Aisling Bea stunned to find family links to 1916 rebellion on her dad's side
can't bea-lieve it |
'To discover my great grandfather was a leader in the Easter Rising has blown my mind'
Aisling (41), who grew up in Co Kildare and is now an award-winning actor, screenwriter and comedian, traces her family's roots for the popular British TV show and zones in on both the paternal and maternal sides of her family.
Now living in London with her producer husband Jack Freeman and their nine-month-old daughter, Aisling returned while heavily pregnant to Ireland to get help from her mother and aunt to trace her family tree.
She reveals her real name is Aisling O'Sullivan and says she gets her stage name 'Bea' from her father called Brian, who tragically died when she was just three years old.
'For my dad's side of the family. I know a lot of anecdotes and things swirling around the sort of War of Independence and the Irish fight for freedom and self-determination, so I'd love to know more about that time in history and their place in it,' she says.
Aisling dug out old photos for her episode of the show
Aisling remembers going on family trips to her dad's home area of Ballyferriter in Co Kerry.
It was there she learns that her paternal great grandfather Pádraic Ó Briain and his wife Ellen, had three young children, Sean, Maureen and Aisling's grandmother Eileen.
Pádraic, who also used the name Paddy O'Brien, was a schoolteacher, but it also emerges he was the Secretary of the Irish Volunteers in Ballyferriter at the time of the outbreak of World War I.
At the time of the Easter Rising in Kerry in 1916, 300 men would gather at the Volunteers' headquarters in Tralee to take part in the rebellion, including what has been documented as 'men from Ballyferriter and Dingle, led by Paddy O'Brien, a national school teacher'.
Historian Dr Daithí Ó Corráin has more information for Aisling.
'They expected to take part in an armed rebellion against British rule in Ireland and Pádraic is right at the heart of what is the most pivotal moment in 20th century Irish history,' he explains.
Aisling was pregnant at the time the show was made
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'Pádraic and his men march through the night in terrible weather conditions 40 miles over a mountain pass [Conor Pass] to be on time on Easter Sunday, awaiting instructions.'
Aisling is flabbergasted.
'I can't even imagine what it must have been like for those men marching all the way to Tralee, 40 miles at night, getting ready to stage a revolution against one of the biggest powers in the world at the time.
'There were probably so many thoughts in my great grandfather's head, but a deep belief in what he was going to be potentially fighting for.
'I'd be someone I suppose that would try and stand by what I believe in and that's very important to me, but this is a lot more life or death. It brings chills without a doubt,' she says.
The Kerry Volunteers had been waiting for a German ship, the Aud, to offload 20,000 rifles and one million rounds of ammunition. But miscommunication led to the ship's discovery by the British.
The guns and ammunition were meant to arm volunteers from not only Kerry, but also Limerick, Clare and Galway, leading to the abandonment of the Easter Rising in that region, with just Dublin staging the rebellion the following Monday.
Aisling discovered that Pádraic's wife, Ellen, her great granny, died of TB at the age of 33 in 1920, leaving her great granddad to bring up three small children.
She also finds out that Pádraic was a member of the Gaelic League, which promoted Irish language and culture, and was a passionate Gaelgeoir right until he died at the age of 78 in 1965.
It also emerges that Ellen's mother, Aine O'Donoghue, was the first teacher on the Blasket Islands, when at the age of 19 she travelled there in 1864 to teach English.
'When I was at school and I used to study the 1916 Rising, you think of it as a massive part of our Irish history, and that eventually everyone was involved,' she reflects. Read more
'But really a very small amount of people were involved. Most people weren't revolutionary, most people weren't about to give up their lives for the cause, but there were also a small amount of people like my great grandfather, who were absolutely willing to take up arms and fight for what they believed in and lost their lives for what they believed in. He was part of the Easter Rising, even if they didn't make it to that Monday.
'And it does make me really proud that he was part of that small group of people.
'I wish I could go back in time and tell him that your great granddaughter is not only going to love the language but is going to come back to where he is from with a British crew for a British TV show to study his life and his influence while she's pregnant with a little girl, whom I'm calling Saoirse, which is the Irish for freedom, in our language, and the idea of that genetic line has blown my mind a lot.'
The comedian also tracks down her maternal side. Her mother Helen's maiden name is Moloney.
'My mother's side of the family are this big gang of very vocal alpha females, and that's probably the bit of my upbringing I've probably brought into every part of my work and life,' she says.
'On my mother's side, everything revolved around my grandmother, in particular. My grandmother was this sort of formidable pillar.
"I remember Mammy being like 'oh she was one of the first women in the town to wear trousers', and then my mother was one of the first female professional flat-race jockeys of her era, and those small moments of like shunning the idea of what people think you should do — I'd love to know going back where did that come from.'
She travels to Co Limerick, and traces her maternal lineage back to pre-Famine times, where she discovers that her great, great granddad James Sheehy was married to Martha Fitzgerald.
Local historian Dr Richard McMahon reveals that in February 1841 the family home was broken into by a gang, who looted the house for guns and seriously injured James, leading to his death from the wounds inflicted on him.
Martha was left to bring up five kids on the family farm of 40 acres, which they rented at the time.
'Martha has a fight on her hands now, she has lost her husband, she has five children, most farm holders are male, most farmers are male, so if you're a widow it's a very difficult situation,' stresses Dr McMahon.
When the Famine started in 1845 not only did a million people starve and a million emigrate, but tenants were thrown off their farms as they could not pay rent. Aisling is taken aback to learn Martha's farm holding increased to 115 acres.
'That is hard to hear, I'll be honest, because having spent all of our childhood learning about the Irish famine in our history classes, you feel like anyone who, for many terrible situations, profited... It does make me feel a little bit shameful to be honest,' she admits.
But Dr McMahon is more reassuring.
'It's a difficult one. There's elements of Martha which I think are very admirable, like her husband has been killed, she herself has gone through traumatic experience, so there's that sense of her as a fighter,' he tells her.
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