I did not intend to visit this area of the city but late in the evening I ended up at St. Kieran’s Cemetery and I had a very small camera in my pocket so I took a few photographs even though daylight was fading rapidly.
There are many burial grounds across County Kilkenny some of which are vested in Church bodies and some are in the ownership of Kilkenny County Council. The cemetery featured in my photographs is administered by Kilkenny County Council and it appears to be well maintained.
When I examined an aerial view of Kilkenny back in 2017 this looked like a huge carpark, the type that is used to store cars before delivery to dealers, but as it looked odd I decided to visit only to discover that it is a modern graveyard.
Unless you have a family connection there is no real reason to visit this cemetery, other than to kneel and say a prayer. It does not feature any historic graves and one does not learn much from viewing the headstones.
The cemetery is enclosed within a very low stone wall enclosure which provides no obvious security against anti-social activity which is surprising because my reading of local publications indicate that anti-social activity is an issue in the area. There is a large iron gate which serves no real purpose but as I already noted it is well looked after.
Apparently it is a custom to leave a glass or bottle of Guinness at Brendan Behan’s grave on his birthday which makes more sense than leaving a bunch of flowers.
Brendan Francis Aidan Behan (christened Francis Behan) 9 February 1923 – 20 March 1964) was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist and playwright who wrote in both English and Irish. He was named by Irish Central as one of the greatest Irish writers of all time.
Behan found fame difficult. He had long been a heavy drinker (describing himself, on one occasion, as “a drinker with a writing problem” and claiming “I only drink on two occasions—when I’m thirsty and when I’m not”) and developed diabetes in the early 1950s but this was not diagnosed until 1956. As his fame grew, so too did his alcohol addiction. This combination resulted in a series of famously drunken public appearances, on both stage and television. Behan’s favourite drink was champagne and sherry.
Behan had married Beatrice Salkeld (daughter of the painter Cecil Salkeld) in 1955. A daughter, Blanaid, was born in 1963. Love, however, was not enough to bring Behan back from his alcoholic abyss. By early March 1964, the end was in sight. Collapsing at the Harbour Lights bar, he was transferred to the Meath Hospital in central Dublin, where he died, aged 41.
Behan had a one-night stand in 1961 with Valerie Danby-Smith, who was Ernest Hemingway’s personal assistant and later married his son, Dr. Gregory Hemingway. Nine months later, Valerie gave birth to a son she named Brendan. Brendan Behan died two years later, having never met his son.
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