by Orna Ross
After the Mass was over, anyone who wanted had their chance to tell them what they thought of their dishonourable conduct. Then they were run out, told to leave County Wexford and never come back.
* * *
Diary 15th September
Disaster. Disaster. Disaster. I didn’t go to Redmond’s out-farm last night as Mammy was feeling poorly and I didn’t like to leave her alone. Molly and Cat went up and a friend of Molly’s, a Miss Kathleen O’Brien. I don’t think Molly even asked Norah, presuming she’d be unavailable. They were all together, with Barney and Tipsy and Lama and eight other men, when Joe Breen came running in from cycling over the fields to warn them he had heard the Stater troops were headed out there after them. That very moment, they began to hear the rumble of the lorries and all hastened to make an escape. Some were lucky, but not all. Not Barney. Nor poor Tipsy, Molly or Miss O’Brien either.
Also captured were sixteen rifles, seven revolvers, twelve hand grenades, hundreds of rounds of rifle ammunition, two mines, a bag of gelignite and a quantity of wires, cables and electric batteries. The best of our stash.
But what is worse, what is truly terrible for us all, is that Dan located Molly’s papers, every last despatch and list in her possession. The two large sack-loads of stuff I gave to her a few weeks ago were found, hidden under a stack of hay. I cannot believe her carelessness, hiding them all in the one place. Why did she not separate it out and keep it in different stashes as we have all been trained to do? Near everything was in those sacks. A record of all our activities from January up to the end of last month. The names of all our forces throughout South Wexford, our strength and equipment, places of parade etc. And all the correspondence on the bank raids, the amounts taken and how distributed. In short, our entire scheme of operations and plans. I’d never have handed them across if I thought she’d be so careless.
Now we’ll all pay the price.
* * *
The Gaol
Wexford
7th October
Dear Peg,
Thanks for your welcome letter. To answer your questions: 1. There are between forty and fifty of us here in the gaol. 2. During the day we’re allowed out of our cells and confined to a large dayroom. 3. We pass the time as you might imagine, reading, playing cards, sparring. Our exercise is one hour walking round and round the yard. I’d give anything for a game of football but that’s not allowed.
One of our officers in charge is Lieutenant Dan O’Donovan. Likes his title a lot, I can tell you, and takes his duties very seriously. He’s getting himself a name as a right hard man. Lucky, I don’t have much to do with him. The odd time when he is in to do a check our eyes cross but we act as if we never knew each other. Neither of us knows what other way to do it.
Thanks for the offers of help. We know you are “always there” and thank God we do know it. The only thing you can do for me is what I ask of you all the time, to look after Norah. She doesn’t have your strength. I have written to her, as you know, but I’m not like you with the letters – my words never seem to say it right.
My poor Norah, we had such great plans. Only God above knows when or if they’ll happen. But our cause is just and that keeps us cheerful.
Hoping, anyhow, that you’re in the best of health. I’ll write again when I get the chance.
Yours sincerely
Your affectionate bro
Barney
* * *
Kilmainham Jail
13 October
My dear Peg,
Well, you will have heard by now that they got me and how. So here I am in Kilmainham, where the 1916 leaders were brought to die. Could we ever have believed then that Irish men would stoop so low?
I am one in a ward of nine and each of us takes turns doing orderly for the room. The girls in single cells also take their turn, serving food, washing-up, etc. We have one bathroom to our floor and we share this amicably for personal use or washing clothes, but are forced to hang our washing over banisters or on improvised lines across the corridors to dry, an embarrassment in front of our male warders.
To keep our hands and minds busy, we study Irish, knit or sew and read. We have to be indoors by nine and have lights out at ten. A bit of a candle sometimes finds its way into our possession but, when lit, it has to be kept under the bed with the readers or card players squatting on the floor to avail of it. If the least glimmer is seen outside, the sentry roars in: “Put out that light” and if this order is not followed, he fires his gun in our direction. On the last such occasion, his bullet came in the window, leaving its mark on the wall opposite.
The Staters grow more insolent and shameless with every passing week. It’s infecting even those who would never have been suchlike in the old days. You can see how it catches them, once the first wrong turning is made.
Friday night is the soldiers’ pay night and we are usually treated to a musical watch. We too often sing in the dark to each other and sometimes we hear our men across the way doing the same. If one of us asks ourselves the question, why am I here, the answer comes then: because we are.
What did you think of the bishops and their announcement against us? You know the old good wish one Irish woman used to give another, “May you be the mother of a bishop”? Among us prisoners, it is now flung as an insult. Naturally, not a single one of us gave in to a decree that pronounced the FS the only government and ourselves nothing but unlawful rebels -- so we haven’t been allowed to attend Mass or Holy Communion since.
What about you? Is Fr J. giving us a hard time still or has he come round? Whichever, it makes no matter. God hears our prayers one way or the other and if Cromwell and the Penal laws didn’t succeed in breaking the faith of the Irish rebel, I don’t hold out too much chance to the Irish bishops.
I hope this letter reaches you. We have been told we will be able to get out a stack of letters by a laundry van in a day or so. There’s little point in writing through official channels – half our communications are not delivered and the other half are so censored they might as well not be sent.
