Dodds is the son of schoolteachers. His father Robert is from a Presbyterian family and dies of alcoholism when Dodds is seven years old. His mother Anne is of Anglo-Irish ancestry. When he is ten, he moves with his mother to Dublin, and he is educated at St. Andrew’s College, where his mother teaches, and at Campbell College in Belfast. He is expelled from the latter for “gross, studied, and sustained insolence.”
In 1912, Dodds wins a scholarship at University College, Oxford, to read classics, or Literae Humaniores, a two-part, four-year degree program consisting of five terms of study of Latin and Greek texts followed by seven terms of study of ancient history and ancient philosophy. His friends at Oxford include Aldous Huxley and T. S. Eliot. In 1916, he is asked to leave Oxford due to his support for the Easter Rising, but he returns the following year to take his final examinations in Literae Humaniores, and is awarded a first-class degree to match the first-class awarded him in 1914 in Honour Moderations, the preliminary stage of his degree. His first tutor at Oxford is Arthur Blackburne Poynton.
After graduation, Dodds returns to Dublin and meets W. B. Yeats and George William Russell. He teaches briefly at Kilkenny College and in 1919 is appointed as a lecturer in classics at the University of Reading, where in 1923 he marries a lecturer in English, Annie Edwards Powell. They have no children.
In 1924, Dodds is appointed Professor of Greek at the University of Birmingham, and comes to know W. H. Auden, whose father George, Professor of Public Medicine and an amateur classicist, is a colleague. He is also responsible for Louis MacNeice‘s appointment as a lecturer at Birmingham in 1930. He assists MacNeice with his translation of Aeschylus, Agamemnon (1936), and later becomes the poet’s literary executor. He publishes one volume of his own poems, Thirty-Two Poems, with a Note on Unprofessional Poetry (1929).
On his retirement in 1960, Dodds is made an Honorary Fellow of University College, Oxford, until his death on April 8, 1979. He dies in the village of Old Marston, northeast of Oxford.
Among Dodds’s works are The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), which charts the influence of irrational forces in Greek culture up to the time of Plato, and Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, a study of religious life in the period between Marcus Aurelius and Constantine I. He is also editor of three major classical texts for the Clarendon Press, Proclus: Elements of Theology, Euripides‘ The Bacchae and Plato’s Gorgias, all published with extensive commentaries, and a translation in the case of the first. His autobiography, Missing Persons, is published in 1977. He edits Louis MacNeice’s unfinished autobiography The Strings are False (1965) and MacNeice’s Collected Poems (1966).
Rosanna “Rosie” Hackett, Irish insurgent and trade union leader, is born into a working-class family in Dublin on July 25, 1893. She is a founder-member of the Irish Women Workers’ Union (IWWU) and supports strikers during the 1913 Dublin lock-out. She later becomes a member of the Irish Citizen Army and is involved in the 1916 Easter Rising. In the 1970s, the labour movement awards her a gold medal for decades of service, and in 2014 a Dublin city bridge is named in her memory.
Hackett is the daughter of John Hackett, a hairdresser, and Roseanna Dunne. According to the 1901 census, she is living with her widowed mother and five other family members in a tenement building on Bolton Street in Dublin. The available documents suggest that her father dies when she is still very young. She joins the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) when it is established in 1909 by James Larkin, which marks the beginning of her lifelong activity in trade unionism. By 1911 she is living with her family in a cottage on Old Abbey Street, and her mother has remarried to Patrick Gray.
Hackett fights for many decades for the rights of workers. Through her affiliation and work with the ITGWU, the IWWU and the Irish Citizen Army, she helps carve out and secure modern-day working conditions. Her career begins as a packer in a paper store, then becoming a messenger for Jacob’s biscuits. At that time the working conditions in the factory are poor.
On August 22, 1911, Hackett helps organise the withdrawal of women’s labour in Jacob’s factory to support their male colleagues who are already on strike. With the women’s help, the men secure better working conditions and a pay rise. Two weeks later, at the age of eighteen, she co-founds the IWWU with Delia Larkin. During the 1913 lock-out she helps mobilise the Jacob’s workers to come out in solidarity with other workers. They, in turn, are locked out by their own employers. This does not stop her work to help others, and she, along with several of her IWWU colleagues, set up soup kitchens in Liberty Hall to help feed the strikers. However, in 1914 her Jacob’s employers sack her over her role in the lock-out.
Hackett begins work as a clerk in the printshop in Liberty Hall, and it is here she becomes involved with the Irish Citizen Army. She is involved in preparations for the 1916 Rising, working in a union shop, helping with printers, and making first-aid kits and knap-sacks.
If other members of the ITGWU were looking for James Connolly, Hackett aids in bringing them to him. She “worked as canvasser and traveller and was called on to carry out many confidential jobs.”
Hackett takes up first aid training provided by Dr. Kathleen Lynn for six months before the Rising and attends night marches organised by the Irish Citizen Army. According to her own account, she says, “A week before Easter, I took part in the ceremony of hoisting the challenge flag over Hall.” Like other girls and women who are involved in the Rising, she carries messages and guns and prepares uniforms and food for Irish Republican Army (IRA) members “and sometimes risky work.”
