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The following is the transcript of a talk given by Gerry Hanberry on the 23 August 2016 in the Central Library, Ilac Centre, Dublin 1.AudioWelcome to the Dublin City Public Libraries and Archive Podcast. In this episode, writer and poet Gerard Hanberry reveals the inspiration behind well-known Irish songs and ballads. Learn the often surprising, sometimes bittersweet but always absorbing stories of the real women who inspired some of the world’s finest love songs. Recorded in front of a live audience at the Central Library on 23 August 2016 as part of the Libraries' Heritage Week Programme.ModeratorWelcome to the Central Library and this afternoon we have Gerard Hanberry and he is a Renaissance man, author, poet, musician and he is going to be looking at his latest book today on 14 love songs, famous Irish love songs, and the women that inspired them.  His book ‘On Raglan Road’ will be out in September I think, isn’t it Gerry?GerardThe end of September yeah.ModeratorThe end of September and it will be on Amazon and in all of the book shops.  So without any further ado I’m sure you are dying to get going, can I introduce Gerard Hanberry.  (Applause)GerardThanks very much.So that’s the cover of the forthcoming book ‘On Raglan Road’, as you know called after the famous song, ‘Great Irish Love Songs and the Women who Inspired Them’.  This book brings together, might introduce my various activities.  I tend to have a very kind of compartmentalised world.  I’m involved in poetry.  I have four collections published and I’m also involved in music.  I’m involved in writing.  So this book sort of intersects all three I think, the lyrics and there’s a man, Kevin Maguire, I just want to name check him because he gave me a lot of help in researching.Some of the high points in the book would include the song ‘The Galway Girl’:I took a stroll on the old long walkOf a day -I-ay-I-ayI met a little girl ... or I met a pretty girlIs this fiction or fantasy?  Well the reality is it is true.  There is a Galway girl and I was lucky enough to be able to trace her and we’ll see her coming up now shortly.And the real story behind Nancy Spain as well is very interesting.  It’s not at all what you would imagine.  I often think of the people standing up and Christy Moore singing ‘I love you Nancy Spain’ and their hands on their heart, when they hear the real story (laughter) I’m afraid another Irish myth will be shattered.  (laughter)What I really enjoyed about putting the book together was speaking with the composers and the artists and the recording artists and all of that.  But very often little asides came out as well as their generosity and their honesty in revealing who the actual females were and in some cases they wouldn’t reveal it and told me ‘I don’t really want to be in the book.  I don’t really want to go back there’ for understandable reasons given their current relationships maybe.  So some people declined.  But there were a few little nice stories on the side.One of them was Mundy telling me as a young man of 19 and the girl that inspired his very first song which was used in the film ‘Romeo and Juliet’, the song is called ‘To You I Bestow’ and it was the night following her farewell party, she had to go back to the United States, she was an American here for a few years and he fell madly in love with her.  But he was in bed and as he said in this freezing cold house and the words came to him in the middle of the night and he didn’t want to get out of bed but he remembered Bob Dylan had said in some interview that very often your words will come in that moment between half sleep and half wake and no matter what happens you have to write them down.  So he told me how he got out of bed in this freezing cold house in the middle of winter and found a biro and wrote the words on the back of a Golden Pages phone book (laughter).  Yeah and that became his very first hit which set him on the road to success.  It was featured in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, as I say, and that album went on to sell 11 million copies.  So if he hadn’t got out of bed that cold ... if he hadn’t and said ‘Ah, I’ll think of it in the morning’ but you won’t think of it in the morning.So those little asides I really enjoyed hearing and one of the most famous songs in the whole world today is a song called ‘You Raise me Up’ and I’ll have a little surprise towards the end of the talk, hearing the actual story of how that came about and the inspiration for that.  I had another song by the same author ‘Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears’ about the same woman who came through Ellis Island but unfortunately we were cut down to 14 songs, 14 chapters, so that didn’t get through on this occasion and Mick Hanly’s great song ‘Past the Point of Rescue’.That’s the contents.  It begins back in the 1600s with an old ... you’ve often heard the cliché the 40 verses, well this has over 40 verses, Una Bhán, it’s an old Gaelic song from the 1600s, it tells of the love affair between Thomas Lauder Costello and a McDermott girl.  It’s a sort of a Romeo and Juliet story and it goes on and it goes on and it goes on and goes on (laughs).  But it’s a fabulous...The next chapter is ‘Danny Boy’, then ‘Down by the Sally Gardens’, ‘Gortnamona’ Percy French’s great love song set to music in the 1950s, he wrote the lyrics.  And then ‘On Raglan Road’ itself, the song that inspired me to write the book.  ‘Nancy Spain’ by Barney Rush.  ‘Sarah’, the story of Phil Lynott and his love for his daughter expressed in song, the tragic story of Phil Lynott.  I was listening to a local radio station during the Easter 1916 commemorations and the radio presenter came on and said “Now we’re going to play the song ‘Grace’ that was a big hit for Jim McCann in the 1980s written by Joseph Plunkett an hour or two before his execution in Kilmainham jail and I was saying to myself had he nothing better to do (laughter) than write a song a couple of hours before he was led out which of course the radio presenter had it all upside down.  The song was written in the mid 80s by Sean and Frank O’Meara who were ... and still are ... songwriters.  In fact Sean is the Head of the Advertising Authority at the moment and the song ‘Grace’ was written in response, as he told me, ‘The Fields of Athenry’ had been a great hit in the early 80s and I said to  myself ‘Surely, I could find some historical story to match ‘The Fields of Athenry’ and it took him months and months searching his mind but then he remembered a story he had been told in school about this girl who married one of the signatories of the Proclamation just hours before he was to be executed in Kilmainham.  So he wrote the song in the mid 80s ‘Grace’.  ‘Passed the Point of Rescue’ Mick Hanly’s great song of love, ‘The Voyage’ Johnny Duhan.  Frank and Walters ‘After all’, a great 90s song.  ‘Galway Girl’, Steve Earle.  ‘To You I Bestow’ by Mundy and ‘You Raise me Up’ by Brendan Graham.Okay, so I think what I’ll do is I’ll read the introduction to the book just so as you get a feel for it and then I’ll skip down and I’ll read a little bit of the chapter on Patrick Kavanagh.  