Kilkeary Graveyard is situated five kilometres south east of Nenagh. There are the foundations of a medieval church within its grounds and is said to have taken its name from St.Cera/Kera. Little is known of this saint but her death is recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters as January 5th 679AD. She was believed to have formed a religious community in this area. Most of the graves date to the 18th and 19th centuries. One of the most striking monuments is an obelisk erected to William Parker Carroll who fought in many military campaigns against Napoleon, it is believed to be a replica of the Wellington Monument in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. The Ormond Historical Society recorded the gravestones at Kilkeary in 1981 and mentioned the grave of a Mary Feely who they state was possibly the inspiration for a poem called ‘The Dying Girl’ written by Richard Dalton Williams.  Williams grew up nearby in Toomevara and he wrote the poem about a young girl dying from consumption an illness that would take him later in life. Mary Feely was 20 at the time of her death in 1845.  Williams went to America in 1851 after he had been convicted and was due to be transported (but escaped) due to establishing the Irish Tribune (an Irish Republican Paper). I have included the first and last verse of the poem below.

“From a Munster vale they brought her.
From the pure and balmy air;
An Ormond peasant’s daughter,
With blue eyes and Golden hair-
They brought her to the city,
And she faded slowly there
Consumption has no pity
For blue eyes and golden hair.

Before the sun had risen
Thro’ the lark-loved morning air,
Her young soul left its prison,
Undefiled by sin or care.
I stood beside the couch in tears
Where pale and calm she slept,
And tho’ I’ve gazed on death for years.
I blush not that I wept.
I checked with effort pit’s sighs
And left the matron there,
To close the curtain of her eyes
And bind her golden hair.”

GPS: 52.83262, -8.1236