Three weeks before the Easter Rising, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) raid a shop where Hackett is working. She is alone when they come, and they are looking for a copy of “Gael.” She says to them, “wait until I get the head” and she calls for Connolly. The police are stopped by Connolly and Helena Molony who are armed, and Hackett immediately hides everything, so that when the police come back, they cannot get anything.
Through her experience of working in the printshop, Hackett helps to print the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. She is in the printing room in Liberty Hall as a trusted messenger in 1916 when the Proclamation is printed, and it is the first time she is allowed in. Three men are there when she enters the room and one comes over to her, shakes her hand and congratulates her. It makes her very proud, especially since no one else is allowed to get in. She subsequently tells family members of handing it still wet to James Connolly before it is read by Patrick Pearse outside the entrance to the General Post Office (GPO).
Hackett is an active member of the Irish Citizen Army. On Easter Tuesday, under the command of Constance Markievicz, she takes part in the 1916 Rising and is located in the area of St. Stephen’s Green and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. This position is heavily attacked with guns, short of first aid and “looked like a death trap.” However, after moving from an initially overlooked position in St. Stephen’s Green, it is one of the last positions to surrender. In the Royal College, as a first-aid practitioner, she is allowed entry to the lecture room sanctioned to the Red Cross only. Another first-aider, Aider Nora O’Daily, later reports that during those days, “I have a very kind remembrance of Little Rosie Hackett of the Citizen Army, always cheerful and always willing; to see her face about the place was a tonic itself.”
After surrendering, the rebels are taken to Dublin Castle. Hackett is imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol for ten days.
In 1917, on the anniversary of Connolly’s death, Hackett, together with Helena Molony, Jennie Shanahan and Brigid Davis, print and hang a poster detailing the anniversary. After the first poster displayed by the ITGWU members is taken down by the police, they work to ensure that their poster will stay on Liberty Hall much longer by staying on top of the roof to defend it. They barricade the door using a ton of coal and nails on the windows. The poster is hanging there until 6:00 p.m. and thousands of people can see it.
After the Rising, Hackett returns to the IWWU which, at its strongest, organises over 70,000 women. After the 1945 laundry strike, they win an extra week of paid holidays for the workers. She attends many important labour union events such as the opening of the new Liberty Hall on May 2, 1965, and Arbour Hill memorial services. Until her retirement, she runs the trade union shops resulting in over five decades of active participation in the Irish trades union movement work to improve conditions for Irish workers. In 1970 she is awarded a gold medal for fifty years of ITGWU membership.
In the 1970s, Walter McFarlane, then branch secretary of the ITGWU, awards an honorary badge for Hackett’s fifty years contribution to the union.
Hackett never marries and lives in Fairview, Dublin, with her brother Tommy until her death on July 4, 1976. She is buried at St. Paul’s plot in Glasnevin Cemetery next to her mother and stepfather. At her burial, she is honoured with a military salute and her coffin is covered with the Irish flag. After her passing, her legacy is remembered in the union’s newspaper, a tale of the strife of Hackett together with the rest of Dublin’s working class, for which she fought to change.
In May 2014, the Rosie Hackett Bridge is officially opened by the Lord Mayor of Dublin. The Hackett Bridge Campaign began in October 2012, led by three women Angelina Cox, an active member of Labour Youth, Jeni Gartland and Lisa Connell. The final shortlist of contending names for the new bridge were Rosie Hackett, Kathleen Mills, Willie Bermingham, Bram Stoker and Frank Duff.
In April 2015, a plaque is unveiled on Foley Street by the North Inner City Folklore Project to commemorate the women of the Irish Citizen Army. The plaque lists Hackett as a member of the St. Stephens Green/College of Surgeons garrison during the 1916 Easter Rising.
Plunkett’s only grown sibling, a younger brother, from whom he is estranged from about 1916, for reasons not fully clear but connected to his mother’s will, is the noted British naval officer Sir Reginald Drax. Another younger brother dies in infancy.
The title passes to Plunkett at his father’s death in 1899 at a fairly young age. The young Lord Dunsany returns to Dunsany Castle in 1901 after war duty. In that year he is also confirmed as an elector for the Representative Peers for Ireland in the House of Lords.
In 1903, Plunkett meets Lady Beatrice Child Villiers (1880–1970), youngest daughter of Victor Child Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey, who is then living at Osterley Park. They marry in 1904. Their one child, Randal, is born in 1906. Lady Beatrice is supportive of her husband’s interests and helps him by typing his manuscripts, selecting work for his collections, including the 1954 retrospective short story collection, and overseeing his literary heritage after his death.
