Women’s rights champion who was ignored by friend de Valera in her fight for equal status
Documentary tells how Agnes O’Farrelly blazed a trail
LAST Friday’s referendum on women and care in the home might not have happened if Eamon de Valera had listened to Agnes O’Farrelly when the Constitution was being drawn up – according to the producer of a new documentary on ‘one of the most influential women in 20th century Ireland’.
The Co. Cavan-born O’Farrelly – or Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh in her preferred Irish – is the latest unsung heroine of Irish history to come in for belated recognition, thanks to a TG4 documentary airing this Friday.
Born in 1874, she was the first woman to write a novel in Irish; one of the first female scholars of Celtic studies; the first female Professor of Irish at UCD and a founding member of Cumann na mBan.
The passionate Conradh na Gaeilge (Gaelic League) member spent a lifetime advocating for women in education and sport, founding the prestigious thirdlevel camogie tournament the Ashbourne Cup, and helped spread literacy and keep Irish alive on Inis Meáin and in Donegal.
Maeve McAlister, producer of Uan Uladh: Scéal Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh, said O’Farrelly was ‘very much in the room with the movers and shakers of the day at crucial periods – the men who are household names to us’.
She was friends with the likes of Douglas Hyde, Eoin MacNeill and Eamon de Valera, the latter of whom she canvassed for ‘more equal status for women to be explicitly written into the Constitution’, Ms McAlister told the Irish Mail on Sunday.
‘Perhaps a little bit naively, she thought their relationship was stronger than maybe it was, because her counsel was not taken on by de Valera and it was not included.
‘She ultimately failed in that particular instance, and here we are in 2024 looking at that same part of the Constitution to try to encourage equality again. So I think that she was quite revolutionary in her thinking.’
O’Farrelly had good reason to expect to be listened to by the time the Constitution was being drafted in the 1930s. She had already blazed a trail for women in education and sport and was a cult hero in some rural Gaeltacht areas.
Coming from significantly more wealth than most of the other Catholics living around the family home near Virginia, Co. Cavan, the young O’Farrelly used her privilege to maximise her own education and constantly advocate for others.
‘She also did not marry, so she didn’t have dependants or a household or husband to maintain, as many other women of her age group would have,’ Ms McAlister said. ‘So there’s a combination of things that meant she was able to dedicate herself to broader issues and she very much always had women at the heart of what she did. And she always recognised how she wanted to pull other women up with her.’
Studying at St Mary’s University College in Dublin’s Merrion Square, O’Farrelly was tutored in Irish by the key Gaelic Revival figure, the co-founder of Conradh na Gaeilge and later politician Eoin MacNeill.
It was at MacNeill’s encouragement that she went to Inis Meáin, one of the Aran Islands, to hone her Irish. ‘Inis Meáin became popular with those middle-class Gaelic Leaguers that she would have been part of,’ Ms McAlister explained. ‘They were very much in favour of spending time in these [linguistically] unpolluted areas. But she very much wanted to be involved and to spend time with local people.’
While Inis Meáin is synonymous with revivalist names such as MacNeill, Pádraig Pearse and JM Synge, O’Farrelly left a far more lasting mark on the women of the island.
She set up a branch of Conradh na Gaeilge there for local women to meet, giving them the chance to learn to read and write in the language they used.
And she wrote the travelogue Smaointe Ar Árainn about her summers on the island around the turn of the 20th century.
‘She’s very much held in high regard with the people of Inis Meáin,’ Ms McAlister said.
‘There’s one quite funny little note from our research that she was ingratiating herself with the locals, but she still brought her French cafetière because she wanted good coffee while she was away. That’s a very middleclass thing to do and I’m sure some eyes were rolled, but by all means it seems she was thought of fondly in the area.’
O’Farrelly, who went by the pen name Uan Uladh (lamb of Ulster), made a similar impression on locals around the Ulster College of Irish in Cloughaneely, Co. Donegal, of which she was a founding member and then principal.
‘She loved hosting and was very much seen as the life and soul of the party. She very much enjoyed the company of others and while she didn’t have children of her own, she recognised that education of children was very, very important for the preservation of the language, and that teaching the teachers to teach the kids was one of the crucial ways for Irish to continue to exist and to thrive.’
O’Farrelly, who died at the age of 77 in 1951, was also ‘a big driving force behind’ and former president of the Camogie Association and founded the top thirdlevel education camogie tournament, the Ashbourne Cup.
‘It’s still a very, very important competition for any woman playing in Ireland if they’ve gone through university,’ Ms McAlister said. ‘She recognised that camogie was another way for women to partake in public life and to release them from the shackles of their domestic life. It was a way for them to be visible and put them on a par with men.’
The documentary’s presenter, Clíodhna Ní Chorráin, told the MoS she has been ‘likened a lot to Úna’ while making the programme.
The Co. Armagh woman is also ‘very involved’ in Conradh na Gaeilge and is a tireless activist and campaigner for promotion of
‘Her counsel was not taken on by de Valera’
‘She brought her cafetière to Inis Meáin’
the Irish language. Currently teaching Irish at the University of Ottawa in Canada, she is starting a Master’s in Irish language translation later this year.
‘As I undertake that, I will remember Úna as the first ever female to do a Master’s in Irish,’ she said. ‘I find that I’m now constantly asking myself, if it weren’t for Úna, would I be doing what I’m doing today? Would I be working in the industry I’m working in? Maybe not. She’s definitely a huge inspiration to me and I think we have a lot to thank her for.’
Uan Uladh: Scéal Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh airs this Friday, March 15, at 8pm on TG4.