 The vault containing the remains of Michael Bodkin (alias Michael Furey in the short story The Dead by James Joyce) in Rahoon Cemetery in Galway. Galway-born Nora Barnacle became the muse and wife of the famous novelist and short story writer James Joyce (1882-1941), and one of the most influential women in English literature. She was the inspiration for many of the women characters in his short stories, one play, and novels, including Gretta Conroy in The Dead, Bertha Rowan in Exiles, Molly Bloom in Ulysses, and Anna Livia Plurabelle in Finnigans Wake. There are two biographies of Nora, one entitled Nora Barnacle Joyce: A Portrait by Pádraic Ó Laoi in 1982 and Nora : the Real Life of Molly Bloom Nora Barnacle was born in the maternity ward of Galway Workhouse on 21 or 22 March 1884, the daughter of Thomas and Annie, née Healy. Her father was a baker and her mother supplemented the family income with her work from home as a dressmaker. Nora was one of eight children, one of whom died in infancy. One sister stayed in Galway and cared for her mother in old age, two siblings emigrated to the USA and three to England. Nora was to spend her adult life in continental Europe. Following their parents separation, as a consequence of Thomas’s heavy drinking, the children lived with relatives in a number of residences around the city. After spending some time with her Healy grandmother in Nuns’ Island, Nora went to live with her mother and uncle, Tom Healy, at number 4 (now number 8) Bowling Green in Galway. This two-roomed, two-storey, terraced house was purchased in 1987 by Mary and Sheila Gallagher and turned into the Nora Barnacle Museum. Nora went to the Mercy Convent Primary School until she was 13, and later worked as a porteress in the Presentation Convent in Galway. Nora had three boyfriends in Galway. The first was Michael Feeney, who died as a youth in 1897 from pneumonia. The second, and most important, was Michael (Sonny) Bodkin, who lived at number 2 Prospect Hill. His family’s shop is now part of Richardson’s Public House at the corner of Eyre Square. There are plaques inside and outside recalling the literary connection with Nora and James Joyce. Michael Bodkin developed tuberculosis and is said to have got out of his sick bed on a wet night and serenaded Nora beneath her window in Nuns’ Island. He died shortly afterwards in 1900 and was buried in the family vault in Rahoon Cemetery in the city. The third boyfriend was Willie Mulvagh, a Protestant. It is said that she did not love him, but because of her uncle’s disapproval, she continued the relationship. One night her uncle found her with Mulvagh and beat her. Shortly afterwards in 1903, Nora left Galway and went to Dublin. She secured employment as a chambermaid in Finn’s Hotel on Leinster Street, beside Nassau Street. On 10 June 1904, she met Dublin-born James Joyce while walking down Nassau Street and they arranged to meet again on 14 June, but Nora did not turn up. Joyce wrote to her asking to meet her on 16 June. She turned up on this occasion, and their first date on 16 June 1904 changed their lives forever. That date was chosen by Joyce as the setting for his famous novel Ulysses and it is now immortalised as Bloomsday. The 16 June 1904 rendezvous began a relationship that lasted for 36 years, until James’s death on January 13, 1941. Nora eloped with James Joyce on 18 October 1904 to continental Europe. They lived in various places like Trieste to 1915, Zurich during the First World War, the inter-war years in Paris, where Ulysses was published in 1922, and finally after the publication of Finnegans Wake in 1939, they moved back to back to Zurich again on 17 December 1940. She had a difficult life with James Joyce and they lived in constant poverty. Nora lived on in Zurich until her death on 10 April 1951. James Joyce was always impressed by Nora’s stories. Her love story about Michael Bodkin became the influence one of his short stories, The Dead. He visited Galway in 1909 and in 1912. After visiting the grave of Michael Bodkin in Rahoon Cemetery with Nora, he wrote a poem, ‘She Weeps over Rahoon’, in which he tried to imagine how she felt at the grave of her former lover. Joyce based the fictional character of Gretta Conroy on Nora and that of Michael Furey on Michael Bodkin in The Dead, the last and best short story in Dubliners, first published in 1914. In fact, it is generally regarded as one of the best short stories in English literature. It was made into a film, The Dead, directed by John Huston, shortly before his own death in 1987. After hearing ‘The Lass of Aughrim’ sung at a Christmas party in Dublin on the feast of the Epiphany, a song she regularly head her mother sing, Gretta Conroy remembers Michael Furey and tells her husband the story of the Galway boy’s love for her . Her husband, Gabriel Conroy, decides to set out on his own ‘journey westward’ to the land of Gretta and her dead lover. Joyce remembered the graveyard where Michael lay buried in the last paragraph of The Dead. The story of Michael Bodkin was also influential in James Joyce’s only published play, Exiles (1918). In April 2012, the words of that beautiful poem were recorded on a plaque inside the gate of Rahoon Cemetery. She Weeps Over Rahoon By James Joyce Rain on Rahoon falls softly, softly falling, Where my dark lover lies. Sad is his voice that calls me, sadly calling, At grey moonrise. Love, hear thou How soft, how sad his voice is ever calling, Ever unanswered, and the dark rain falling, Then as now. Dark too our hearts, O love, shall lie and cold And his sad heart has lain Under the moongrey nettles, the black mould And muttering rain. Bernard O'Hara's latest book entitled Killasser: Heritage of a Mayo Parish is now on sale in the USA and UK as a paperback book at amazon.com, amazon.co.uk or Barnes and Noble It is also available as an eBook from the Apple iBookstore (for reading on iPad and iPhone), from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (Kindle & Kindle Fire) and from Barnesandnoble.com (Nook tablet and eReader). An earlier publication, a concise biography of Michael Davitt, entitled Davitt by Bernard O’Hara published in 2006 by Mayo County Council , is now available as Davitt: Irish Patriot and Father of the Land League by Bernard O’Hara, which was published in the USA by Tudor Gate Press (www.tudorgatepress.com) and is available from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. It can be obtained as an eBook from the Apple iBookstore (for reading on iPad and iPhone), from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (Kindle & Kindle Fire) and from Barnesandnoble.com (Nook tablet and eReader). |