The Plunketts are socially active in Dublin and London and travel between homes in Meath, London and Kent, other than during the First and Second World Wars and the Irish War of Independence. He circulates with many literary figures of the time. To many of these in Ireland he is first introduced by his uncle, the co-operative pioneer Sir Horace Plunkett, who also helps to manage his estate and investments for a time. He is friendly, for example, with George William Russell, Oliver St. John Gogarty, and for a time, W. B. Yeats. He also socialises at times with George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells and is a friend of Rudyard Kipling.
In 1910 Plunkett commissions a two-story extension to Dunsany Castle, with a billiard room, bedrooms and other facilities. The billiard room includes the crests of all the Lords Dunsany up to the 18th.
Plunkett serves as a second lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards in the Second Boer War. Volunteering in World War I and appointed Captain in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, he is stationed for a time at Ebrington Barracks in Derry, Northern Ireland. Hearing while on leave of disturbances in Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916, he drives in to offer help and is wounded by a bullet lodged in his skull. After recovery at Jervis Street Hospital and what is then the King George V Hospital (now St. Bricin’s Military Hospital), he returns to duty. His military belt is lost in the episode and later used at the burial of Michael Collins. Having been refused forward positioning in 1916 and listed as valuable as a trainer, he serves in the later war stages in the trenches and in the final period writing propaganda material for the War Office with MI7b. There is a book at Dunsany Castle with wartime photographs, on which lost members of his command are marked.
During the Irish War of Independence, Plunkett is charged with violating the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act 1920, tried by court-martial on February 4, 1921, convicted, and sentenced to pay a fine of 25 pounds or serve three months in prison without labour. The Crown Forces had searched Dunsany Castle and had found two double-barrelled shotguns, two rook rifles, four Very pistols, an automatic pistol and a large quantity of pistol ammunition, along with shotgun and rifle ammunition.
During World War II, Plunkett signs up for the Irish Army Reserve and the British Home Guard, the two countries’ local defence forces, and is especially active in Shoreham, Kent, the English village bombed most during the Battle of Britain.
Plunkett’s fame arises chiefly from his prolific writings. He is involved in the Irish Literary Revival. Supporting the Revival, he is a major donor to the Abbey Theatre, and he moves in Irish literary circles. He is well acquainted with W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Percy French, George “AE” Russell, Oliver St. John Gogarty, Padraic Colum and others. He befriends and supports Francis Ledwidge, to whom he gives the use of his library, and Mary Lavin.
Plunkett makes his first literary tour to the United States in 1919 and further such visits up to the 1950s, in the early years mostly to the eastern seaboard and later, notably, to California. His own work and contribution to the Irish literary heritage are recognised with an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin.
In 1940, Plunkett is appointed Byron Professor of English in the University of Athens in Greece. Having reached Athens by a circuitous route, he is so successful that he is offered a post as Professor of English in Istanbul. However, he has to be evacuated due to the German invasion of Greece in April 1941, returning home by an even more complex route, his travels forming a basis for a long poem published in book form (A Journey, in 5 cantos: The Battle of Britain, The Battle of Greece, The Battle of the Mediterranean, Battles Long Ago, The Battle of the Atlantic, special edition January 1944). Olivia Manning‘s character Lord Pinkrose in her novel sequence the Fortunes of War is a mocking portrait of Dunsany in that period.
In 1947, Plunkett transfers his Meath estate in trust to his son and heir and settles in Kent at his Shoreham house, Dunstall Priory, not far from the home of Rudyard Kipling. He visits Ireland only occasionally thereafter and engages actively in life in Shoreham and London. He also begins a new series of visits to the United States, notably California, as recounted in Hazel Littlefield-Smith’s biographical Dunsany, King of Dreams.
In 1957, Plunkett becomes ill while dining with the Earl and Countess of Fingall at Dunsany, in what proves to be an attack of appendicitis. He dies in hospital in Dublin, at the age of 79, on October 25, 1957. He is buried in the churchyard of the ancient church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Shoreham, Kent. His funeral is attended by many family members, representatives of his old regiment and various bodies in which he had taken an interest, and figures from Shoreham. A memorial service is held at Kilmessan in County Meath, with a reading of “Crossing the Bar,” which coincides with the passing of a flock of geese.
Beatrice survives Plunkett, living mainly at Shoreham and overseeing his literary legacy until her death in 1970. Their son Randal succeeds to the barony and is in turn succeeded by his grandson, the artist Edward Plunkett. Plunkett’s literary rights pass from Beatrice to Edward.
Russell is born on April 10, 1867, in Lurgan, County Armagh, in what is now Northern Ireland. He writes with the pseudonym Æ (often written AE or A.E.). He is also a writer on mysticism, and a central figure in the group of devotees of theosophy which meets in Dublin for many years. He takes his pseudonym from a proofreader’s query about his earlier pseudonym, “AEon.”
Russell is the second son of Thomas Russell and Mary Armstrong. His father, the son of a small farmer, becomes an employee of Thomas Bell and Co., a prosperous firm of linen drapers. The family relocates to Dublin, where his father has a new offer of employment, when he is eleven years old.
