Brigdín Conway was the last of the Morton family who, in the 1940s and 1950s, had one of the very few Irish-speaking homes in east Belfast.
Brigdín was born in January 1940, the daughter of Biddy Pheadar Mháire Nic Diarmada, a native speaker and Irish examiner from Fintown, Co Donegal, and Belfast-born CBS teacher Richie Morton, who taught Irish at Rann na Feirste during the summers and was one of the founders of the city’s Cumann Chluain Ard.
As an infant, Brigdín and her siblings were evacuated to Fintown during World War II, where she began her education through Irish.
She later returned to Magheraroarty for a year under a Gael Linn scholarship, as her mother preferred the southern education system.
Brigdín grew up in Clara Street in east Belfast with her Irish-speaking siblings – Deirdre (Flanagan, who lectured in Celtic Studies at Queen’s), Diarmaid, Antaine, Máire-Róisín (McKeever) and Áine (Downey).
After her father became blind, the family moved to South Parade, from where Brigdín qualified as a teacher, and married the love of her life, Pat Conway.
In the late 1970s, the Conways moved into the old rectory in Killough, Co Down, where Pat became principal of the village primary school and Brigdín taught Primary 1.
They reared five daughters, Fionnuala, Bairbre-Róisín, Úna, Gráinne and Caoimhe.
After Pat’s death aged just 50, in 1986, Brigdín decided to remain in the seaside village she loved, where she served the community loyally as both a teacher and later as a lay magistrate at the Family Court.
A devoted aunt and grandmother, she remained an Irish-speaker throughout her life and was delighted when the old family home at 3 Clara Street became a feature on the Gaelic Tour of east Belfast.
Irish was so rarely spoken at that time that the family were known as ‘the Mickeys who speak Chinese’ – Brigdín’s sister Áine later penned a childhood memoir entitled ‘The Mortons Who Spoke Chinese’.
Brigdín Conway died on January 24, just a few days short of her 85th birthday.
GD