Rev Godfrey Massey on Bruff during the Famine Years

RevGordon Massey (1803-1852) was Church of Ireland Vicar in Bruff. Click here to read his account of Bruff during the Famine time.

THE FAIRY RATH OF BRUFF

THE FAIRY RATH OF BRUFF. BY BRIAN O'FLAHERTY.
THIS song and air take their name from a celebrated fairy fort situated at the town of Bruff, in the county of Limerick, and like many others in this collection, would have probably been lost, or left in the " world of spirits," had it not fallen into our hands.
Brian O'Flaherty, the author, was an humble peasant, a mason by trade, and, for aught we know, he may have been "master-builder" to his friends—the fairies and "good people" of Bruff. He was a native of Bruff, or its vicinity, but we cannot discover when he lived. It appears he was not numbered among the literary portion of the bards of his day, but was considered rather presumptive in assuming the name, and for such conduct he was cited, prosecuted, and expelled, at one of the Bardic Sessions then held in Munster.
However, Brian was not so easily got rid of, and in order to gain favour, he mustered up all the natural talent he was possessed of, and composed the present song.
Bruff is situated on the banks of the river Camog (Anglicised " The Morning Star"), and lies about fifteen miles from Limerick. Tradition informs us that the banks of this river up to the town were formerly laid out with beautiful gardens, where all species of plants and trees peculiar to this country grew, and was much admired for being the resort of birds of all kinds, from the melody of whose notes it gained the appellation of Binn (melodious).
At the west side of the town there is a little eminence called Lios (Fort), and there is also a castle, or Brogha, which is supposed to have been built by the De Lacy family shortly after the English invasion.
The birds carolled songs of delight,
And the flowers bloomed bright on my path,
As I stood all alone on the height
Where rises Bruff's old Fairy Rath.
Before me, unstirred by the wind,
That beautiful lake lay outspread,
Whose waters give sight to the Blind,
And would almost awaken the Dead !

The new mural on the Hospital Road Junction

Click on picture to enlarge

JFK's Bruff connections

Thomas Fitzgerald

Thomas Fitzgerald was JFK�s great grandfather on his mother�s side. He was reportedly born in Bruff, County Limerick in 1823. He was a farmer and so probably lived in a rural part of the Parish or Townland of Bruff, but the exact location is unknown.

The map on the left shows the town of Bruff, which lies at the heart of the Parish and Townland of the same name, as it was in 1840.

Although the Fitzgerald farm was affected by the Great famine, Thomas managed to keep it going until finally, in 1854, he was forced to leave Ireland and headed for the U.S. Like the Kennedy�s he also settled in Boston, Massachusetts and in 1857 married Rosanna Cox who had arrived in Boston from County Cavan, Ireland. One of their children, John Francis Fitzgerald (Honey Fitz), JFK�s grandfather, eventually became Mayor of Boston.

Postcard

North View from St. Mary's Convent, Bruff, County Limerick,showing Monastery
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Postcard "Main Street, Bruff

Click on Picture to enlarge. Postcard, b/w, Photo J.J. Hurley "Main Street, Bruff, Co. Limerick. Posted 1910

Postcard, b/w, matt; wide white margin across the bottom in which, printed in red, is the title "Main Street, Bruff, Co. Limerick." at left, with "Photo. by J.J. Hurley." at right. View along a row of six or seven shops; in centre foreground an open top small car is parked against the kerb with two men sat in it looking at the camera; the car is outside Healy's shop and outside it three boys hold bicycles, while a boy a girl and a bearded man look on; an by an upper window of the shop is a sign for Ariel cycles and a partially legible sign in a downstairs window shows that the shop sells bicycles; it also sells pitchforks and shovels bundles of which lean against the window, further down the street two women look out of a shop doorway and further again are some barrels on the pavement. Reverse printed in brown; at centre top "Post Card, with a short underlining and short vertical line which has been continued in ink to the base of the card by the sender; to left of centre "This Space for Correspondence only; to right "Address only here"; box for stamp at top right largely obscured by stamp. Red one penny postage revenue stamp of Edward VII . Circular black cancellation "Kilmallock/ 10 PM/ DE 17/ 10" with a small part of the same stamp repeated below. Addressed to Mr. John Carroll, c/o Mrs J.G. Wilson, 304 West 144th St., New York City, America, from M. Hogan Holycross 17.12.10, wishing a happy Christmas. Pencil dealer's marks "Lim" at top left, "L. Post '89" above address, and "£20 at bottom to right of centre.