Following his time at the Metropolitan School of Art, Russell becomes an accounts clerk in a drapery store but leaves in 1897 to organize agricultural cooperatives. Eventually he becomes editor of the periodicals Irish Homestead (1905–23) and The Irish Statesman (1923–30). In 1894 he publishes the first of many books of verse, Homeward: Songs by the Way, which establishes him in what is known as the Irish Literary Revival. His first volume of Collected Poems appears in 1913 and a second in 1926. He maintains a lifelong interest in theosophy, the origins of religion, and mystical experience. Candle of Vision: Autobiography of a Mystic (1918) is the best guide to his religious beliefs.
At the turn of the 20th century, Russell is considered by many to be the equal of Yeats, but he does not continue to grow and develop as Yeats does. He is prolific and versatile, but many critics find his poetry facile, vague, and monotonous, with “rather too much of the Celtic Twilight” in it.
Russell, who had become increasingly unhappy in the Irish Free State which, according to Yeats, he called “a country given over to the Devil,” moves to England soon after his wife’s death in 1932. Despite his failing health he goes on a final lecture tour in the United States but returns home utterly exhausted. He dies of cancer in Bournemouth, England, on July 17, 1935. His body is brought back to Ireland, and he is interred in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin.
Barry learns Irish from a young age. He attends Ballymartle National School but is unable to attend secondary school due to a lack of facilities in the area. He begins work on the family farm after primary school. In 1903, he moves to Cork to work as a draper‘s apprentice with the firm O’Sullivan and Howard, where he becomes involved in the Gaelic League and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. A successful athlete, he also plays for the Blackrock National Hurling Club and wins four senior county hurling championships between 1910–13.
In 1913, Barry joins the newly formed Irish Volunteers. In 1915, he moves to Kilkenny to take up employment there, where he continues his volunteer activities. Shortly after the 1916 Easter Rising, he is arrested in Kilkenny in a British Government crackdown, and sent to Frongoch internment camp in North Wales. In 1919, he returns to Cork, where he is Commandant of the Irish Republican Police (IRP) in Cork during the Irish War of Independence. In the Cork No. 1 Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), he helps with prisoner escapes and returning looted goods after the burning of Cork by Black and Tans. After the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the split that follows, he chooses the anti-Treaty branch of the IRA. He is captured by Irish Free State troops and is sent to Newbridge internment camp on October 6, 1922. He is not charged or convicted of any crime.
Irish Republican prisoners in Mountjoy Prison begin the 1923 Irish hunger strikes, protesting being interned without charges or trial and poor prison conditions. The strike quickly spreads to other camps and prisons, and Barry takes part starting on October 16. He dies 35 days later on November 20, 1923, at the hospital at Curragh Camp. IRA Volunteers Joseph Whitty from Newbawn, County Wexford, dies on September 2, 1923 and Andy O’Sullivan from Denbawn, County Cavan, dies as a result of hunger on November 22, 1923, in Mountjoy Prison. The 41-day hunger strike is called off the following day, November 23. Whitty, Barry and O’Sullivan are three of the 22 Irish Republicans who die on hunger-strike during the twentieth century. Barry is initially buried by the Free State army in the Curragh, but three days later, following a court order, his remains are disinterred. He is buried in the Republican plot at St. Finbarr’s Cemetery, Cork.
Prior to Barry’s body arriving in County Cork, the Bishop of Cork, Daniel Cohalan, issues a letter to the Catholic churches which forbids them to open their doors to his body. Bishop Cohalan expresses far different opinions on the 1920 death, also by hunger strike, of the Lord Mayor of CorkTerence MacSwiney. “Terence MacSwiney takes his place among the martyrs in the sacred cause of the Freedom of Ireland. We bow in respect before his heroic sacrifice. We pray that God may have mercy on his soul.”
In Barry’s hometown of Riverstick there stands a stone memorial, unveiled in 1966, in his honor and he is remembered with a wreath-laying commemoration every November.
She meets the Robertson commission in 1901 on behalf of St. Mary’s Dominican convent, Eccles Street, Dublin, where, as well as presenting the results of a questionnaire survey of women graduates, compiles in conjunction with Agnes O’Farrelly and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, she argues for the right of women to receive education on the same terms as men and in the same colleges, and to be employed by the universities on identical conditions (which is not realised until the Irish Universities Act of 1908). Along with Sheehy-Skeffington, she is a key figure in the formation of the Irish Association of Women Graduates in 1902, which concerns itself with various questions regarding women graduates’ employment in government departments, hospitals, and schools, as well as attempting to influence public policy in relation to sex discrimination.
After the passage of the Irish Universities Act in 1908, Hayden is appointed a member of both the senate of the National University of Ireland (NUI) and the governing body of the new University College Dublin (UCD), the first woman to hold such positions. In November 1909 she is appointed a lecturer in history, and in July 1911 first professor of modern Irish history at UCD, a position she holds until her retirement in 1938.
Hayden’s last major public campaign, at the age of 75, is in the lead-up to the referendum on the 1937 Constitution of Ireland, in opposition to articles 40, 41, and 45 concerning the status of women. Reversing her lifelong non-party-political stance, she helps to form the Women’s Social and Progressive League as a political party committed to opposing the constitution and any regressive consequences it would entail.
