Peacefully she died. The last of Kevin Barry's siblings, the widow of The O'Rahilly, Elgin was born on November 13th, 1903 and died on October 10th, 1997. As a child she had strikingly good looks, which did not desert her. She also was a girl of considerable courage, a quality manifested in the part she played in an attempt to rescue her brother from Mountjoy Jail in October 1920.
Elgin's eldest sister Kitby, the dominant personality in a family of seven strong people, reluctantly agreed to play her part in an attempt to storm the prison. She was told to bring with her "one girl who could be relied on for courage and initiative". She chose Elgin, who was 16. Their task was to present themselves at the gate at a given time and "to tackle the two Auxiliaries [guarding Kevin] and prevent them from shooting Kevin before the entry to the boardroom of the rescue party". (The quotations are from Kitby's testimony to the Bureau of Military History.)
The rescue went awry, and the Barry girls took the tram home to Fleet Street. They were coming down North Frederick Street when Elgin began to cry, "silently and hopelessly", her sister says. She had been bright and lively all through the visit and was able to postpone her reaction until then. Kitby let her weep. "Even in those days," she says, "the psychological value of tears after shock was well known".
Elgin then was at school at the Loreto Convent on St Stephen's Green, where her four sisters also were educated. She joined Cumann na mBan and was imprisoned in the North Dublin Union, where she went on hunger strike for 28 days during the Civil War. As a family, the Barrys kept the pure republican flame alight long after others who had fought for independence adapted to shifting circumstances in the new State.
In the 1920s, Elgin spent some time in the United States, staying principally with the veteran republican and book publisher Connie Neenan. In Dublin, she worked as a secretary and in 1935 married the O'Rahilly, Richard by name and Mac by usage. Their three-month honeymoon was spent driving across America.
Mac was a barrister-at-law and a quirky student of current affairs. When Sean MacBride formed Clann na Poblachta in 1946, he became its treasurer, and later he was an active member of the Irish section of Amnesty International. Elgin and Mac had four children, Michael (now The O'Rahilly, but not inclined to use the title); Ann, Ruth (Sweetman) and Celie. Elgin was a person of regal bearing who was not, apart from that early tram ride, disposed to cry; so I shall not weep now but just wish her leaba i measc na naomh.
D.O'D.