Give my love to all and tell them to remember the poor convict in their prayers and to write to me. Even a few censored lines would make all the difference to…
Your affectionate friend,
Molly
* * *
The Barracks
Newbridge
15th October
Dear Sister,
This letter comes to you from Newbridge, where we are put up in the old British Cavalry Barracks. We were transferred two days ago, brought up by train. Conditions are not too bad, about twenty men to each room, and we all have a bed and enough blankets. Food, unfortunately, is not too plentiful. The Dublin boys are well away, able to get food parcels from home. They don’t share with Wexfordmen but we fill up with the cuts of bread and cold porridge they don’t want.
We spent a long day on the train when we were brought up, locked into one of those old-fashioned closed carriages with nothing to eat but tinned fish, and you know how I love that. It was dark when we got to Dublin and after a long wait we set off again. They didn’t tell us where we were going. A rumour went round that we were being brought to the island of St Helena, where Napoleon saw out his days. Instead, we stopped at a wayside station about an hour from Dublin. From there they marched us towards a searchlight that scanned the skies and fields until we came to this place.
We were left standing for hours outside a group of low, dark wooden huts in the freezing cold while they checked us in, six prisoners at a time. It was early morning before I was shown my mattress. I fell gratefully into it, I can tell you.
Since then, it hasn’t been too bad. Tipsy is here as well and Larry Crean, Joe Duggan, Paddy Doyle, Thomas Keogh and the Redmond brothers from town. Other “yellow-bellies” too that you wouldn’t know so well. All are in good form. Tipsy sends his regards.
The worst, I suppose, is the slanders the press is putting about. Tell Daddy never to believe these stories
that are used against us (I know you and Mammy wouldn’t) and tell them both to pray for us. I have written to them too but saying less than I say to you. Take care of yourself also, Peg. We know the risks you take for us. It is only now that we have our backs to the wall and everybody against us, that we appreciate you girls of C. na mBan as the fine comrades you are. Without you, the fight would have died long ago. God bless the work.
Your affectionate bro,
Barney
* * *
Diary 19th October
I had a horrible dream last night. I dreamt I was out with the boys, part of the column, with a gun in my hand looking for Dan O’Donovan. I saw him ahead of me and ran after him. He was faster than me and I would never have caught up with him but suddenly, as he ran down a long, narrow passage, he came upon this ten-foot-high hedge and he could go no further. I had him and he knew it. So he turned around to me and started trying to persuade.
“Now, Peg…” he started, in the same smarmy voice he used to me that night with Barney in Enniscorthy. “Let’s be sensible…”
But I let him say no more. I shot him straight on.
He grabbed his front where the bullet went in and slowly folded to the ground until he was lying, flat on his face, dead. I went over to him and knelt down beside him to turn him over and when I did, I got the shock of my life, for I saw it wasn’t Dan at all I had killed, but Denis Heffernan. And I woke up shouting, “No, no, no…”
Well, I couldn’t get back to sleep for the rest of the night. Of course it was only a dream, but it left a horrible black feeling pressing down on me, a feeling that has stayed with me all day.
This evening I went up to Mammy’s room for a chat. She was in bed early, having a rest, and I sat down on the side of the bed. She wasn’t looking the best and I decided not to burden her with my worries. We spoke for a while of the decrees issued to the press by the government on how we are to be described from now on: we are “Irregulars”, not Republicans; our soldiers are “bands of men”, not an army; our engagements are “incidents”, our battles are “attacks on property or people”. They learned their English propaganda well.
After a while, Mammy sensed my mood and wheedled it all out of me the way she does. I told her about the dream and the heavy feelings I am carrying around with me. “Such feelings are only natural,” she said, “considering all that’s going on. What you mustn’t do is let the worries turn you away from the work.”
“No, no, the work is no burden, Mammy,” I said, surprised at her misunderstanding. Yes, I had been up the last four mornings before dawn, painting slogans on walls: CALL OFF THE MURDER GANGS. DON’T TORTURE OUR PRISONERS. THE IRISH REPUBLIC LIVES. Yes, as things get hotter, I’ve never been busier and with Molly gone and Norah a near prisoner in her house, it nearly all falls onto me. But I don’t mind. It’s an honour to work for Ireland.
“Work isn’t just typing notices about informers or calling meetings, Peg,” Mammy said. “It’s coping with feelings the like of what you’re having. Not letting such feelings deflect you.” She touched my hand and I felt bad, because I knew she was thinking how much she’d like to still be up to such work.
She went on, explaining that reclining from the horrors and giving up now would be the easy thing to do. “You’re missing your brother, that’s part of the problem,” she said. “You have to take too much on yourself while he’s away in prison. But we mustn’t let him down.”
Again she didn’t say it but I knew she was thinking of herself, of how hard it was for her not knowing when she might see him next or how she might be by then.
I hadn’t thought about it in that way but she’s right; I do miss Barney, and Norah too. She’s only up the road but she might as well be in England itself for all I get to see of her. And though I know those who think like us were always a minority, that Boland and Pearse and Tone and Emmet and many more, all the way back, were always in the minority, still it can be hard to hold fast when press and pulpit and people unite against you as strong as they are right now.