Hayden receives an honorary doctorate from the NUI in 1935, three years before her retirement. A dedicated cyclist and swimmer, she is fluent in Irish, Greek, and Hindustani, and after retirement devotes her efforts to improving the welfare of Dublin children through her newly formed social club. She dies on July 12, 1942, at her residence in Rathmines, Dublin. Her unpublished diaries are deposited in the NLI.
A biography of Hayden, Mary Hayden: Irish Historian and Feminist, by Joyce Padbury is published by Arlen House in 2020.
Johnson works on the docks for an Irish fish merchant, spending much of his time in Dunmore East and Kinsale. It is this way that he picks up ideas about socialism and Irish nationalism, joining a Liverpool branch of the Independent Labour Party in 1893. In 1900 he starts work as a commercial traveller, then moves in 1903 with his family to Belfast where he becomes involved in trade union and labour politics.
In 1907 Johnson helps James Larkin organise a strike in the port, but has to watch in dismay as the strike, which begins with remarkable solidarity between labour, Orange, and nationalist supporters, collapses in sectarian rioting. At various times he is the president, treasurer and secretary of the Irish Trades Union Congress (ITUC) which is, at the time, also the Labour Party in Ireland, until officially founded in 1912 by James Connolly and James Larkin. Johnson becomes Vice-president of the ITUC in 1913, and President in 1915.
Johnson sympathizes with the Irish Volunteers, many of whom are sacked from their jobs, for illegal activities. During the Easter Rising, he notes in his diary that people in Ireland paid little heed to the fate of the defeated revolutionaries. He succeeds as leader of the Labour Party from 1917, when the party does not contest the 1918 Irish general election. When the British government tries to enforce conscription in Ireland in 1918, he leads a successful strike in conjunction with other members of the Irish anti-conscription movement.
Johnson is later elected a TD for Dublin County to the Third Dáil at the 1922 Irish general election and remains leader of the Labour Party until 1927. As such, he is Leader of the Opposition in the Dáil of the Irish Free State, as the anti-treaty faction of Sinn Féin refuses to recognise the Dáil as constituted. He issues a statement of support for the Government of the 4th Dáil when the Irish Army Mutiny threatens civilian control in March 1924.
Johnson is the only Leader of the Labour Party who serves as Leader of the Opposition in the Dáil. He loses his Dáil seat at the September 1927 Irish general election, and the following year he is elected to Seanad Éireann, where he serves until the Seanad’s abolition in 1936.
In 1896 he meets Marie Tregay, then a teacher in St. Multose’s National school, outside Kinsale. A native of Cornwall, she has advanced political views. They marry in 1898 in Liverpool. Their only son, Frederick Johnson, is born in 1899, and becomes a well-known actor. Johnson dies on January 17, 1963, at 49 Mount Prospect Avenue, Clontarf, Dublin.
Each summer, Labour Youth holds the “Tom Johnson Summer School” to host panel discussions, debates and workshops.
Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh, Irish actress and republican activist, is born Mary Elizabeth Walker in Charlemont Street, Dublin, on May 8, 1883. She starts acting in her teens and appears in the first Irish language play performed in Ireland. She is a founder-member of the Abbey Theatre and is leading lady on its opening night in 1904, when she plays the title role in W. B. Yeats‘s Cathleen ni Houlihan. She later joins the Theatre of Ireland, which she helps to found.
Nic Shiubhlaigh is born into a nationalist and Irish-speaking family. Her father, Matthew, comes from County Carlow and is a printer and publisher who becomes proprietor of the Gaelic Press. Her mother, Mary, is a dressmaker from Dublin. She grows up in 56 High Street in the Dublin Liberties.
Nic Shiubhlaigh joins the Gaelic League about 1898 and comes into contact with Arthur Griffith and William Rooney. She joins the cultural and revolutionary women’s group Inghinidhe na hÉireann in 1900. With the help of drama enthusiasts William and Frank Fay, she starts acting with the drama group of Inghinidhe na hÉireann. In 1901, the drama group takes part in a feis with two plays, Tobar Draoidheachta by Patrick S. Dinneen and Red Hugh by Alice Milligan. George Russell and W.B. Yeats, who are in attendance at the performance, are moved by the dedication of the amateur players. Russell, who had already offered the Fays his mythic play Deirdre, persuades Yeats to offer them his patriotic play, Cathleen ni Houlihan.
In 1902, Nic Shiubhlaigh joins W. G. Fay’s Irish National Dramatic Company, along with others such as Maire Quinn, Brian Callender, Charles Caulfield, James H. Cousins, P. J. Kelly, Dudley Digges and Frederick Ryan. Their first production of the two one-act plays, Cathleen ni Houlihan, with Maud Gonne in the lead role, and Deirdre, is on April 2, 1902. The company, which has no funds to speak of, acquires a couple of bare rooms at 34 Lower Camden Street, which with the help of friends from Irish-revival societies, they turn into a tiny theatre. They rehearse at the Coffee Palace and also use the Molesworth Hall for productions. In March 1903, with other members of her family, she appears in the first production of Yeats’ morality play, The Hour-Glass, in which she plays the part of the Angel.