So the book opens with an introduction and this is the introduction:It is evening and friends have gathered.  Conversation and conviviality abound.  Eventually somebody requests a song.  A reluctant member of the company known to have ‘a voice’ is identified and pressed to sing, hush descends, the singer grows in confidence as the spell takes hold.  Some listeners close their eyes while others hold hands and sway to the melody.  The song might tell of unrequited love or of loss and pain due to death or emigration or another lover.  The singer’s head is bowed now and the song concludes.  A moment of poignant silence and then the warm praise.  The bard, the poet, the musician, those people have always been held in very high esteem in Ireland.  Back in the old days of the Gaelic Order the poet or the file was a powerful individual and each chieftain had his own bard.  Writing in 1596 the English poet and Government official Edmund Spenser said poets in Ireland were, and I quote:“Held in so high request and estimation amongst them, that none dare to displease them for fear of running into reproach through their offence, and to be made infamous in the mouths of all men”.Many of us have tapped our feet to the Chieftains as the band performed an ancient tune by Turlough O’Carolan, the blind 17th century harp, and wondered who was it that could have inspired him to write such a beautiful melody.  Audiences still listen enthralled by Christy Moore as sings of ‘Nancy Spain’, a woman whose name continues to haunt the composer no matter where he wonders.  How often have we taken to the dance floor at the sound of the opening notes of ‘Galway Girl’ and wondered who the beautiful enchantress could have been.  A girl he said he met as he took ‘stroll on the old long walk of a day -I-ay-I-ay’ with her hair of black and her eyes of blue.  Maybe we’ve rocked to Thin Lizzy and wondered about Sarah who according to the song changed Phil Lynott’s world and who exactly was the beauty first seen by the poet Kavanagh ‘On Raglan Road ... whose dark hair weave a snare that I might one day rue’ and, by the way, since I started writing this the amount of women who claim to have been (laughs) the inspiration for Raglan Road is amazing really.  And people thought Kavanagh lived a quiet, sheltered life (laughter) but quite obviously not as quiet and as sheltered as we thought.Anyway, this book tells the story of all of those wonderful women, of great beauty and charm, who inspired poets and composers to write some of the world’s finest love songs.  It also provides information about the lives of the writers and explores the circumstances under which these beautiful songs and poems came to be composed.  So even though the book begins with the old Irish love song Una Bhán there, which was sung by Joe Heaney and (10.14 inaudible).I’m going to start by talking about Kavanagh ‘On Raglan Road’ because that’s the title of the book.  So again I’ll just read a few pages from that chapter.  So the chapter ‘On Raglan Road’ which is chapter 5 begins like this:It has to be one of the great iconic images of Irish folk music.  Luke Kelly, his eyes shut tight, chin up, head thrown back.  There he is.  And that flaming tangle of curly red hair so instantly recognisable.  In some still photographs he has his 5 string banjos strung around his neck and you just know he is delivering ‘On Raglan Road’ from deep in his heart.  Hearing Luke perform this moving song of unrequited love is a powerful and emotional experience.  Sadly Luke died in January 1984 at the age of 44 from a brain tumour but his voice lives on and so on.  His masterful interpretation of ‘On Raglan Road’ partly stems from the fact that he was personally invited to sing the song by the composer, the poet Patrick Kavanagh.  They met in 1964 by accident in The Bailey pub, a well known Dublin public house, and Kavanagh told Luke that he had a song for him and even sang him a few verses.  But it was 20 years before meeting Luke Kelly in the Bailey that Kavanagh appeared in the offices of the Dublin based newspaper The Catholic Standard and produced a sheet of brown lined paper from his pocket on which was written the lyrics of ‘On Raglan Road’.  Kavanagh was a columnist with The Catholic Standard at the time and his friend Benedict Kiely who also worked on the paper was able to recall in an interview years later that the lyrics were scribbled in pencil and the spelling was not very accurate (laughter).  Typical Kavanagh, yeah.  Patrick wanted to know if the verses could be sung to the tune of ‘The Dawning of the Day’.  So the two friends raised their croaking voices in a terrifying cacophony (laughter) and sure enough the rhythm and lines fitted perfectly with the old Irish air and that was in the mid 1940s.  ‘The Dawning of the Day’ is a very apt tune for Kavanagh’s poem because the original Gaelic lyric, known as ‘Fáinne Geal an Lae’, is a good example of what’s known as an Aisling or a vision poem.  So I go on and I talk about what an Aisling is.  He was bewitched by her beauty and tries to court her with gentle words but she rejects him and it goes on like that.  Kavanagh’s poem ‘On Raglan Road’ can be seen as a loose reworking of the old song ‘Fáinne Geal an Lae’ which is an old Aisling.  I’m jumping through paragraphs now.  And in Kavanagh’s version the poet sees a beautiful girl on Raglan Road and falls in love with her.  He knows that it’s impossible and that grief is as inevitable as the falling leaves in autumn but he is helpless because he has become enchanted.  He tries his best to win her using all his artistic talents but in the end she rejects him and he fears that she may have taken his inspiration with her as she departs down ‘a quiet street where old ghosts meet’.  Then I go in and I explain where the old air came from, the ‘Fáinne Geal an Lae’ was originally composed in a more complex form by the Sligo born harpist Thomas Connellan in the 17th century and the lyrics ‘Fáinne Geal an Lae’ were first published by teacher and writer Edward Walsh in his collection ‘Irish Popular Songs’ in 1847.  But it’s really Patrick Weston Joyce who published a much simpler version of the song known as ‘The Dawning of the Day’ in his collection of Irish airs in 1873 and it’s this version that we all know and some of us were tortured going to school (hums the tune) on the tin whistle.  Yeah so that’s the version, Patrick Weston Joyce’s version.I go on then and I talk about Kavanagh and a bit about his background.  He was born in Inniskeen.  Most of you know the story anyway so I won’t read it out, born in Mucker and I think it’s a fabulous name (laughs) for a place in which Kavanagh would have been born yeah, 1904.  A townland called Mucker.  He was the son of a small farmer and a cobbler and most of you know that story so.  He left school at 13 and went on to help his father with the land and (laughs) there is a great quote from his father, he was useless of course.  Kavanagh was useless at farming and at most things really except poetry and obviously talking to girls as well as we find out (laughs) but there’s a great quote from his father “You’ve broken every implement on the farm except for the crow bar and you’ve bent that” (laughter), so that about sums it up on his ability.  