A Rose Of Tralee Story As Told By A Former Rose
By Deborah Schull
It was 2005. A phone call from Carnacon, County Mayo, rang down the hall of the University College Dublin dormitory. It was for Aoibheann Ní Shúilleabháin, a fire-engine-red-haired, tongue-pierced, 22-year-old student of Theoretical Physics. Aoibheann detected a sheepish tone in her father’s voice when he said, “You’ve to fill out some forms for the Mayo Rose.”
It seems he’d gone and entered her name in County Mayo’s Rose competition, the first step on the road to national glory: coronation as Ireland’s Rose at the (formerly named) Rose of Tralee Festival, held each year in County Kerry since 1959.
Aoibheann was mortified—and not a little bit angry. “Look, I’ve got my finals and that’s much more important than anything else,” she said. Perhaps an even deeper reason underlay that one, evinced by her admission years later: “I was never considered a ‘girly girl.’”
Had she known the competition’s history, Aoibheann might have been more willing. The festival had evolved over the years from a beauty pageant for young Irish women to an international festival celebrating the “aspirations, ambitions, intellect, social responsibility, and Irish heritage” of young women from anywhere in the world.
Girly girl or not, Aoibheann gave in. “I was basically doing it to humor my dad,” she explains or, perhaps, rationalizes. She then agreed to a formal interview. “I was just going to go in and chat. . . . I was just so relaxed about it.”
Now it was her mam’s turn to be mortified because, as Aoibheann said, “I didn’t buy anything new, and I wasn’t wearing high heels or anything like that.”
Wouldn’t you know the studious Aoibheann breezed through the interview, enjoying her few moments on stage “because I was talking about my degree and everything like that.”
At that point she remembers thinking “this has been an interesting experience, and it will end here, and that will be fine.” Which is why she still vividly recalls her surprise when they called her name as the winner of the Mayo Rose and gave her marching orders to go down to Tralee and compete in the final, national pageant.
And an invisible line was drawn in the sand of her life. “It was at that point that I decided ‘Right, I’m representing my county at this major international festival.’ So I took out my tongue piercing, and I spent some time buying dresses and shoes and things like that.”
In short, it was time to be a ‘girly girl.’
On 23rd August, 2005, Aoibheann was crowned the 47th Rose of Tralee at an event watched over two nights by 75% of Ireland’s television audience. By now more open to fortuitous surprises, she took a leap of faith and deferred graduate school for a year to tour Ireland and the world as an Irish Rose.
Turns out she had the time of her life—and took many life lessons from that time.
“When you go abroad and you’re the representative from Ireland with other people from the Irish community, it’s really important that you take that responsibility, that you talk to people, that you remind them of Ireland—of the values you hope you’re representing.”
And let them speak to you.
“It’s something we often joke about, when you meet someone of Irish descent, and they say, ‘Oh, I’m the O’Sullivans from County Cork.’ And you’re like, ‘Well, there’s lots of O’Sullivans in County Cork.’ But, do you know what? It’s really important that we ask and we make sure people can find that link and that route to Ireland. I think it’s something that as a country we do very differently. There’s apparently 80 million people of Irish descent around the world, and I think it’s important we value those people and we acknowledge that ‘Yes, they are Irish as well.’”
Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin is known as an outstanding academic, broadcaster, and STEM education advocate; she also toured internationally as lead singer of the Irish traditional band Ragús. And it all started with the Rose of Tralee.
Deborah Schull is an award-winning writer and producer. She founded Cultural Roadmapp, a startup producing Road Trip: Ireland, a 7-part series of cultural heritage audio tours for Wild Atlantic Way road trips. This article draws from interviews recorded by Dr Leah Bernini Cronin (president) for Kerry, part 2 of the series.