In 1903, the playwrights and most of the actors and staff from these productions go on to form the Irish National Theatre Society, which has its registered offices in the Camden Street theatre. Nic Shiubhlaigh is a founder member and on the management committee of the society. Yeats is president, while Russell, Maud Gonne and Douglas Hyde are vice-presidents. William Fay is stage manager. The society founds the Abbey Theatre.
Nic Shiubhlaigh acts in the Abbey Theatre from the time of its founding. On its opening night on December 27, 1904, she plays the name part in Cathleen ni Houlihan. Her portrait is painted by John Butler Yeats for the occasion and hangs in the vestibule. She is the principal actress of the company after Máire Quinn’s departure to the United States, and when she leaves, the burden of the chief women’s rôles falls upon Sara Allgood.
In September 1905, the Abbey administrator and financial backer, an English theatre impresario called Annie Horniman, in hopes of improving the artistic quality of the productions at the Abbey, offers to guarantee salaries (a sum of £500 per year) for the actors and for Willie Fay as producer. To her mind, this will allow the actors and Fay to dispense with their day jobs and concentrate wholly upon their acting. The more nationally-minded members of the staff disagree. Nic Shiubhlaigh writes, “It was pointed out that the old Irish National Theatre Society had been founded in 1902 on the understanding that its independence as a national movement was to be secured only through the efforts of its members. It would be contrary to these ideals to accept a subsidy from an independent source.” For them it would mean a choice between a national theatre and an artistic theatre. At a meeting of the society, supported by Yeats, Gregory and Synge, the motion to accept Miss Horniman’s proposition is passed by a majority of shareholdings rather than a majority of votes. Nic Shiubhlaigh along with others resign, but they agree to remain until the end of the year, as part of an upcoming tour of England.
Nic Shiubhlaigh remains with the Abbey until December 1905, when along with Honor Lavelle (also known as Helen Laird), Emma Vernon, Máire Garvey, Frank Walker, Seumas O’Sullivan, Padraic Colum and George Roberts, she leaves. She joins the Theatre of Ireland, which she helps to found. This is formed in June 1906 with aims similar to the Irish National Theatre Society. She returns to the Abbey in 1910.
At the time of the 1916 Easter Rising, Nic Shiubhlaigh is living in Glasthule, a suburb of Dublin. She cycles into the city and, along with other members of Cumann na mBan, makes her way to Jacob’s Biscuit Factory, whose garrison under the command of Thomas MacDonagh guards the city against the troops of Portobello Barracks, and acts as an information and supplies hub for other garrisons around the city. She commands the women of the garrison. They remain there until the surrender, cooking and rendering first aid to the garrison, and bringing despatches through the city.
Nic Shiubhlaigh had retired from professional acting in 1912, and seldom works in professional theatre again. In 1929, she marries former IRA Director of Organisation, Major General Eamon “Bob” Price, and they move to Laytown, County Meath.
Nic Shiubhlaigh’s last stage appearance, alongside her sister Gypsy, is in a production of Gaol Gate at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, on November 21, 1948, staged to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of Theobald Wolfe Tone.
Nic Shiubhlaigh dies on September 9, 1958, in the Drogheda cottage hospital.
Her book, The Splendid Years, written with the help of her nephew Edward Kenny, recalls the years of the national revival and the Easter Rising.
Boland is the son of Irish Republican Brotherhood member James Boland and Kate Woods. He was active in GAA circles in early life and referees the 1914 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final. He joins the IRB at the same time as his older brother Gerald in 1904, following in the footsteps of his father, uncle and probably grandfather. He is educated at the Synge Street CBS, but hads a personality clash with one of the brothers so he refuses to carry on his attendance at the school. He then goes to De la Salle College, County Laois, as a novice.
Boland later joins the Irish Volunteers along with Gerry and his younger brother Ned. They take an active part in the Easter Rising of 1916.
At the 1918 Irish general election, Boland is elected as an MP for South Roscommon. In line with all the Sinn Féin MPs elected at that election, he does not take his seat in the British House of Commons but withdraws to sit in the declared independent Dáil Éireann (the First Dáil) and is named by Éamon de Valera as special envoy to the United States, a role his uncle Jack had played 25 years earlier. He leaves Ireland for the United States along with de Valera as part of a campaign to raise awareness and support for their cause in America. He negotiates a loan of $20,000 from the Irish Republic to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic through the head of the Soviet Bureau, Ludwig Martens, using some Russian jewelry as collateral. These jewels are transferred to Ireland when he returns. His sister Kathleen and her mother are entrusted with the safekeeping of jewels.
