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So Once Was I: Forgotten Tales from Glasnevin Cemetery
‘Remember now as you go by, as you are now so once was I …’
From unmarked plots to striking monuments, Glasnevin Cemetery has become home to a microcosm of Irish society since it opened its gates in 1832. Every grave has a story to tell, but with more than a million souls resting there, many of these stories have been long forgotten.
So Once Was I sets out to celebrate the quirky, strange and sometimes unbelievable tales of lesser-known figures in Ireland’s famous cemetery. Representing all threads of Irish society’s rich tapestry, from lion tamers to pioneering aviators, the mistress of the macabre to a mysterious, murderous count, forgotten revolutionaries to the mammy of Irish cooking, the cemetery’s population is reanimated in this book through vivid retellings of their lives. This intriguing tour through the national necropolis brings back to life those Joyce called the ‘faithful dead’, an intricate mosaic of stories rediscovered among the grandeur of Glasnevin’s famed monuments.
From unmarked plots to striking monuments, Glasnevin Cemetery has become home to a microcosm of Irish society since it opened its gates in 1832. Every grave has a story to tell, but with more than a million souls resting there, many of these stories have been long forgotten.
So Once Was I sets out to celebrate the quirky, strange and sometimes unbelievable tales of lesser-known figures in Ireland’s famous cemetery. Representing all threads of Irish society’s rich tapestry, from lion tamers to pioneering aviators, the mistress of the macabre to a mysterious, murderous count, forgotten revolutionaries to the mammy of Irish cooking, the cemetery’s population is reanimated in this book through vivid retellings of their lives. This intriguing tour through the national necropolis brings back to life those Joyce called the ‘faithful dead’, an intricate mosaic of stories rediscovered among the grandeur of Glasnevin’s famed monuments.
336 pages, Paperback
Published July 8, 2024
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October 21, 2024
Earlier this year I had the pleasure of being on one of Warren Farrell’s guided tours of Dublin’s Glasnevin cemetery. Warren brought the place alive (apologies, but anything to do with cemeteries is just made for puns, so I’ll try to avoid them here) with his knowledge and passion for the place and it’s residents. As Warren pointed out in his tour and emphasizes in the opening words of his book, Glasnevin is more than a mere cemetery, it is a necropolis, a city of the dead where more than 1 million souls buried since it opened its gates in 1832 lie. Warren’s live tour focused on the ranks of the great and famous of Ireland’s history who reside there, and is in particular a who’s who of our republican and national heroes with the graves of Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith, Constance Markievicz, Maud Gonne McBride, Eamonn de Valera, Roger Casement, Charles Stuart Parnell and Daniel O’Connell. As such it must rank as one of the world’s great historical cemeteries alongside Père Lachaise in Paris, Highgate in London or Cementerio de la Recoleta in Buenos Aires.
Unlike his live tour, Warren’s book focuses on the stories of Glasnevin’s lesser known residents. What follows is a series of mini biographies of forgotten actresses, medical pioneers, poets, architects and artists. Some of the stories he has dug up (sorry, there goes another clanger 🤦) are quirky to say the least. There is the lady who was buried twice; the zookeeper killed by an elephant; a lion tamer mauled by his charge; a republican priest who erm, invented swimming goggles and who also officiated at the wedding of 1916 leader Joseph Mary Plunkett to Grace Gifford the night before his execution in Kilmainham jail.
Meticulously researched and told with panache, insight and flair, Warren bestows the dignity of remembrance to people known, loved and respected in life but whom otherwise would have remained forgotten and obscure in death, their graves (often unmarked) passed unnoticed by the casual visitor among the plethora of tombs to the famous. To paraphrase Yeats’ epitaph, ‘ cast not a cold eye on life, on death … horseman pass me by’.