CELEBRATION OF 150 YEARS OF THE FCJ SISTERS IN BRUFF Wednesday 1 February 2006 It is nearly two centuries now since the young widow Marie Madeleine Victoire d’Houet distinctly heard a voice from the crucifix saying, “I thirst”. A long and complex road led from that moment to the foundation of houses of her congregation here in Limerick. By a happy coincidence, our patron saint, took the name, Ita, because it means ‘thirst’. It was an expression of her recognition that our thirst for God is the most fundamental thing in our lives. Intense thirst is the most excruciating need that we can experience. We speak about a burning thirst, a raging thirst. Madame d’Houet, like St Ita, realised that her first response to the thirst of God’s Son would be that she should long for him; she was called to become the companion of Jesus – to try to live always in his presence and to try always to do his will. She was inspired by recognising God’s thirst for us shown in the death of his Son; Saint Ita was inspired by the thought of our thirst for God. But the fact is that these two things go together. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says about prayer: “Whether we realise it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him”. Exactly the same can be said about religious life. Today we celebrate the feast of St Brigid who was one of the first to live the religious life in Ireland. Tomorrow, we celebrate the Presentation of the Lord, when we particularly reflect on the role of religious in the Church. One can also say about education, about retreats and about missions about the whole of what Madame d’Houet undertook that they are about the encounter of God’s thirst with ours so that we may thirst for God. Today we celebrate a hundred and fifty years during which her legacy has lived here in Bruff since the time Dean Cussen persuaded her to send some of her sisters here. And it is as important as ever that what those pioneers began should be continue to be filled with the awareness that it is founded on the meeting of God’s thirst with ours. Religious life, lived in their own times by Ita and Marie Madeleine, is founded on that encounter. Pope John Paul said that religious, “live ‘for’ God and ‘from’ God”, that is why they can be signs and witnesses of God’s love which unites people to one another. As the number of religious declines it is more important than ever that we recognise that it is on this encounter of God’s thirst for us with our thirst for God that the educational tradition of this school is founded. The young people of today, and all of us, live in a world which is noisier and busier than ever before. It may be easy to imagine that our lives are fuller than the lives of those who went before us – endless activity, information, travel, communications – always in contact through mobile phones and email. But the truth may be that our lives are actually emptier. The thirst for God can become just a hidden, unexpressed pain – the fear that life is pointless, the guilt of seeing the starvation and pain of others while we sit in a comfortable armchair, the fear of natural disasters or terrorism, an awareness of the fragility of the affluence that we have come to depend on, a sense of loneliness, the question ‘is that all that there is to life?’. We risk not understanding ourselves because we do not open our minds to the realisation that our lives are a thirst for God. Our thirst is no less than it ever was, but we may be afraid to look at it. Pope John Paul once said that we are afraid of being silent for fear of meeting ourselves and meeting the emptiness that asks about meaning. We badly need to learn that our thirst is thirst for a God who loves us, generously, mercifully, personally, as Pope Benedict put it in his first encyclical, “with all the passion of a true love”. That is why we can look at life with hope: God is love. Pope Benedict said on the day of the solemn inauguration of his pontificate: “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.” That is the purpose of Catholic education, to lead people to an understanding of themselves and of their lives in the light of the most fundamental truth about us. We come to know our true selves when we understand that we are made by love and for love, that we live in the context of God’s longing for us which arouses our longing for God. That is the faith that gives unshakeable hope. Nothing can overcome the love of God that invites us and urges us on. God has, as the reading puts it, shown us his mercy and his boundless goodness. God’s loving presence saves us, not messengers or angels but the personal presence of God in our lives: “I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord” ( Rom 8:38,39 ) . Tonight we give thanks for all the ways in which that has been done here in Bruff for 150 years. No doubt there will be memories this evening of people who played very important parts in the history of the Faithful Companions of Jesus here in Bruff. Like St Paul, we should never cease to give thanks for all the graces that have been received here and the ways that so many people have been enriched, especially by their teachers. Tonight we pray in particular for all of those sisters, pupils, parents, teachers and all who were part of the life of the school, who have gone before us to meet our loving God. It is right that we celebrate this occasion in the context of the Eucharist. Here we are in the presence of Jesus who, on the Cross, fully revealed, God’s thirst for us. Here we come to express our thirst for God, to become more fully aware of our longing and to be touched by the promise that we will one day be at home with God. We pray that, like Mary, we will be blessed because we believe that the promise made to us by the Lord will be fulfilled, and because we have tried to share that promise, and our thirst for its fulfilment, with others. CCC 2560. Vita Consecrata, 41. Cf. Orientale Lumen, 16. Deus Caritas Est, 10. +Donal Murray Bishop of Limerick © Copyright Diocese of Limerick 1991-2007 - Disclaimer
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