the score, the map below shows the border between the former urban districts of Killiney and Dalkey and it's a good uphill walk from Bono's house, highlighted in yellow at the bottom.

Bono lives on the actual townland of Killiney, one of the constituent townlands of the former Killiney and Ballybrack urban district.

Strathmore Road

And when you take into account that the entrance to Bono's house was moved from its original position, which could have been argued onto the Vico Road, it is now unequivocally on the Strathmore Road. So Bono doesn't actually live on the Vico Road at all.

So there.

Cui Bono

I have in the past been accused of being related to Bono. Fortunately I was able to disprove this claim, at least to my own satisfaction.

However, in disproving it I ended up chasing his people and mine and so I may know a little more about his background than some of his fans.

While following up another angle, the other day, I came across what appears to be an interview Bono gave to Lynne Kelleher, in 2006 and which appeared in the Irish Mirror. It reminded me that journalists should really be very careful about what they write.

She tells us how Bono's parents' mixed marriage put him off organised churches. She goes on

He said he felt his late Protestant father, Bob, was excluded from the family on Sundays when he and his brother would go to mass with his Catholic mother Iris.

While his parents did come from two rival Christian camps, it was actually the other way round. Bob was the Catholic and Iris the Protestant. [But see third comment below]

Both Bob and Iris lived on the Dublin Artisans Dwellings Company Estate at Aughrim St. My relations, who are also from that estate, told me that Iris was a looker, but because she was a Protestant the lads were told to stay away from her. Bob Hewson clearly paid no attention to that advice.

Bono's parents, Bob & Iris on their first marriage (5/8/1950)
Click image for a larger version

I imagine the mixed marriage did cause some grief in the respective families. Bob and Iris were first married in the Church of Ireland in Drumcondra on 19 August 1950, where the witnesses were from the Rankin (Protestant) side only. The couple settled in Haroldville Avenue in Dolphins Barn, where they were persuaded (quite likely by the local curate, Father Muleady) to remarry in the Catholic Church, which they did on 28 December 1950. The witnesses at this marriage consisted of one Hewson (Thomas Leo) and Father Muleady's housekeeper.


The two marriages of Bono's parents
Click image for a larger version
In his biography of Bono (2005), Mick Wall tells us about the wedding in the Protestant church in Drumcondra, and goes on to say that their union would "some years later, be blessed by a Catholic Priest". What he doesn't tell us is that this "blessing" was in fact a full marriage and so notified to the State by Father Muleady. I have been trying to find a word in the English language to describe this phenomenon, so far without success.

When his own turn came, Bono married in the beautiful All Saints Church of Ireland in Raheny.


All Saints Church, Raheny
I have titled this post Cui Bono, not very original I'll admit. The meaning is a question Who gains?. It seems to me that the winner here is Father Muleady, by a mile.

Backhanded Compliment?

I was ploughing through some linguistic sites/blogs recently and it got me reflecting on the complexity of language and the way in which it carries baggage which may be peculiar to a region or a group of people.

I had always been impressed by François Sagan's description of herself as a Catholic Agnostic, not so much by the description itself as by the subtlety of the baggage.

Agnostic by conviction and Catholic by upbringing. So you have Jewish agnostics, Anglican atheists etc. It is a very useful distinction and saves a lot of time, pain, and misunderstanding.

But my reflections took me back elsewhere.

I had written a speech on, inter alia, Third World Debt for a Minister at an IMF/World Bank AGM.

On hearing the Minister deliver it, a very senior colleague turned to me and said, "That sounds like Bono wrote it".

I didn't know whether to be chuffed or angry. If it was a comment on the substance of what was said, then irrespective of this person's opinion of Bono, I would take it as a compliment. If, however, it was equating me personally with the greatest debt reliever of all time, I would be seriously insulted.

Now, Saint Bob would be a different matter entirely.

What do you think?

(For the avoidance of doubt, I am not related to Bono, this side of Adam and Eve, as far as I know and pray.)