Perhaps the most compelling section of the book is that on conflict, revolution and war. The centerpiece for Glasnevin is undoubtedly the republican plot containing the big names of Ireland’s struggle for independence from Fenian times of the 1848 young Ireland rebellion through to 1916 and the war of independence. But in the vicinity and literally the shadow of these also lie the forgotten names of these struggles as well as the Irishmen who fought in the ranks of the British army as veterans of the Napoleonic wars and World War 1. Warren brings their neglected stories to light, and illustrates how competing narratives of history lie side by side in Glasnevin.
It is worth mentioning here what is perhaps the most intriguing forgotten tale of the cemetery. Buried in Glasnevin are several victims of an event lost to history, the 1918 torpedoing of the mailboat RMS Leinster off Dun Laoghaire by a German U-boat with the loss of over 500 Irish lives - Civilians, women, children, Irish soldiers in the British army and mail workers. More Irish souls were lost in this disaster than on the Lusitania or Titanic, and it remains the greatest maritime loss on the Irish Sea. Every day hundreds of Dubliners pass the discreet anchor memorial to the Leinster in Dun Laoghaire with most undoubtedly not knowing anything about the story. I count among those, and me a self proclaimed history buff. Thanks Warren in particular for this one.
So once was I is a work from the heart of the author, displaying his flair for storytelling and social history and his love and passion for his place of work and research. By writing and remembering the forgotten stories of Glasnevin’s dead with sensitivity, dignity and respect, he reminds us of the inherent value of every life regardless of fame and fortune. Above all, he reminds us of our own mortality and the hope we all harbor to be remembered by someone in the times to come. Horseman, cast an eye as you pass.
Unlike his live tour, Warren’s book focuses on the stories of Glasnevin’s lesser known residents. What follows is a series of mini biographies of forgotten actresses, medical pioneers, poets, architects and artists. Some of the stories he has dug up (sorry, there goes another clanger 🤦) are quirky to say the least. There is the lady who was buried twice; the zookeeper killed by an elephant; a lion tamer mauled by his charge; a republican priest who erm, invented swimming goggles and who also officiated at the wedding of 1916 leader Joseph Mary Plunkett to Grace Gifford the night before his execution in Kilmainham jail.
Meticulously researched and told with panache, insight and flair, Warren bestows the dignity of remembrance to people known, loved and respected in life but whom otherwise would have remained forgotten and obscure in death, their graves (often unmarked) passed unnoticed by the casual visitor among the plethora of tombs to the famous. To paraphrase Yeats’ epitaph, ‘ cast not a cold eye on life, on death … horseman pass me by’.
Perhaps the most compelling section of the book is that on conflict, revolution and war. The centerpiece for Glasnevin is undoubtedly the republican plot containing the big names of Ireland’s struggle for independence from Fenian times of the 1848 young Ireland rebellion through to 1916 and the war of independence. But in the vicinity and literally the shadow of these also lie the forgotten names of these struggles as well as the Irishmen who fought in the ranks of the British army as veterans of the Napoleonic wars and World War 1. Warren brings their neglected stories to light, and illustrates how competing narratives of history lie side by side in Glasnevin.
It is worth mentioning here what is perhaps the most intriguing forgotten tale of the cemetery. Buried in Glasnevin are several victims of an event lost to history, the 1918 torpedoing of the mailboat RMS Leinster off Dun Laoghaire by a German U-boat with the loss of over 500 Irish lives - Civilians, women, children, Irish soldiers in the British army and mail workers. More Irish souls were lost in this disaster than on the Lusitania or Titanic, and it remains the greatest maritime loss on the Irish Sea. Every day hundreds of Dubliners pass the discreet anchor memorial to the Leinster in Dun Laoghaire with most undoubtedly not knowing anything about the story. I count among those, and me a self proclaimed history buff. Thanks Warren in particular for this one.
So once was I is a work from the heart of the author, displaying his flair for storytelling and social history and his love and passion for his place of work and research. By writing and remembering the forgotten stories of Glasnevin’s dead with sensitivity, dignity and respect, he reminds us of the inherent value of every life regardless of fame and fortune. Above all, he reminds us of our own mortality and the hope we all harbor to be remembered by someone in the times to come. Horseman, cast an eye as you pass.
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