In the 1922 Irish general election, Boland is re-elected to the Dáil representing Mayo South–Roscommon South. Six weeks later, on July 31, he is shot by soldiers of the National Army when they attempt to arrest him at the Skerries Grand Hotel. Two officers enter his room and, although unarmed, he is shot and mortally wounded during a struggle.
Boland’s death affects Collins and possibly spurs him toward peace negotiations with Éamon de Valera.
Boland’s brother, Gerald Boland, is a prominent member of Fianna Fáil and later serves as Minister for Justice. His nephew, Kevin Boland, serves as a Minister until he resigns in solidarity with the two ministers, Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, who are sacked from the government in May 1970 during the Arms Crisis. Kevin Boland’s resignation from Fianna Fáil and the subsequent loss of his seat marks the end of an era for the Boland political dynasty.
In the 1991 TV movie The Treaty, Boland is portrayed by Malcolm Douglas. In the 1996 film Michael Collins, he is portrayed by American actor Aidan Quinn. The film is criticised for fictionalising both Boland’s death and Collins’ life.
Lynch is born on November 9, 1893, in Barnagurraha, Anglesboro, County Limerick, the fifth child among six sons and a daughter of Jeremiah Lynch, farmer, and Mary Lynch (neé Kelly). The family is politically active. His father’s brother, John, had taken part in the Fenian Rising of 1867 and his mother had been joint secretary of the Ballylanders branch of the Ladies’ Land League.
Lynch attends Anglesboro national school (1898–1909). In 1910 he moves to Mitchelstown, County Cork, to take up a three-year apprenticeship in the hardware store of P. O’Neill on Baldwin Street. He remains there until the autumn of 1915. While in Mitchelstown he is a member of the Gaelic League and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. He also joins the Irish Volunteers. In 1914, when that organisation splits, he does not immediately join the militant rump. He then moves to Fermoy, County Cork, where he works in the store of Messrs J. Barry & Sons Ltd. His move coincides with a period of inactivity as neither Volunteer faction is very active nor is he known. Consequently, he does not take part in the 1916 Easter Rising, but it is a turning point for him. On May 2, 1916, he watches as the Kent family are led through Fermoy, having been captured by British soldiers. Richard Kent dies from a wound sustained that day and Thomas Kent is executed a week later. Lynch becomes a committed Volunteer at this point.
Once committed, Lynch’s enthusiasm and aptitude ensures that he quickly attains positions of responsibility. From early 1917 he is first lieutenant in the small Fermoy company. In September 1917, the Irish Volunteers in east Cork are reorganised. Nine local companies are formed into the Fermoy battalion, and he is elected adjutant. In April 1918, at the height of the conscription crisis, he briefly quits his job to concentrate on organising the Volunteers. In May he is lucky to escape arrest during the sweep that accompanies the “German plot.” When the immediate danger ends, he returns to Barry & Sons.
In January 1919, at the beginning of the Irish War of Independence, the Volunteer organisation in Cork undergoes a major restructuring. Three brigades are established, and Lynch becomes brigade commandant of Cork No. 2. In April he visits Irish Republican Army GHQ in Dublin to discuss plans and to seek arms. It is a frustrating experience as the GHQ has few guns and are cautious about action. Throughout the summer of 1919 he presses GHQ to authorise attacks on British targets as a method of acquiring arms and to prevent boredom and stagnation setting in among his men. Finally, GHQ sanctions attacks if the primary aim is the capture of arms. In response, on September 7, 1919, twenty-five men from the Fermoy company, led by Lynch, ambush fourteen British soldiers on their way to service in the Wesleyan church in Fermoy. Fifteen rifles are captured, one soldier killed, and three wounded. Lynch is shot in the shoulder, probably by one of his own men. As a result, he has to leave his job and hides out in Waterford for a time. A series of arrests follow, among those is Lynch’s close friend, Michael Fitzgerald, who dies on hunger strike in Cork County Gaol in 1920.
Lynch spends the early months of 1920 at GHQ in Dublin. During this time, he is offered the position of deputy chief of staff, but turns it down, preferring to return to Cork. Although not an articulate speaker, he impresses those he meets. His organisational talents, attention to detail, ability to inspire, and intolerance for those who waste meetings endlessly discussing side issues, are noted. He has a low tolerance for politicians and at all times considers the military wing of the movement to be of primary importance. He is engaged to Bridie Keyes, but marriage is postponed pending a final settlement of hostilities.
On June 26, 1920, Lynch, Seán Moylan, and two colleagues capture Major-GeneralCuthbert Lucas while he is fishing on the Munster Blackwater. He gives a false name when he is arrested on August 12, 1920, at City Hall, Cork, with Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, and ten others. All but MacSwiney are released four days later. He then sets about organising a flying column within the brigade. Ernie O’Malley arrives from headquarters to train the men. This column achieves a major coup on September 28, 1920, when they briefly capture the British Army barracks at Mallow, leaving with a large booty of rifles, ammunition, and two machine guns. The British respond to this increase in activity and the war settles into a pattern of ambush and counter-ambush. The Mallow battalion suffers severe losses in February 1921 and Lynch himself narrowly escapes when four are killed during an encounter at Nadd in March 1921.
