The final request of a woman, whose unclaimed body lay in a London morgue since her death on Christmas Day, was realised yesterday in the Connemara village of Spiddal.
In her will, Irish-born Marian Marriot asked to be buried in the west of Ireland in an area untouched by industrial development, beside a stream and a meadow. She also wanted the lament of a piper to ring out as they laid her in the ground. She died aged 70, penniless, in London on Christmas Day, from peritonitis and emphysema and was without friends or family.
When the social services in the UK found among her items an old membership card from the Irish Club in London, they rang the club in February.
Owen Murphy, vice-chairman of the club, knew Ms Marriot as she was honorary secretary for a time.
He believes she had relatives in southwest Ireland and her maiden name was Butler. Her parents were said to have a coffee plantation in east Africa.
She was a marvellous debater, recalls Mr Murphy, and the pair won a debating competition in the 1970s. Then they lost touch.
He believes she had lived in a bedsit off Fleet Street, where she said she worked as a freelance journalist.
The Irish Club decided to donate £1,000 to carry out her last wishes. They appealed to the London Irish community to help defray the costs involved in burying her in Ireland. Tulach Bhuí Cemetery in Coilleach, Spiddal overlooking the sea was chosen as the burial ground.
Parish priest of Spiddal, Msgr Brendan Kelly, told the congregation who gathered in St Enda's Church yesterday there were two striking elements about the case of Ms Marriot.
"There's the lamentable loneliness of a life, which we can all understand and identify with, and then there's the goodness that will overcome everything."
A small plaque will mark the spot where Ms Marriot was laid to rest.