William Bulfin: Rambles in Eirinn

In the late 19th century there was a thriving Irish community in Argentina. Made up mainly of descendants of emigrants from Longford and Westmeath who had left Ireland in the wake of the Famine, others had gone in the 1880s when the country seemed a prosperous destination. Among them was an Offaly man – William Bulfin from Derrinlough near Birr. He would quickly become one of the most influential men in the Irish community there, establishing a newspaper, ‘The Southern Cross’. Bulfin returned to Ireland in the early years of the 20th century and before his death in 1910 produced one of the iconic books of the period- ‘Rambles in Eirinn’. This book was written as Bulfin cycled the lanes and roads of Ireland, detailing the history and landscape in which he passed.  In 1910 the newspaper An Claidheamh Soluis provided the following stirring report on the death of Bulfin:

The death of William Bulfin deprives Ireland of one of her ablest men, and of one of the boldest asserters of her claims to national freedom. He left this country for the Argentine in early life, and soon became a journalist who was known and feared for the honour and fearlessness of his methods. In a land where irreligion and atheism are the fashion he championed the cause of Catholicism, and in the fight for religious freedom he gathered round him, under the Irish flag, the bravest and most trustworthy of our exiles in Buenos Ayres and in the country around it. The seoinin element who were ashamed of their race and country, and who wished to be regarded as English, were opposed to him. They started a newspaper in opposition to the " Southern Cross," but he beat them to the ground, and they lost a fortune in the rival enterprise. Yet he was too modest to boast of his success. It was not material success he ambitioned,' but rather the success of righteousness. His visits home, his tours through the country, and the opportunity which he found of writing of Ireland and of her affairs, gave him the greatest joy of his life, for he loved and respected the homeland with the passionate enthusiasm of a boy, and the reverence of one who knew and had realised her sacredness. His knowledge of Irish was not extensive, but he knew every period of Irish history, and his belief in our movement was proved by the splendid aid he rendered it both here, at home, and in the Argentine. He was a man of great parts and lofty ideals. His writing have made the name of our country respected, in spite of English traducers, throughout', the two American continents. Of affairs and men at home he was keenly critical, but his criticisms were always constructive and seldom acrid. He would have Irishmen intellectually and physically manly. His own life was one strenuous toil, and if it holds one lesson more than another for us, it is, always to be courageous.

For more information search the pages of the Irish Newspaper Archive (www.irishnewsarchive.com )