In early 1921 Lynch seeks to encourage greater cooperation between the various brigades in the south. Senior brigade officers meet on three occasions to discuss cooperation and a plan to import arms from Italy. The importation project fails, but the First Southern Division is formed on April 26, 1921, bringing eight brigades from Cork, Kerry, Waterford, and west Limerick together. He is elected divisional commandant, making him the most powerful officer outside GHQ. His influence is further increased by his appointment as Southern Divisional Centre and Supreme Council member of the clandestine Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in March 1921.
Lynch is wary when the truce is called in July 1921. He works hard to maintain order in his division and to achieve a state of readiness in case the negotiations fail. For him the Anglo-Irish Treaty is a failure. When the Supreme Council of the IRB meets on December 10, 1921, he is the only voice against the agreement. He is among the officers who insist that an army convention should be called to discuss the treaty, effectively asserting that the army no longer accepts a position subordinate to the Dáil. The army, he believes, is the army of the Republic, and no civilian body can order it to abandon the Republic. The provisional government tries to ban this convention, but it goes ahead on March 26, 1922, and elects an army executive. Lynch is elected Chief of Staff. Between March and June, he works hard to prevent a civil war. He believes unity can be maintained, even under the Treaty, if a republican constitution can be enacted. He also cooperates with Michael Collins in promoting Irish Republican Army (IRA) activity in Ulster. In his adherence to the idea of a republic, the practicalities of politics have little impact on his consciousness, and he is dismissive of the popular support for the Treaty. He is horrified at the thought of civil war but fails to see that his position is leading almost inexorably in that direction. Distrusted as too moderate by Liam Mellows and Rory O’Connor, he is locked out of the Four Courts for a time.
When the Four Courts are attacked, Lynch immediately leaves his headquarters at the Clarence Hotel to travel south. He is briefly detained, before reaching Kingsbridge Station, and has a meeting with Eoin O’Duffy. He is disgusted when Free State figures later claim that he was released, having promised not to take arms against the government. The most plausible explanation of the incident appears to be that O’Duffy interpreted Lynch’s comments, merely indicating disappointment that a war had started, as constituting a statement of intent not to involve himself.
Lynch’s initial actions seem designed to avoid full-scale conflict. He does not order an attack on Dublin, nor does he attempt to seize Limerick. He chooses a containment strategy, seeking to hold a line from Limerick to Waterford for the republican forces. This fails, as the government sends troops in from the rear by sea. The republicans have no urban base when Lynch abandons Fermoy on August 11, 1922. He continues to meet individuals who seek a way to end the war, but intransigence has set in, and he insists that armed struggle will only end with a republic or absolute defeat. As early as August many republicans believe the war is lost and urge a reassessment of tactics, but Lynch rejects all such calls. Operating from secret headquarters in Santry, he orders the shooting of pro-Treaty politicians in retaliation for the execution of republican prisoners.
Under war conditions it is impossible for the army executive to meet regularly, and this leaves Lynch in almost complete control. As the pro-surrender lobby grows within the republican forces, he delays a meeting of the executive, claiming with some justification that it is too dangerous. He leaves Santry and attends a meeting of the Southern Division Council in the last days of February 1923. Sixteen of the eighteen officers there tell him that the military position is hopeless. This forces the calling of an executive meeting on March 6, 1923. No agreement is reached. He strongly favours fighting on, but a motion from Tom Barry, calling for an immediate end to hostilities, is barely rejected. Another meeting is arranged for April 10. On that morning a group, including Lynch and Frank Aiken, suddenly find themselves in danger of capture in a farmhouse on the slopes of the Knockmealdown Mountains in County Tipperary. They flee and are pursued. During the chase Lynch is shot in the abdomen. It seems clear that he is shot by the pursuing Free State soldiers, although Irish historian Meda Ryan has considered the theory that he may have been shot by one of his own in order to remove the major stumbling block to surrender. His colleagues are forced to abandon him, and he is captured. Initially the Free State troops believe they have caught Éamon de Valera. He is taken first to a public house in Newcastle, County Tipperary, and then to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Clonmel, but dies from his wound at 8:45 p.m. that evening. His last request is to be buried beside Michael Fitzgerald in Kilcrumper Cemetery, Fermoy, County Cork. On hearing of Lynch’s death, Ernie O’Malley writes, “You who were a living force are now a battle cry.” O’Malley is wrong, however, as the peace faction within republicanism is strengthened by his death and Aiken orders the suspension of activities on April 27.
In 1935, a massive memorial, consisting of a 60-foot-tall round tower, guarded by four bronze Irish Wolfhounds, is erected at Goatenbridge, County Tipperary, near the site of his capture. It is unveiled on April 7, 1935. Separate annual commemorations are held at Goatenbridge and Kilcrumper. Three biographies have been written and the Liam Lynch memorial pipe band is based in his native Anglesboro. The Lynch family possess a substantial collection of private correspondence.
seamus dubhghaill 