So he walked off down to Dublin, all the way from Mucker down to Dublin, and got to know to know some of the literati.  He went back and read as much as he could and eventually made his breakthrough and came to Dublin.  He left home.  He tried London for 5 months before settling in Dublin but he soon became disillusioned with the poetry world and the Dublin arts community.  In 1942 his long poem ‘The Great Hunger’ was published in The Horizon magazine and so on.  There followed a difficult period for Kavanagh as he tried to make a precarious living as a columnist and writing bits and pieces up around Dublin.  This was the first time he first saw the woman that would inspire him writing an ode.  He was working on  pros manuscript that would later be published in 1948, Tarry Flynn, a semi-autographical novel and it was banned for a while actually following publication so it must be good.  (laughter)So who was this beautiful enchantress?  Here is Kavanagh anyway in his middle years I suppose.  A fabulous photograph I think because it captures Kavanagh’s rural background, you know the little cottage and there’s something scholarly about him all the same and yet the fabulous rustic ... So this guy was 40 or 41.  The girl was Hilda Moriarty and when Patrick first set eyes on her she was a young student from County Kerry studying Medicine at University College Dublin.  She was 22 years of age at the time and is said to have been “one of the two most beautiful women in Dublin”.  I don’t know who said that now but it’s a great quote.  The other being Kathleen Ryan, star of the film ‘Odd Man Out’.  The year was 1944 and the poet was living at 19 Raglan Road boarding house run by Mrs Kenny, he was paying 10 shillings a week.  He had arrived in the capital from his farm in Monaghan 5 years previous.  He befriended the girl, brought her to tea, they met a lot.  Hilda was interested in him because he was a well known poet about town, a published poet, and she was very interested in writing and that.  She also felt he needed some encouragement at the time, he was a bit down, and she was doing Medicine because her father told her basically.  Her father was a doctor down in Kerry.  Now, Hilda was not in the least bit interested in having a romantic relationship with the much older man with his dishevelled appearance and his harsh Monaghan accent but Patrick saw things differently and he was badly in need of some excitement in his life at this time too.  He had recently lost his job as a columnist in The Irish Press and so on.  In an interview, RTE 1987, Hilda, who was still alive at the time, explains how she thought Patrick was quite old “at least in my eyes at that time he seemed quite old”.  She tells how she abraded him about Terry Flynn and writing about cabbage and turnips and potatoes and Kavanagh replied that he was a peasant poet and Hilda told him that he should write something else and she explains in the interview that this was the origin of writing good.  The young student and the older poet continued to meet regularly during 1944 and into the following year.  This is why she looked like.  They met in the Country Shop up in Stephen’s Green and in cafes in Grafton Street and deep down Kavanagh knew the relationship was doomed to failure and he afterwards wrote that “falling in love is more a suicide than an accidental death” (laughter).  But he was struck by cupid’s arrow and he couldn’t help himself.  He followed her down to Dingle one Christmas, made an eejit of himself down there (laughter) and of course wasn’t invited to the doctor’s house.  A total disaster.  But he got an article in a newspaper about it anyway so he got something out of it.Now, just a few points, in 1945 he brought Hilda with him on a visit to Dunsany Castle down in County Meath.  He wanted to meet Lord Dunsany.  He thought he would get him to become his patron.  He had other ideas as well bringing Hilda.  But if his intentions were to turn both the Lord and his young companion into succumbing to his wishes then the day was a complete failure.  But, he took Hilda for a walk through the castle grounds and there he saw bluebells growing beneath the trees and later Kavanagh wrote a poem on unrequited love inspired by the flowers and by his day out with Hilda in County Meath.  The untitled poem is now known as ‘Bluebells’ and it is sometimes known by its first line “The bluebells are withered now under the beech trees” and the importance of it is it prefigures ‘On Raglan Road’.  It’s not as good a poem at all as ‘On Raglan Road’ but it contains the idea that love is about a season like spring and that the use of nature imagery and the various specific locations.  So the poem ‘Bluebells’ is linked to the later and superior poem ‘On Raglan Road’ and we can see the poetic mind working towards something finer that will emerge when he comes to write his great song of unrequited love.  As the months began to pass after this Hilda began to find Kavanagh bothersome, to put it mildly.  He would show up ... I suppose nowadays we’d kind of call him a bit of a stalker maybe (laughter) but she’d be having coffee with her student friends in Bewleys or wherever it was and he would be over here looking over.  So she tried to shake him off a bit. There is a letter in the National Library – this is really good – which was sent by Kavanagh to Hilda dated 31st of May 1945.  It’s exactly what you would expect him to write.  It’s written shortly after their trip to Dunsany Castle.  It’s not a very diplomatic statement, nor is it an example of a perfect love letter.  It is, however, exactly what one might expect from the modern poet in his floundering attempts to come to terms with his emotional situation and his disappointment.  He was beginning to realise that this wasn’t going to work out as he had planned.  So he wrote her a letter – a few lines from it.“I am no longer mad about you (laughter) although I do like you very, very much.  I like you because of your enchanting selfishness” (laughter) and he goes on.  “Your friendship, our love or whatever it was, was so curious and so different.  There has never been and never will be another woman who can be the same to me as you have been.  (laughs)  I think it’s a perfect Kavanagh letter, you know putting his two big feet into it and yet redeeming himself sort of at the end.She wanted to make a complete break with him of course but his mother died and that held her back from making the break.  But in 1946 she met Donogh O’Malley, a newly qualified Engineer from Limerick, and much to Patrick’s distress they began seeing each other regularly.  Kavanagh even accompanied them on numerous dates. (laughter)  Donogh was confident that Kavanagh was not a rival.  (laughter)  He was now putting the finishing touches to the poem that would eventually become ‘On Raglan Road’ and it was published in The Irish Press in October 1946.  It was called ‘Dark Haired Miriam Ran Away’, that was the original name of ‘On Raglan Road’.  It was accompanied by a photograph of the poet which was very unusual at the time.  