Eileen nee Earls Breen

Eileen Breen’s Poetry Pages
A collection of selected poems
by the late Eileen nee Earls Breen
March 27, 1916 - May 5, 2006
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A collection of 21 poems written by my beloved mother, the late Eileen Breen of Bagenalstown, County Carlow, Ireland, were chosen so her poems and interesting life will be remembered. A poem from her collection will be posted on www.ourEcho.com a few times each month.

This thumbnail sketch of my mother’s life is to acknowledge with deep gratitude the kindness and friendship provided by Tom and Kathleen Clarke, Margaret Cushen, Kathleen Lillis, Amanda Rothwell, Maura Doyle, and Mrs. Michael. I value the care and concern provided by family members, Phyllis McCormack and Joan Earls. I'm grateful for the love and extra care provided by the Curry Family, Mary Doyle, and Nell O’Riordan to my mother over many years. And to her granddaughters, Lorraine and Sharon who kept the fun and the life in her right to the end.

A special thanks to Kate Foster for creating my mother's heart-shaped memorial garden with lilac trees, roses, a brass name plate with epitaph in Buffalo, New York. Grand merci to the Alliance Française de Buffalo, Buffalo-Lille French Sister City Association, and the friends who contributed rose bushes, plants, bulbs, and red holly trees. The garden is under the front window, gets the morning sun, and is a playground for birds, bees and butterflies.
From Vonnie and Family, Buffalo, New York
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Eileen Breen’s poems are about Bagenalstown, Graiguenamanagh, walks along the Barrow River, watching children fishing in the river with jam jars. The collection includes her tribute to her father, her mother; memories of old soldiers, bus conductors, the smell of spring flowers, holidays in Wales, war, love, loss and death. Her poems have been published in Irish newspapers, books, anthologies and read on TV and Radio. Some have won prizes. Mary Doyle, her long-time friend, who still lives in Bagenalstown took most of the accompanying photographs. They are published here with her kind permission.

My mother was the third of seven children
born to William and Mary Kate (nee Walshe) Earls. She was born in the Curragh Army Camp in Kildare, Ireland, two weeks before the 1916 Irish Rebellion, during in World War One. Her father was in the British Army's 11th Hussars and was in North Africa on duty when she arrived during the war. She grew up outside the village of Graiguenamanagh in County Kilkenny. When a school girl she sang in the choir of Duiske Abbey, the town’s 13th century Cistercian Abbey.

She married young but the marriage was not a happy one. Taking her children with her, she returned to her mother’s town where various family members helped her to look after her children. She got a job taking care of Mary, the sick wife of Michael Walshe, the tailor who lived at 3 Main Street, Bagenalstown. When Mary died in 1945, she stayed on and learned the tailoring business. A love affair developed between her and Michael which lasted forty years. There was no divorce in Ireland so they could not marry. When Michael died in 1942, she buried him with Mary.

In the early 1950s, she started a boarding house where she took in old men who had no families and cared for them until they died. When the hotel closed, she put a sign in the window that said, “Teas.” It soon became a popular restaurant catering to farmers, locals, rock bands, and the all-night firemen’s banquet. She even catered a tinker’s wedding with the same attention to detail expected by a prince and princess. When her main daily trade was over, she served free dinners to men out of work. She then enlisted their help to delivered meals to old people in the town who were sick, poor, or could not get out.

The boarding house and restaurant was the first on the street to have television and a fridge with ice cubes. It was a drop in center for a cup of tea and a chat for many people who just wanted to discuss the issues of the day.

Mom had a light-hearted spirit and without hesitation she’d sing a song or recite a poem at any funeral, wedding, or birthday, big or small. A few times she regaled tourists in Temple Bar, Dublin’s Latin Quarter, with her poems and songs. She loved the sea and often went by train to Tramore, outside the seaport of Waterford where she sat in a little tea house. While the waves lashed the pier and seagulls screamed and circled overhead, she wrote poems about things on her mind or in her heart’s core.

Eileen Breen was known as a “character.” She had a great interest in old tombstones and cemeteries and was well known as a social historian. She had a keen awareness of nature and the environment. She wrote letters to presidents all over the world to voice her concerns about issues of the time. Many of them wrote back to her. She adopted a family from Zimbabwe through Amnesty International. She supported the wives and children of Irish political prisoners and hunger strikers.

My mother celebrated her 90th birthday with gusto on March 27th 2006. She was in hospital only one day before she went off in her sleep on Friday, May 5th. In spite of being 80 percent deaf, she lived alone for the last 25 years and took care of herself. She lived at 3 Main Street, Bagenalstown, County Carlow for 64 years. At one of her five funeral services, a priest said that not only had the last member of the Walshe Family, Old Barracks, Kilree Street, living in Bagenalstown departed; the town had lost one of its last rare characters as well.

Another priest noted what a coincidence it was that my mother returned to her home town and got a job taking care of Mary, the sick wife of Michael, the tailor. For the last few years, Nell O’Riordan, visited Mom every day, coaxed her appetite with her favorite foods, washed her, and took her for drives by the river to see the swans and into the country to see the lambs, the mountans and the wildflowers. It was because of Nell’s care, my mother was able to live happily by herself for so long. Nell is the wife of John O'Riordan, the tailor.

As Mom wished, her ashes are buried in a small wind swept cemetery over looking Inver Bay, Donegal, West of Ireland. Some days, the Atlantic Ocean lashes and pounds the clifts. Overhead, silver-winged falcons twist and turn against the gray-blue ski and glide towards the sea where my mother most loved to be.
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The following poems will appear on the web site beginning in November, 2006:

Memories of Bagenalstown
Remembrance Day
Poppies

In Memory Of My Father
In Memory of My Mother
The Graiguenamanagh Bus

A Morning Walk
A Fishy Tale
Working Holiday
Summer’s End
Ode To A Butt
In Memoriam
To Harold
Our Hill
Maggie

A Rosary for the Dead
Good Night Gran
The Last Lapp
Invitations
What’s in a Name
Night Lights
Death

Pictures

1. Memorial
2. Eileen at 17 years
3. Eileen in the poppie fields
4. Mary Doyle, friend and Photographer
5. 3 Main Street, Bagenalstown, Mom's home for 64 years

Most photos by Mary Doyle, Bagenalstown