A mighty heart stopped beating last week.
By John Fitzgerald
Ned Egan…author, poet, songwriter, and teller of great yarns, took his leave of a world he enriched with his dizzying range of talents and strange-than-fiction exploits.
Ned’s famous copper etchings hang in walls across Ireland, America, Australia, and Western Europe, their glinting gold never failing to draw admiring onlookers to remark on the artwork and eternal resonance of those ”ancient Ireland” themes.
Ned, who was 88, passed away at Waterford University Hospital, where he had spent his final days after suffering a fractured hip at his home in Walkin Street, Kilkenny. He had also been battling cancer, rapidly failing eyesight, and other ailments; all of which conspired to rob us of a living legend.
Ned was born into a very different Ireland from the one we know- or the one depicted on his etchings. He first saw the light of day in the tiny County Kilkenny village of Baurscoobe in 1936.
His school days were among the most challenging of his life, but the brutality of teachers was offset by the half-crown prizes that Ned received for his weekly essays in Primary School. Even the grumpiest of teachers had to defer to this teenager’s way with words.
Like many a young chap in those far-off days, Ned left school early on and shortly thereafter joined the hundreds of thousands of Irishmen and women on the “emigrant trail.”
With a heavy heart he said goodbye to his parents, brothers and sisters and boarded a cattle boat to find employment across the water. He toiled on building sites before joining the army. He saw service in the Middle East which was then, as now, engulfed in war and revolution. He also served in Europe, where he was stationed at NATO military airbases.
Ned later emigrated to Australia, where a mining accident cost him an eye and almost his entire vision. But he refused to let adversity deflect him. He rediscovered the innate writing talent that those grumpy teachers had recognized way back in his childhood.
Ned penned his first literary work, a book of poetry, in 1980. Memories of a Leprechaun is a collection of charming tongue-in-cheek odes focusing on aspects of Irish culture and folklore.
Around that time he moved back to Ireland where he set up his famed copper etching venture in Callan. The shining beautifully crafted etchings depicted Celtic themes, extolling the heroes and heroines of the Emerald Isle. These found their way into pubs, clubs and hotels across Ireland, and Ned toured the USA with the Wolfe Tones- a promotional drive to introduce Irish Americans to his work.
Ned went on to write Tales of Old Ireland and Australia, a collection of memories and reflections of his own adventures in the home country, the Middle East, Britain, and the Land of the Kangaroo.
In a remarkable change of style and direction, he wrote the controversial but un-put-down-able Sex and Death: Green White and Gold, a novel inspired by that dark, oppressive and censorial “Other Ireland” that was so inimical to creative folk. Ned then took to song-writing, penning dozens of soulful, merry, and story-telling numbers. These included Luke’s Song; a tribute to the late Luke Kelly of The Dubliners.
Mayoral Reception
Last November Ned was honoured with a Mayoral reception, which was held at the café bookshop in William Street, Kilkenny; an intellectual hub of the city that he frequented.
At that event, he cast his mind back to those days of struggle “TB, broken bones, re-broken bones, blood poisoning due to poor diet, savagery of teachers, mitching from school at every opportunity, and an unwillingness to learn what I didn’t want to were a few of the impediments I faced…obstacles and dead stops thrown in the face of Academia by nature, society, bad times and my very own cranky self.”
He made and lost several fortunes, mainly in the construction business. But the cruellest blow of all was the loss of his beloved daughter, Noreen, when he lived in Australia. Not a day has passed without Ned thinking of Noreen.
He was inspired by a love of learning from an early age, he told the gathering. Unfortunately for him, his teachers felt he was learning all the wrong lessons and that his attitude was “outrageous, totally unacceptable and an appalling example to other pupils.”
He explained to the throng of admirers at the café bookshop: “Not wanting my intelligent and musically gifted mother to discover what a wretched scholar I had willingly become, I used to have my schoolbag- a desperate old sacking affair- full of rocks and sticks, in order to give the impression that it was the weighty library of a studious boy.
“Yes, they were unprofitable schooldays; viewed from a conventional standpoint, although I left with the ability to read and write. That was inevitable. My mother had most of us reading before we ever went ‘down the road’; this was a mistake really, as I read all the books in the school in the first week, and was bored witless for the next ten years.”