The poem became very popular in Dublin and it was sung at parties and that to the tune of ‘On Raglan Road’ after it was published in the paper in 1946.  It would be in the 60s before he produced it to the ballad here.  Anyway, ‘Dark Haired Miriam’, who was Miriam?  Well his brother Peter claimed that Miriam was his girlfriend (laughter) and that Patrick had stolen the name of his girlfriend and that was, again, quite in keeping with Kavanagh’s style.  In ‘47 Hilda married Donogh O’Malley and they settled down in Limerick.  She was now a qualified doctor and Donogh, as you know, went on to become a famous politician, he became Minister for Education and he is forever known as the man who introduced free secondary education into Ireland and free bus travel as well which changed the face of Ireland in a way.I’ll just skip to the end.  That was the end of the relationship and the song became a hit in the 60s and indeed it remains Kavanagh’s most famous song.  Donogh died suddenly in March 1968 following a heart attack after delivering a bi-election speech at Six Mile Bridge and Hilda ran for election but she didn’t get it.  It was very acrimonious.  Des O’Malley got it and it was a very acrimonious election.  Patrick married his long term companion, Katherine Barry Moloney, a niece of Kevin Barry, in 1967.  They had been seeing each other and were partners for many years but sadly he married in April and he died that November and Hilda sent a wreath to his funeral and she lived on into the 80s.  So that’s a potted ... a very quick version of ...Now, I want to jump forward to this is Brendan Graham.  A major figure in world song writing, I mean one of the major figures, and we’re lucky in Ireland to have him.  If ever a man should be honoured in his home country it’s Brendan Graham – author, composer, lyricist.  If he were in England he’d be Sir (laughs) or knighted or whatever.  If you know Brendan, ‘Rock and Roll kids’, does that ring a bell, yeah?  ‘The Voice’ and of course ‘You Raise Me Up’, a huge hit for Josh Groban in the US and around the world, Westlife as well yeah and played at all these historic moments.  I could go on and on.  It’s an amazing, amazing song.  It is the most popular song in the world today, ‘You Raise me Up’.  The facts and figures, I won’t bore you with them, they’re in the book but sold in its millions.  Million!  And used at historic moments – Olympics, Super Bowl.  It’s currently being used by Hillary Clinton for her election promotion video.  You all know the song yeah.  Now, it is possible to appreciate and interpret ‘You Raise Me Up’ in many different forms, in different ways.  The lyricist, Brendan Graham, regards his song as and I quote ... by the way, I want to thank Brendan Graham, he was so generous and honest and forthcoming and thoughtful about his inspiration for the song.  A signpost that people will read through their own particular frame of reference and according to their own particular needs.  He is happy if the song serves to elevate the milk of human kindness and he is not interested in determining how the lyric should be perceived.  What gives the song its power and what makes it universally popular is the fact that the listener is permitted to bring his or her own meaning to the worldview in the line ‘You Raise Me Up’.  So you bring your own meaning to the ‘You’.  For some, the ‘You’ might be a loving and supportive partner and therefore it’s a love song.  But for others it could be a song of praise and thanks for a parent or a teacher or a mentor and it’s been used for all these.  It might be addressed to a sibling or a grandparent or a coach or a preacher.  Others will interpret it as a sort of hymn of praise or a divine being.  The listeners make their own meaning.  As someone said to him ‘it’s a cross between a hit and a hymn’.  (laughter)  I think it’s a valid description of the song, it is too.  Brendan wrote the lyrics and he accepts all of those interpretations.  I quote him “I was aware of the ambiguity I created in the way I used the word ‘You’ in the lyric” he explains “but it is not simply a device to make the song universal, Brendan expands on his thinking behind the famous line ‘You Raise me Up’.  If I am raised up ‘to be more than I can be’ it is the person I love who loves me and through that person it is also something greater, an embodiment of the spiritual energy of the universe and the greater unknown”.  I think it’s a fabulous way of putting it – those are Brendan’s own words.  When pressed further, for the first time ever, in this book Brendan explains his source of inspiration for the song.  He was reflecting his own views that we are all ‘one with the moment’ – to borrow a line for another of his songs.  He first became aware of this idea by doing research for his novel.  Brendan is also a best-selling novelist, as if he hadn’t enough success to contend with, he is also an author as well as a composer, a lyricist.  This novel, ‘The Whitest Flower’, he was researching this among the indigenous people of South Australia’s Coorong.  These Aboriginal people “see humans and animals, plants and the land, as a conjoined part of one great whole” to quote Brendan, therefore they have a great respect for life and for the environment, for the sacredness of things.  This is all tied in with their idea of ancestors who still live in the sun and the moon and the sky and in the rivers and lakes and in the billabongs and in the very shape of the earth.  Brendan sees a parallel between the beliefs of Aboriginal people and Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Emerson’s notion of the super soul, that we are part of all the creation.  Some people that the ‘You’ in the line ‘You Raise Me Up’ refers to their God but as Brendan points out it doesn’t matter who you call God because it is the same God and if you are preaching to the creator but yet one with him or her or “the force that through the green fuse drives” as Dylan Thomas put it then the ‘You’ of everything is the same, it is at once both human and divine because we are all part of the divine.  Now that’s a bit deep for me to expound in a lecture but if you’re reading the book you can read back over that and it makes really profound and very good sense.  He wasn’t using the ‘You’ in the singular sense rather it was a plural or split meaning, it is the people around me who raise me up but because they’re also part of the divine and the one the ‘You’ is also ... so as I say he’s one of Ireland’s leading song writers, a top lyricist and I won’t go through all the awards and all about his life.Let me just go on a little bit about the song.  ‘You Raise Me Up’ was originally an instrumental called ‘Silent Story’.  It was composed by a Norwegian called Rolf Løvland of the Irish/Norwegian duo Secret Garden.  Some of you might remember that from the 1995 Eurovision Song Contest winner ‘Nocturne’.  Now, Rolf Løvland later came to believe that his musical composition was somehow incomplete, it needed a lyric, but it had to be the correct lyric, one that was in total harmony with the music that he composed.  So you’re familiar with the music (hums a tune), so there were no words to it.  