Mammy is right: it was never going to be easy. Thank God that at least I have her to turn to. Whenever I am wavering, she is there to set me straight.
* * *
Diary 6th November
As I was walking home from school today, I came upon Father John at the end of the school lane. He suggested he walk home a bit of the way with me and, as I had little choice in the matter, I smiled nicely at him and fell in with his step. He took the scenic route in getting to the point, asking me first about Mammy’s health and how was Daddy and how was the teaching going and would the children be ready for the parish concert in time. All very proper and almost pleasant, only we were both fixed on what was coming.
He started the subject by referring to the Rathmeelin robbers and asked me if I didn’t think they should have been reported to the authorities.
“It was the people troubled by the blackguards who made the choice, Father,” I said. “They went to those they thought best able to help.”
“You’ll agree, maybe, that they were at fault in that.”
“I wouldn’t be sure, Father.”
“You wouldn’t be sure. You wouldn’t be sure. Tell me, Peg, don’t we have a police force who could take up for them?”
“I don’t think they put much pass on the new police, Father.”
His eyebrows came down into that false furrow he puts on when he wants you to know he’s cross with you. “You are aware of the statement of our bishops on these matters?”
“Ye-es.”
“You know that it is a sin to take on the work of the government, to set up our own policing and armies and so on. You must know that.”
I let my silence speak.
“And so you must know your duty in such matters?”
I looked down at my shoes, dusty from the bad condition of the road.
“Peg, your job as a national-school teacher brings responsibilities.”
“I know my responsibilities, Father. I’ve always taken them seriously.” He could have no complaint about my work, for since the start of the school year, I’ve made sure to be over-and-above diligent, no matter how tired I was.
“I’m not referring to your school duties, Peg. As I think you well know.”
“You mean politics,” I said.
He came to a halt on the road. “It’s gone well beyond politics, Peg. You heard the pastoral letter of their Lordships, the bishops, read off the altar last Sunday.”
To deuce with their Lordships the bishops, I felt like saying. The same bishops have deprived Republicans of the Sacraments. The men out there fighting – devout Catholics almost to a man – now go into danger without absolution of their sins. Knowing that if they fall in action or are captured or executed, they might be refused the Last Rites. If I ever heard of a sin, that is surely one.
“Am I not as entitled as the next person to what I believe, Father?” I said to him, quiet and polite as I could make it. “And believing as I do, am I not to work for what I believe to be right?”
He dropped his eyes and started fiddling with his cuffs, embarrassed. He can’t take straight talk. I could have said a lot more only I was afraid of where I might take us.
“We must not be proud, Peg,” he said. “Pride is a great sin. We must listen to those who know most about these matters. Follow the guidance of your bishops and you won’t go far wrong.”
It was pointless trying to explain anything to him. I nodded my head towards the house instead. “Will you come inside, Father?”
“It was my intention to go in and see JJ. Is there a need for me to do that, d’you think?”
“You mean…about what we’ve been saying?”
“Yes.”
Was this his way of asking me whether I intend to give up my work? He stood like he was waiting for an answer but I wasn’t going to lie outright to him, so I just stood there too. I killed a man, Father, that’s what I was thinking as I stood there, looking into his comforta
ble chins. I’ve killed a man. What do you in your parochial house, and your lordships the bishops in their safe, hierarchical palaces, know about that? How can I look up to you, turn to you for guidance when I’ve done more, seen more than you in your safety ever will?
He sighed. “I’ll leave it for today,” he said. “Tell your mammy I sent a blessing.”
“I will, Father. Thank you, Father.”
“You think hard about what I said, Peg. And be sensible, like the good girl you are.”
For God’s sake! To think I once was afraid of him. I told Mammy all about it afterwards and she only laughed. “Don’t mind Father John,” she said. “All he wants is the quiet life.”
* * *
Diary 17th November
Barney is home! Escaped from jail! He turned up tonight while Mammy and I were on our knees in the kitchen saying the rosary. I nearly died of fright when the two faces – himself and Tipsy – popped up at the window.
Oh but then I was up and away and so was Mammy. I haven’t seen her this excited in weeks. It’s that good to see them. Since the Staters executed those four prisoners the other day, we’ve been so worried.
I still can’t believe what the Free State has come to. Four men taken out and murdered without trial, without word or warning, their relatives not even informed. They found out their loved one was dead by receiving a telegram saying: REMAINS OF _____________ HAVE BEEN COFFINED AND BURIED IN CONSECRATED GROUND. SIGNED: GOVERNMENT, SAORSTAT EIREANN.
It is meant as a warning: nobody on our side is safe, that is what they’re trying to tell us. Nobody. Not even – or maybe especially not – the ordinary boys. Thank God that Barney’s out of their grip. We must keep him safely away from them now.
They escaped through a tunnel, with six others from various parts of the country, and then had to walk the whole way back, it being too dangerous to take any of the lifts they were offered– a distance of a hundred and fifty miles across hills and fields. Ten days of non-stop marching, poor things. They only encountered Army boys once along the way, near Arklow, so at least they were in luck there.
