Ireland in Travail

During our first months, September, October, and November, Ireland passed into a state of war. The country had been going there step by step, by way of raid and arrest on the on...

We stood shivering on the steps, and watched Himself and O’Grady climb into one of the lorries. Himself was wrapped up well enough; but I had a pang at the sight of O’Grady, who...

He went off, and when he came back he had left his coat and hat behind. He was given the best place by the fire, and was soon busy eating everything that was left.

Out of the whirlpool of lies, misunderstandings, prevarications, distortions, inaccuracies and passions which go to the making up of history, can one secure some of the causes a...

We did at last seem to be putting the winter behind, and like divers in a sea, to be coming out of darkness and cold. Spring did seem to be arriving. The sun shone, the days len...

September wore out; October wore out; November arrived. The long, unkind evenings of those months seemed a forcing ground for the terror, which was going about like a disease th...

As if the fury of those days were breeding them and putting them upon the streets, the shaking lorries increased in number; and the flying Crossley tenders swept by in the hunt-...

With the arrival of June a long dry summer made a beginning. The leaves were thick upon the trees, the birds had done their spring singing and were sending their families out in...

Our road came in for a spell of peace after the departure of the Minister of Propaganda. From time to time other houses up and down the way had been looked up by the Crown Force...

I took the tram back to College Green, and found the paper boys raising a great clamour there. The first of the Cork hunger strikers had died. As I left the tram and threaded th...

Now that an armistice had been signed, and Dublin was again the centre of affairs, my wife and I packed up at the end of the Orange celebrations and returned home. We arrived in...

Not everybody succumbed to the magic of those words, for O’Grady and I were led away to the left to a place which must have been a guardroom. The spell of the army was upon ever...

The concussion of the bomb nearly threw me off my feet. For a few moments I thought that I was hit. In a dream I could see people falling, and I realised that things were dartin...

Now that the height of the summer had come, and each day was hotter than the last, there began an exodus from Dublin of all who had opportunity, and among the speeding guests wa...

Mrs. O’Grady’s forebodings were to prove themselves only too true. The fatal evening came at the end of an April day when the Crown Forces made a great haul of propaganda in Mol...

We began to know by sight the people in the neighbourhood. A number of officers lived in one of the houses. Sometimes they were in uniform, and sometimes in mufti. They went out...

It was past eleven o’clock when I left my wife and wandered out of the hotel and across O’Connell Bridge. The tide was high, and something about the lights that lay upon the Lif...

I made my way across the great warm room towards the fireplace. Tea was progressing merrily, and I was soon seated with a cup in my hand, eating potato cakes hot from the kitchen.

In the wonderful August weather of 1920, my wife and I were in our London flat sighing for cooler places. The season had come to an end with less than its usual glory, and for d...

The officers met their ends in their beds, in their baths, at shaving. One and all were shot in cold blood, and, extraordinary to relate, no defence seems to have been made. In...

Himself was out; but I was not alone. Mrs. Slaney sat upon my sofa, and Mrs. Slaney smoked a cigarette, and once again Mrs. Slaney poured into my dulled ears the story of Irelan...

All along the platform were weary passengers and flashing lamps. A silk stocking slid to the platform from my suitcase. The stooping Customs man bumped his finger on a darning-n...

Sunday, November 21st, Himself and I went to Howth, and spent all day by the sea on that wild bit of foreland, which Dublin City has not managed to tame. It was getting dusk as...

As soon as Himself and I had had dinner, we went to look up 47’s wife. There was no time to waste if we were to get back before curfew. I was longing to see her after all this t...

Next morning Himself and I breakfasted early and went flat hunting. We went light-heartedly, not knowing what was before us. I had started with some idea of comfort and cleanlin...

“And why should they tell? Mike’s given the Government a long run for him sure enough, and faith they’re running still. But he’s dead and buried for all that under another name....

“I see you have ‘engaged’ on the door,” she said cheerfully, “but I must come in for a moment to tell you something. It’s very bad for you to sit writing like this, you should b...

“God save us!” Mrs. O’Grady exclaimed to Himself when she heard of the truce, and to this day I have not made up my mind whether the exclamation was one of hope or despair.

The flat had been imperfectly cleaned; the curtains had been imperfectly put up; the window-cleaner had not come, but was coming at some date known only to himself; the door loc...