So Rolf let the tune sit for a good while.  Sometime later Rolf Løvland’s musical partner, a girl called Fionnuala Sherry, the Irish violinist with the band, came across Brendan’s novel ‘The White Flower’ and was impressed by what she read.  The book tells the story of Ellen O’Malley, survivor of the Irish Famine and so on and she was inspired by the book and she somehow saw a link between the book and the story and the music that her musical partner had written.  Fionnuala passed the book onto Rolf and he was deeply moved by Brendan’s writing.  He saw a tenuous connection between the music he had written and his composition which was then called ‘Silent Story’.  In May of 2001 Fionnuala Sherry called Brendan and asked if he would be interested in meeting with Rolf and herself and have a listen to his composition side of the story with a view to writing a lyric to match the air.  They knew each other, having been introduced at the Eurovision in ’95 when the Secret Garden won.  Brendan was now working full-time as a novelist having secured a lucrative publishing deal but when he found out they were actually in Dublin at the time and staying close by he agreed.  Then Rolf and Fionnuala were confident that if anybody could hear the story in the music that Rolf was trying to tell in the melody it would be brilliant.  Brendan listened to a demo of Fionnuala playing the tune and he said very little.  He then went home and he set to work.  I’ll show you what he did.  By the way, the song became a huge hit all around the world, particularly in the USA for Josh Groban ‘You Raise Me Up’.  That’s Josh Groban here.  There is the ...You raise me up, so I can stand on mountainsYou raise me up to walk on stormy seasI am strong when I am on your shouldersYou raise me up to more than I can beYeah.  Now, just to go back.  They were confident that Brendan could do it.  He listened to the demo.  He then went home and he set to work.  The first thing he did was to brainstorm his ideas and jot them down on a scrap of paper.  (audience gasp) And there is the scrap of paper.  So that’s the very first moment that ‘You Raise Me Up’ appeared in the world, yes, and those original ideas on that sheet of paper turned up recently among his bits and pieces and he very generously sent me a copy which I can use in the book.  The title and most of the chorus you can see kind of emerges here and the title and most of the chorus emerged first, that same night, and Brendan called Rolf and Fionnuala over to his house.  He had the lyric written on a sheet of paper, Rolf saw the words ‘You raise me up so I can stand on mountains, you raise me up’ and he immediately said ‘Yes, these are the words, that’s the song’.So just the women behind ‘You Raise Me Up’ are Fionnuala Sherry who saw the link and maybe a fictional woman called Ellen O’Malley in the novel, yeah, and the world wouldn’t have what is, without doubt, at the moment probably the best known, probably the best-selling song as well.Now, as I told you I had a surprise for you, if Brendan doesn’t mind me pointing them out, Brendan is with us today and there he is.  (Applause)  He’s now embarrassed.Brendan GrahamI only came because I thought you might do a Paddy Kavanagh on me.  (laughter)GerardI’m sorry for putting you in the spotlight Brendan.  He is not a man who likes the spotlight in any manner or means.Now, how are we doing for time?  Not too bad.  All I can do now is go down through the images here and talk about them, yes.Let me see the next image here, yes, ‘Grace’, the story of ‘Grace’, everybody knows this, yeah, yeah.  And in fact I’ve been giving talks around Galway libraries on ‘Grace’ for the 1916 thing but it’s such a fabulous story behind the song.  I mean the song is a romanticised version of it. (Sings)Oh Grace just hold me in your arms and let this moment lingerWell, she arrived at the jail at 6 o’clock, having purchased an engagement ring herself in Grafton Street and went up and waited until 11.00.  Near midnight she was brought in to the little church there.  She was brought in to the little church in Kilmainham and Joseph Plunkett was brought down the steps in handcuffs and they weren’t allowed to speak or touch.  They could respond to the service, to the Mass.  She had recently converted to Catholicism.  After the ceremony he was handcuffed again and taken immediately away.  The place was full of soldiers and she was taken away by the local priest who had officiated.   She was lodged in the house, the local bell ringer’s house of that church.  That was about 1.30am.  She went to bed.  About an hour later a car arrived for her.  The Governor of the jail had sent for her again.  She was brought back to the prison and she was allowed 10 minutes with him in his cell.  The cell was full of soldiers and officers, packed tight.  A sergeant was put standing at the door with a stopwatch to time the 10 minutes to the second.  Again, they weren’t allowed touch but they were allowed speak but as she said later ‘we who had so little time to speak in our last 10 minutes couldn’t find anything to talk about at all’.  So he spoke about Pearse and the others who had been executed the previous morning and then she was ushered away and 3 hours later he was brought out and executed.  This photograph was taken a few weeks afterwards by a journalist who came over to interview her.  Now she was a prickly enough character.  It’s a very interesting story but I just don’t have time to tell it but notice she’s wearing a wrist watch, yeah, the height of fashion at the time.  So why is she holding a cat?  She wants the watch of course (laughter), yeah.  And the journalist was very surprised that a person didn’t appear around the corner.  That was taken out in Plunkett’s Mansion in Widows Weeds, she became the height of fashion.  But the story is fantastic.AudienceI’d like to say something if I may?GerardYeah?AudienceI think I’ve a few Christmas presents now sorted out.GerardOh thanks.  (laughter)  Yeah.  That’s great.  In a painting with William Orpen, the painter, painted in 1906 – the height of fashion, yes.  Again, she’s a very fashionable person.AudienceDid she ever re-marry?GerardNever re-married.  Never re-married, no.  Got very involved in the anti-treaty, ended up in Kilmainham herself for a year or so.  She was an artist.  That’s her cartoons.  She was a cartoonist, a caricaturist and no she lived a sad life enough.  Yes?AudienceWhy were they allowed marry in the first place?GerardWhy were they allowed to marry?  Yeah that’s a very ...AudienceWhy them above everybody else?GerardYeah that’s a very interesting question.  First of all, why did she call back an hour later?  It wasn’t because the Governor got sorry for her or anything.  It was because she was now his next of kin legally and they were allowed to marry ... it’s tricky enough.  They had planned to marry on the Easter Sunday of the Rising in a double wedding with Joseph’s sister and of course he couldn’t turn up because he was planning the Rising the following day but the bands had been read and everything had been ready to go ahead on Easter Sunday with their marriage and he had written to her saying ‘We could get marry by proxy?’ and there’s another ... I had to be delicate about this in the book ... when she went to the priest, the words, the phrase, she used was ‘We have to get married’ (laughter).  Now we in Ireland there’s (laughter) connotations around that phrase, yes, and in fact rumours abounded for years around that whole issue and when the Plunkett girl who did go ahead and got married that Easter Sunday came to write her memoirs which were in the National Library up until the end of the 1990s when they were published in a book, in a biography, edited by Ní Bhrolcháin in the early 2000s she clearly states that Grace was pregnant and had a miscarriage and it wouldn’t be worth mentioning at all, it would only be rumour and hearsay and not worth mentioning, except for the fact that she is very specific about it and that it was in her memoirs and now is published in the public domain.  But I was kind of delicate around it in the book saying that she was the only person ever who said that you know.  So all these feed into the reasons.The story of Grace is one of the highlights of the book.  When she was incarcerated herself she painted a ... she was an artist.  This is her cell and if you visit the prison now, Kilmainham, you can visit her cell.  Sadly, it’s exactly as she painted it but it was touched up in the early 60s but (laughs) it was touched up to such a degree that, for example, she didn’t ... different colours are used and it still gives us a rough idea but it’s a more romanticised version than the one she actually painted herself on the wall.Now, skipping on, ‘Danny Boy’, right.  I’m going to go through the remaining 10 songs (laughs) in 5 minutes, right.  ‘Danny Boy’, the story of ‘Danny Boy’ is really, really amazing.  It spans centuries and continents and has been the subject of much debate and all of that.  You divide it into the tune and the lyrics and the old tune could go back to Rory Dall O'Cahan, a blind harper in the early 1600s picked up in Limavady.  I’m really shortening this story now by a Jane Ross.  The story is she heard it being played by a fiddler.  She lived her and he played at the market across the road and she wrote down the music.  Sent it to Petrie, the great Irish collector of songs in his Irish love songs and therefore the tune was committed to paper at last.  But, there is a big difference really between the original Gaelic tune that is supposed to be the ancestor of what we now called ‘The Derry Air’ as played by and as written by blind Rory or Rory Dall O'Cahan and the tune that Jane Ross wrote down and sent to Petrie that he put down in his book.  The title ‘The Derry Air’ or ‘The Londonderry Air’ only appeared in 1894 when the poet Katharine Tynan set the words of her poem Irish Love Song ‘Would God I were the tender apple blossom’, set that to the melody, the melody that she found in Petrie’s book.  But, anyway the melody was fairly well known and that’s Jane Ross of Limavady who sent that melody that we know as ‘The Derry Air’ to Petrie who put it in his book and then it was taken and used by various artists.  It’s a very convoluted story but it’s a very interesting story because ... and just skipping forward, the next woman behind the story of ‘Danny Boy’ is Margaret Weatherly was the wife of the London doctor Edward Weatherly who in 1899 abandoned his practice and left England to find his fortune in San Francisco and later in Colorado in the Gold Rush.  She heard the tune being played, this Margaret Weatherly, and she knew that he husband’s brother, Frederick Weatherly, back in England, in Bristol, who was a lawyer but he was also a fabulous songwriter and lyricist, so she sent him the music.  So the music went across with the fiddlers from Ireland or maybe from Australia and this woman heard it in Colorado and sent it back to her brother and it was Frederick Weatherly ... he had never heard the tune ‘The Londonderry Air’ before but it so happened that he had the lyrics of a song called ‘Danny Boy’ already written and it required just a few alterations to make it fit perfectly, the melody that he’d received from his sister-in-law.  After the song and the air had been accepted by a publisher Frederick found that it had also been used by a person who grades and so on.  So the song ‘Danny Boy’ ... but here is the interesting thing and I kind of like picking holes in myths, the air that this woman, Jane Ross, wrote down is too polished.  It isn’t really a Gaelic air, it’s ... even though it has some links to the old blind harper’s tune it’s too polished.  But she was not a composer so somebody somewhere polished it up and this was fairly known practice at the time, that people who could read music and play the piano in the big house front room as it were would sort of polish up Irish traditional tunes and make them a little bit more classically orientated.  But Jane Ross never admitted where she got the tune but somebody had to have worked on it and this is what I say, a bit of digging and I found this.  Her talent was as a collector and a composer and the melody supplied to Petrie is of such high quality and of sentiment that it could only have been composed by someone of fine talent who had been classically trained but who was also familiar with the latest musical fashions of the time and Jane Ross was not these.  By a strange coincidence one person who possessed these exact credentials did exist and lived in Limavady at that exact time and only a stone’s throw from where Jane Ross lived.  His name was Edward Frederick Christian Ritter.  He was a Prussian born musician who was employed as a music tutor to the two daughters of the wealthy Alexander family.  They were landed gentry who lived on the outskirts of Limavady.  The Alexanders and the Ross family knew each other well and they belonged to the same social stratum.  The music teacher, Edward Ritter, was from a well known musical family.  He arrived from Alsace-Lorraine around 1848 and most certainly would have known Jane Ross in the small town.  Now, Ritter (laughs) fell in love with the daughter that he was teaching the music to, the youngest Alexander daughter, and the pair eloped in 1850.  They married in Middlesex in August 1850 and they saved for Australia where he made his fortune.  So could it have been this man who polished up the tune that Jane Ross had found up in the mountains?  Actually it was her brother that found it up in the mountains and the story of taking it up from the blind fiddler and sending it on to Petrie.  She sent it on to Petrie but it makes all the sense in the world that she didn’t want to say where she got it because of the scandal involved at the time with your man running off with the daughter.  (laughter)  Now, that’s my story and that’s the woman behind it and that’s the house in Limavady where she is now accredited to live.  It’s a much more complicated story than that, I have just tipped the top of the iceberg.  But that’s Frederick Weatherly who wrote the lyrics of ‘Danny Boy’ and loads of other lyrics (sings) ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem’, he wrote that s as well.Now, I’ll just go quickly through in the last 3 minutes.Johnny Duhan, the great song ‘The Voyage’, yes everybody loves that song.  