Bernadette Burns

The Uncertainty of History - remembering Eileen Quinn

Ist November 1920 (Monday)
My sister, Eileen Quinn was shot at Corker by the Black and Tans at 3pm, she died at 10pm. She was 25 years old.

(quote from diary of my grandmother, Tessie Burns)

Memories are like reflections through a window, sometimes sharply drawn, and then within seconds hazy and unclear. There is no one factual truth or telling of an event or story, there are many strands, versions, and viewpoints of any event that has happened. I am fascinated by family stories, the stories we are told and the stories we seek out, those which seem to be buried deeply, and will always remain partially hidden. One such story that enthrals me is the story of my grand aunt, my grandmothers younger sister, Eileen Quinn.

The extraordinary story of Eileen’s death was always known in our family, but it always seemed to us, as children, to be ancient history. At three o’clock in the afternoon of 1st November 1920, Eileen was standing at her front garden gate holding her infant daughter Tessie, and was with her two young children Alfie and Eva. She was seven months pregnant. Two trucks drove along with ‘Auxiliaries’ in them. Someone from the first truck shot Eileen and they continued driving. She was brought into her home, and survived to tell the story to a few visitors. It took a long time for the doctor and priest to get there, and she slowly bled to death, dying after ten o’ clock that night.

There was an inquest about this case, and it was deemed to be death by misadventure. This tragic event had a huge impact on our family, on many people that I knew and on the wider community. William Henry tells the story of this event in his book Blood for Blood. W.B. Yeats references the event in at least two poems, Reprisal and Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen. Lady Gregory refers to it in The Kiltartan Books.

Although I am a painter, I have been working in recent times in a more multidisciplinary way; working with video and photography, and making sculptural objects. I am interested in memory, in the transience of our lives, of events, of family histories and stories. This body of work is about memory and the importance of remembering, with this event and my Grandmother’s diary, at its centre. It is important to me to exhibit this work in 2020, the 100th anniversary of the shooting, and initially in Galway, as it is a Galway story.

Catalogue essay by Siún Hanrahan for The Uncertainty of History: remembering Eileen Quinn

A small painting in which an elegant, beautifully wrought sofa sits in front of a window amid a swirl of soft cloud and text – a moment of piercing clarity within a dreamscape – offers a starting point from which to negotiate the complex currents of ‘The Uncertainty of History’. read more