Tour de Force meets Donnelly's Arm
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| Barry, Liliane and Ingrid. |
Two women driving around Ireland in a restored 1960s Renault 4L, hosting a series of artistic and cultural events, art installations, performances, talks and live broadcasts under the banner of Tour de Force, came up close and personal to the mummified right arm of 19th-century pugilist Dan Donnelly yesterday, writes Brian Byrne. The history of the arm will be part of a talk on sport, medicine and grave-robbing during that period, by historian Barry Kehoe in Muine Bheag Arts next Wednesday, 16 July.
Barry Kehoe was with artist Liliane Puthod and writer Ingrid Lyons to view the arm, made available by appointment with Josephine Byrne. The Byrne family have been custodians of the famous sporting relic since 1953, when it was displayed in The Hideout following the An Tostal re-enactment of the fighter's famous 1815 contest with English champion George Cooper on the Curragh. It remained on display until 1996 when the family sold the pub.
The historian showed Josephine an interpretive page based on a magnetometry scan of the Bully's Acre burial ground at Kilmainham's Royal Hospital. It was shortly after Donnelly was buried there that his grave was robbed and the body sold to a Dublin surgeon named Hall for anatomical research. Hall retained the arm after being forced to return the body to Donnelly's angry fans and it subsequently was used for medical teaching before eventually taking a tortuous and lengthy route to The Hideout, via Edinburgh, London and Belfast.
Barry Kehoe noted that while many human remains have been found in the Bully's Acre — once the main burial ground for Dublin city — there's no trace of an individual grave related to Donnelly. "I understand that there was a wooden memorial erected to him at the time of his burial, but that's no longer around."
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| Viewing Dan Donnelly memorabilia. |
The Renault 4L car which is carrying the Tour de Force duo will be making 'pit stops' in 11 counties around the island of Ireland from yesterday until the 23rd of August. Liliane Puthod, who has lived in Ireland for the past 12 years, told the Diary how she decided to refurbish the car, belonging to her father, which had languished in a shed for as long as she could remember. Last year, she and Ingrid drove it from France to Dublin, via Rosslare, which had been an assembly centre for Renault cars, including the 4L model, between 1965 and 1986. At the start of their current trip in Dublin yesterday, they were presented with some examples of his work by Ireland's last remaining tin-smith, James Collins, including a specially made tin-smith's lamp as a talisman of good luck for their journey.
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| Tin-smith James Collins's work. |
During their Kilcullen stop, Ingrid Lyons showed her fiddle, which is of a similar age to Donnelly's Arm, and which she will be playing at a number of the Tour de Force events.
