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NICHOLAS (NICKY) FURLONG FRSAI AUTHOR, HISTORIAN, NEWSPAPER COLUMNIST, JOURNALIST, BROADCASTER, PLAYWRIGHT AND WIT, 1929 – 2022 We are very grateful to journalist, publisher and editor, Michael Freeman, for allowing us to share this piece he wrote. The Wexford flag of Purple and Gold was at half-mast on the flagpole outside St Martin’s Catholic Church at Piercestown on Friday morning. There were comings and goings at the school and nearby St Martin’s GAA Club grounds and at Londis supermarket in the village. Modest cars and farmers’ jeeps lined up side by side outside the church and along the road leading to the village until there were no spaces left. The sky was blue and the sun was shining. It was a beautiful balmy morning at 11, just as Nicky would have planned it and wanted it. Inside the church about 250 people, most of them the pillars, the cognoscenti and literati and glitterati of County Wexford, gathered. The celebrant, Fr Aodhán Marken, spoke of Nicky’s life and times and that of his late wife Mairead née Breslin who predeceased him by seven years. They were like peas in a pod, he said. The sun streamed in through the stained-glass windows onto Nicky’s coffin on the altar bedecked with beautiful fresh flowers and symbols of his life, and on a lectern at the head of the coffin lay a copy of his latest book, The Rebels’ Priest, a biography of his hero Fr John Murphy, the leader of the 1798 Rebellion in Co. Wexford.
The late Nicholas (Nicky) Furlong in his study at Drinagh Lodge, Wexford town. UCD, and his late wife Mairead’s nieces, Martina Kealy, Castleknock, Paula Panczenko who flew in from Wisconsin, USA, for his funeral, nephew Justin McCarthy, the film and television producer from Connemara, Galway, and Dr Jim Larkin-Breslin from Dublin, nephew. NEAR THE 1798 PIKEMEN MONUMENT AT BARNTOWN
In faraway Vancouver, Canada, his only sister Ina, aged 91, his nephew Patrick, and nieces Blaithín and Trudy, watched and participated in an online livestream of his funeral mass on a webcam from the church.
Nicky Furlong, Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, author, historian, newspaper columnist, journalist, broadcaster, tour guide, playwright, and wit of Drinagh Lodge, Wexford town, had passed away peacefully with a smile on his face with a neighbour saying The Rosary at his bedside in Knockeen Nursing Home, across the way from the monument to the five 1798 Pikemen, at Barntown, on the morning of Monday 21st March. It was just three weeks after his 93rd birthday and just after the Spring Equinox.
In the front pews at Piercestown Church, sat his cousins Patrick and Sean Kinsella, and first cousin Theresa McDonald, relations Dillons, his sisterin-law-in-law, Dr Ann Breslin, retired
He had lived a rich life and he left an enormous legacy of memories, hundreds of papers, radio and television interviews, nineteen books and six stage productions. He defined and
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promoted County Wexford, its history, heritage, culture and sport to the county, to the nation and to the world for most of sixty years. The People Newspapers, the Sunday Independent, Slaney News and South East Radio paid tribute to him for his contribution. Heavenly uplifting song and music in the church, where Nicky was once singer and organist, were provided by Tomás Whelan, soloist, Anthony Nolan on trumpet and Ger Lawlor of Wexford Festival Opera on organ. They performed Hail Queen of Heaven, Panis Angelicus, Abide with Me, How Great Thou Art, and as a trumpet solo, Hail Glorious St Patrick. AT HIS FUNERAL MASS Among those present at his funeral mass at Piercestown Church were: Celestine Murphy, historian and genealogist, retired senior librarian, Wexford County Library, who was consultant to him for his book 'The Rebels’ Priest – the Battles of Fr. John Murphy of Bolavogue, 1753-1798'; Bernard Browne, of Old Ross and Environmental Protection Agency, fellow historian and friend; Willie Murphy, scientist, formerly Johnstown Castle, friend, Pro-
