Many of the great, most of the good were there. They had come to celebrate, not so much commemorate, a comprehensive life rounded by Spiked, as producer Brian De Salvo told them. Spiked: Church-State Intrigue and The Rose Tattoo was the book she had written with Gerard Whelan. It was published while Carolyn Swift lay "eyeballing death" in the hospice at Harold's Cross Dublin.
Last Saturday, he said, she sailed into her rest, where, as with namesake Jonathan Swift, "savage indignation cannot lacerate her breast. Imitate her if you dare world-besotted traveller. She loved human liberty."
As Cathal Simpson told the overflow congregation at a memorial service in St Bartholomew's Church in Dublin's Ballsbridge, "she did not pay lip service to the problems of the world". She was a member of Amnesty International, as well as "a lifelong socialist and member of the Labour Party", the latter two loyalties no longer necessarily twinned, he indicated.
He read from the Sermon on the Mount, words of another socialist, as he put it.
RTÉ producer John Lynch remembered "the professional child" that was her spirit. Her commitment to unknown, unrecognised talent, her editing of Brendan Behan's The Quare Fellow, her work for the Irish Society of Paywrights and on the OZ Whitehead play award, her children's stories, her writing on Wanderly Wagon and The Magic Wish, from which a resurrected Judge and " a sort of Dublin camp" Mr Crow gave their first reading in a church.
Young Davy Whelan apologised for bankrupting her at Monopoly and said goodbye on behalf of all the child friends she had met on visits to schools.
Her daughter, Deirdre Cullen, taught the attendance how to chant a prayer of her different faith for Carolyn's eternal happiness. Kate Binchy read from Isaiah, Joanna Banks read from Ninette de Valois, and Cormac de Barra played the Coolin, Ag Críost An Síol, Carolan's Farewell on a harp. With those final words of The Lord's Prayer (Anglican tradition) ". . . for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory," the Rev William Ritchie ended the service.
In the yellowing autumn light outside, familar faces chatted of what was past and passing, damp oak leaves underfoot. Among them her daughters Maureen and Deirdre, the Minister for Arts, Tourism and Sport, Mr O'Donoghue, with his adviser Fiaich Mac Conghail.
Also present was the former minister at that Department, Mr Michael D. Higgins.
He regretted there was no State apology forthcoming for the way she and her husband, Alan Simpson, had been treated over the closure of The Rose Tattoo in 1957.
Director general Mr Bob Collins and director of television Mr Cathal Goan represented RTÉ.
Managing editor Mr Gerry Smyth represented The Irish Times, where Carolyn Swift had been dance correspondent until last year.