It’s one of his great songs.  He told me who the woman was, and the whole story of it, it makes fantastic reading.  It’s a pure love song and a real love story.  There they are.  They’re married.  They are husband and wife.  They live together still (laughter) which is very unusual in the love songs in this book I  might add, they’re mostly either break-ups or unrequited love.  So the story of Johnny Duhan and ‘The Voyage’ is a fabulous story and Maureen, his wife, who has supported them all she became a Principal, a National School Teacher, and Johnny eventually made good as we all know. (laughter)The story of ‘Nancy Spain’, that’s Barney Rush, the man who wrote ‘Nancy Spain’.  It wasn’t Christy Moore, it was Barney Rush.  He died 2014 sadly.  He wrote also ‘The craic was 90 in the Isle of Man’, his two great songs.  ‘Nancy Spain’, the real ‘Nancy Spain’, that’s her.  ‘Nancy Spain’ was a woman journalist in England, upper class, famous in the 1960s for her feminist and lesbian risings.  So ‘Nancy Spain’ was an English lesbian journalist (laughter).  I told you I would surprise you.  (laughter)  That’s her.  He took her name.  He thought it was a perfect name for an Irish ballad.  He wrote the ballad when he was on 18.  Yes, he thought the name ‘Nancy Spain’ was fabulous.  It was in all the tabloids at the time.  She was killed in an air crash going to Aintree to cover the Grand National and he knew nothing about her but the headlines.  And imagine his poetic sensibility at 18 to know that that name would resonate forever.  But the real ‘Nancy Spain’ there she is.  ‘Nancy Spain’ could be used in our next gay pride march.Now, Phil Lynott, a beautiful painting by Fitzpatrick, Jim Fitzpatrick, yes, of the tragic Philip in his garden with Caroline, Sarah and Cathy.  So the book tells the sad story of Phil Lynott’s life and his brief happy and unhappy marriage to Caroline, Crowther’s daughter, the comedian, Leslie Crowther, yeah, and Sarah the daughter.  His grandmother was also called Sarah.  He wrote two songs ‘Sarah’ – one was on the second album ‘Shades of a Blue Orphanage’ and the Sarah in that song is his grandmother.  He was sent by his mother from England as a boy to live with his grandparents because his mother couldn’t support him.  She had become pregnant and she kept him with her for a few years but eventually the pressure of having a black child in England at the time, just in the post war era, it was too much.  So the whole story of Phil Lynott is one of those great rise and fall stories.  It’s really tragic and an enormous amount of skeletons in the Lynott closet and back in Galway where I come from a great sculptor there, Macdaragh Lambe, recently discovered he was actually Phil Lynott’s son through DNA and all of that.  Everybody had been telling him for years he looked so much like him.  He got tested and it turned out he was and his mother Philomena, a very nice woman, I mean a lady, but she admits herself she may have been rather naive at the time she had Philip, and held on to him, but she had two other children as well and she gave them up for adoption.  But they recently found her.  So the chapter on Sarah is very interesting.  There they are on their wedding day – that’s baby Sarah now:When you came in my life you changed my worldMy SarahYeah.  So that was just before they jetted off to Buenos Aires on their honeymoon and Leslie Crowther (laughs) you know he was English and I don’t know how he felt about having his daughter marry a black Irish man but his quotes are jokingly recorded at the wedding.  But Philip’s mother is still alive and a gracious woman and I met her a few times, she says he was the kindness, most gracious man ever.  But if you hear some of the quotes from his wedding speech, you know ‘he asked me for my daughter’s hand and I said “Why not?  Haven’t you had everything else?” and so on (laughter) but he was a comedian so.  There I am talking to Philomena and looking at Philips book of poetry.  That’s him as a young fella in Crumlin growing up.  That’s his grave, sadly, he ended there in 1986, 4th of January he died.The story of Sally Gardens, everybody thinks it’s about Maud Gonne, it’s not. It’s inspired by two other ladies.  That’s the Una Bhán where the both of them were buried out in the island in Lough Key and two trees grew up out of the graves and intertwined and I just happened to come upon a fine photograph in a photographic exhibition and got the rights to publish it because I thought it told the story perfect and it goes with the chapter.Now, that’s the ‘Galway Girl’ in real life.  Her name was Joyce Redmond and she is from Howth. (laughter)  Another myth shattered but she lives in Galway and her parents, her mother at least, was from the Aran Islands and she lives in Galway now and is a musician and was fond of the arts and it’s one of the great selling points of the book.  Don’t tell anyone, you’re sworn to secrecy that this is the ‘Galway Girl’.  Percy French, the sad story of Percy French in Gortnamona, his wife Ettie died after ... she was only ... he married her at 19, he was in his 30s.  He loved her deeply.  They got on really well.  But she died in childbirth when she was 20.  (audience gasp)  So all his humorous songs, all his fabulously witty songs and all that, but he’s also extraordinarily poignantly sad lyrics you know:Now if you go through the woods of Gortnamona,You hear the raindrops creeping through the blackthorn tree.But oh! it is the tears I am weeping, weeping, weeping,For the loved one that is sleeping far away from me.And it’s Ettie.  Ettie Armitage-Jones whom he married and she died in childbirth and that’s who Gortnamona is about.  So she’s the woman behind that.Mick Hanly told me the story of ‘Past the Point of Rescue’, one of the great songs and exactly who it was, his first wife he married.  She was 18, he was 28.  Then he took off on a mad world tour playing music thinking the marriage would work out.  I’m afraid, as I said, one of the few happy marriages was back ... who was it?  Johnny Duhan, yeah, yeah.The Frank and Walters, I just don’t have time to go into it.  Mundy, as I told you, the story of the inspiration for his book and saying goodbye to the girl and writing the lyrics in the middle of the night and the ‘Raglan Road’ and that’s it.  (laughs)(Applause) Thank-you for listening to the Dublin City Public Libraries and Archive Podcast. To hear more, please subscribe on iTunes or SoundCloud. You can also visit our website - dublincitypubliclibraries.ie and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

The following is the transcript of the talk given in Rathmines Library on 25 August 2016 by Tessa Finn on the extraordinary exchange of love letters between her grandparents which took place during the turbulent year of the Rising.

The following is a transcript of 'The Queen's Theatre', a talk by Cecil Allen in Pearse Street Library on 24 August, 2016.

"Dublin Remembers 1916" has been an extensive series of lectures, talks by expert historians, exhibitions and conferences in Dublin libraries, City Hall, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane and other venues in the city throughout 2016.

