Kathleen Gaul, née Furlong

My mother, Kathleen Gaul, née Furlong, always known to her six children simply as Mam, passed away on 21st April 2020, aged 91 years. She is laid to rest at Yew Tree Cemetery on Wednesday 6th May 2020.

She was a regular at the Irish Centre, Mount Pleasant, first attending in about 1970, and our current home in Boundary Lane, until very recently. She had a life-long passion for Irish dancing and she loved Irish music.

She did not read a lot apart from papers, the Liverpool Echo, the Catholic Pictorial and the Irish post in particular, and she did not write much either. But when I was going through her personal effects last week I found these words in her hand. They were written, somewhat incongruously, on the back of a London underground map, probably torn from her diary but I do not know what year, and they must have made a profound effect on her. In writing them out, I suspect she was saying: this is exactly how I feel. She was, every day of her life, conscious of the Irish legacy that had been bequeathed to her. This is what she wrote. I do not know the source:

Everyone who’s Irish shares a noble legacy

Of hope, hard work and righteousness

Of trust and honesty.

A steadfast love of family,

A faith that’s been their guide,

No wonder being Irish

Is a constant source of pride.

Kathleen Gaul, of Liverpool, Wexford and Down, rest in peace. God save Ireland.

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