Ned completed what he called his MA (“Muckin’ About”), before boarding that bleak and never to be forgotten cattle boat to England.
He recalled: “I slaved and laboured for the all the usual suspects: Wimpey, McAlpine, Tarmac—all the legendary names I used to hear my brothers talk about on holidays home.”
He strove to uphold Western values in the Gulf, Cyprus and Libya. He reflected sadly: “I saw things on those battlefields that I’d prefer to forget, but you never do forget the sights and sounds of war.”
Bomber Command and the Four-Minute Warning……
In 1962, Ned was stationed at an air force base in England at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He recalled: “Nuclear-tipped rockets in East Germany were heartbeats away—our only reassurance was the now almost forgotten Four Minute Warning. That was how long it took doom to travel the few hundred miles to where we were waiting.
“Wives and children had to be kissed goodbye on a regular basis. We were at the Atom and Hydrogen Bomb Underground Holding Area. It had a fancy name, but old habits die hard, so I still never say what or where. But it was Bomber Command territory.
“We never thought Khrushchev—a notoriously tough and legendary Russian General in the war against the Nazis—would buckle when the ships started sailing… We thought we were goners. Five colours on the ‘Tannoy’ Broadcast Code—all except red had been named and howled over the twenty one Victor Bombers lined up for take-off, with engines running—for three days and nights. Two atom bombs each.
“Five or six bombers might get clear before the Lad (missile) arrived. And the electro-magnetic pulse might down those anyway, as it knocked out electrics and electronics over a vast area. But Khrushchev blinked, and the ships turned back, and the world really didn’t know how close a thing it all was. They were never told everything. Nor were we. It was the only time my military outfit gave three cheers for a Russian.”
Australia was a welcome change of scene for Ned, but he’s never regretted his later decision to return to Ireland. In recent years, he moved from a house in Mullinavat to Kilkenny City. Despite continued visual problems and suffering a stroke, he soldiered on.
Among the gathering in the café/bookshop in November were singers who offered renditions of Ned’s own songs. He composed dozens over the decades. Olivia Dunne of Kells excelled on the guitar, and Olivia’s former teacher, 90-year old Collette Dwyer, accompanied her on accordion.
Seamus Cullen, formerly of the Black Aces showband, was there to perform, as was Liz Kitt, famed for her Kitchen Sessions in JB Burke’s pub in Kilkenny’s John Street. Others sang numbers like the Bansha Teddy Bear that Ned penned decades ago. Anecdotes flowed from longtime friends such as Sean Maher, Michael Moroney, Walter Dunphy, Brian Kelly, Martin O’ Shea, Sean McCarthy, Catherine Carroll and Siobhan Moore and the staff of the Kilkenny Observer, at whose office in Friary Street there was always a warm welcome for Ned.
The Mayor Joe Malone cited Ned’s extraordinary life as “a glowing example of how the human spirit can triumph over adversity.”
A lasting legacy…
Ned’s writings and poetry will undoubtedly attract new a generation of readers, and his songs, many of them freely available online, will pluck at many a heartstring.
Students of history will also be drawn to his accounts of events involving family members in the great upheavals of the early 20th century. He participated in the prestigious Kilkenny County Council Decade of Centenaries Oral History Project – which aimed to record the memories of people linked to the Revolutionary Period.
The first interview of the project, aptly enough, was with Ned, who recalled how his uncle Jim Egan, an Anti-Treaty IRA fighter, killed in April 1923 during the Civil War. He spoke also of his mother, Nora, who risked her life as a brave member of Cumann na mBan, his father Ned, who defied the Black and Tans after they wrecked his pub in Dunnammagin, and uncles Páid, Thomas, Peter and Charlie, who were all IRA Volunteers.
Ned summoned up memories of those giants of his childhood with remarkable ease and clarity, and his recollections now form a precious part of the Oral History archive. Future generations will treasure this Blast from the Past.
I had known Ned since his stay in Callan in the early 1980s where, despite visual impairment, he ran his copper etching workshop.
Right now, I suspect that he’s renewing a host of old acquaintances, this time in a world without suffering or illness.
May he find peace beyond this Vale of Tears and may his memory “down here” live on…