Kildare is a county that is steeped in rich culture from the horse racing fields of the Curragh to the beautiful canals that flow through villages and towns like Sallins and Athy.  The Grand Canal is an ideal place for activities like angling, boating, canoeing, sailing and rowing, the banks of the canal are very popular for walking and cycling. There are many former churches and castles dotted around Kildare that add to the scenery of this fine Irish county.St Patrick’s College Maynooth (below, click image to view larger version) was founded in 1795 as a seminary for the education of priests and by 1850 had become the largest seminary in the world.  The Bishops began to look for a site and it was desirable that the college be near Dublin.  This seminary was urgently needed because in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it had not been possible to educate Catholic priests in Ireland.  The chapel, built by public subscription, was initiated by Charles W. Russell, President from 1857 to 1880.  St Patrick’s College also has a university as part of the campus.  Thousands of students from the four corners of Ireland and abroad attend the university each year.Naas Courthouse (below, click image to view larger version) was constructed in 1807 to a design by Architect Richard Morrison, it was extended in 1860 when the four columned portico was positioned as it is today.  The Naas Courthouse was the original meeting place of the Poor Law Guardians who held their monthly meetings as did their successors Kildare County Council, from 1899 until the building was badly damaged by fire in the 1950s, which caused them to move to St. Mary’s.  The Criminal Courtroom was the setting for many films, due to its remarkable resemblance to the Old Bailey in London.Theobald Wolfe Tone one of the leaders of the 1798 Rebellion, was a leading figure in the United Irishmen Irish Independence movement and is regarded as the father of Irish Republicanism.  After his death he was buried at Bodenstown, Kildare in 1798 near to Sallins where his family had a farm (below, click image to view larger version).The Japanese Gardens (below, click image to view larger version) were devised by Colonel William Hall Walker, a wealthy Scotsman from a famous brewing family, the gardens were laid out by Japanese master horticulturist Tassa Eida and his son Minoru.  Their aim was, through trees, plants, flowers, lawns, rocks and water, to symbolise the ‘Life of Man’.  That plan was completed to perfection and Eida’s legacy is now admired by the 150,000 visitors who soak up the peace of the gardens every year.In conclusion Kildare is a great place for either a short visit or holiday and Kildare also has a good transport network. From my work scanning the photographs I noticed that bicycle and horse and cart were popular forms of transport in the 1950s. Click images below to see larger versions. . The Fáilte Ireland Tourism Photographic Collection was donated to Dublin City Library and Archive.  The black and white negatives and colour slides date from the 1930s until the 2000s, they give a significant amount of visual information about Kildare throughout the decades.About our Guest BloggerThis blog post was submitted by Deirdre Coleman while on work experience in Dublin City Library and Archive, October 2016. 

In this podcast, architects Klaus Unger and Stephen Kane present a history of Dublin City's main thoroughfare, O'Connell Street, formerly named Sackville Street. Hear about the unique design features of some of its famous landmark buildings and the stories behind them.  Klaus and Stephen outline the origins of O'Connell Street area as it evolved from the tangle of medieval Dublin, before discussing the influence of the Wide Street Commission, Lord Gardiner, and renowned architects Edward Lovett Pearce, Richard Cassels, Gandon and Francis Johnston (Nelson's Pillar).

In the early years of the 20th century, the Great Southern and Western Railway was the largest railway system in Ireland and it was a significant employer in Dublin.  In this talk, Mary Muldowney looks at aspects of the lives of Dubliners who worked for the GS&WR, from the turn of the century to its reinvention by the Dáil in 1925.  Mary looks at working conditions, pay, pension and industrial action, focusing especially on the lives of those who were engaged at the lower levels of the pay scales, men and women who were completely dependent on the railways.  At a time of political, economic and social upheaval jobs on railway were highly prized, as they were relatively stable and often came with accommodation.

On 1 October 1916, just five months after the Rising, Ireland relinquished its individual time zone and adopted Greenwich Mean Time. With the introduction of daylight saving and the end of summertime that year Dublin’s time was aligned to that of London.Right: Time (Ireland) Act 1916 (click to view larger image)For 36 years Ireland’s time was set on the longitude of Dunsink Observatory, and was 25 minutes 21 seconds later than Greenwich. This had implications for trade and commerce, as well as communications and travel. Up to the late 19th century time was not standardised and each area set its own clocks. The Time Act of 1880 established Greenwich Mean Time for Great Britain and Dublin Mean Time for Ireland.The Time (Ireland) Act 1916, which came into effect on the night of 30 September 1 October as all clocks were put back 35 minutes, streamlined the time zones, and Ireland adopted Western European Time, set on the Greenwich meridian. Many in the nationalist movement saw this as a further erosion of Ireland’s ability to make decisions for itself. However, after Independence, the question of the time zone was not revisited. With this act Ireland was brought into the standardised time zones which were effective across Europe.About The Reading RoomThe Reading Room is located on the first floor, Dublin City Library and Archive, 138-144 Pearse Street, Dublin 2. It is open from 10am to 8pm Monday to Thursday and from 10am to 5pm on Friday and Saturday, and does not close for lunch. A Research Card is available, please enquire at the Issue Desk. 

The following is a transcript of "Elizabeth O’Farrell, The woman with the white flag"  a talk by Ian Kelly, grand-nephew of Elizabeth O’Farrell, at Dublin City Hall on Monday, 25 April 2016.AudioWelcome to the Dublin City Public Libraries and Archive Podcast. In this episode Ian Kelly talks about his great-aunt Elizabeth O'Farrell, her role in the 1916 Rising, her work as a midwife in Holles Street and her legacy. Listen to 'The Tricolour Ribbon' sung by Antoinette Heery, to Ian reading Liam Mac Uistín's poem "We saw a vision", and to Divisional Librarian Anne-Marie Kelly performing her original vignette 'Elizabeth Looks Back'. Part of a seminar held in Dublin City Hall on 25 April 2016.Firstly, on behalf of all our family, I’d like to say many thanks to Dr Mary Clark from Dublin City Library and Archives for organising and inviting us, all of the family of Elizabeth O’Farrell, here to this fantastic venue today.  I’d also like to thank the Lord Mayor of Dublin Críona Ní Dhálaigh for receiving us here at the City Hall on behalf of the people of Dublin and finally I’d like to thank Elizabeth D'Arcy for the magnificent work on restoring and conserving the Proclamation donated by our family.  So thank you very much one and all.  (Applause)Just regarding the Proclamation, I think it’s the most important words that were ever put to paper in Irish history.  When Pádraig Pearse wrote this with the help of Connolly and made it so inclusive for everybody it was so far reaching, ahead of its time, and even at that time. It’s a magnificent piece of work and it’s great to hear that this Proclamation that we have for the people of Dublin will last forever.  So hopefully future generations will read it and take on board what it says and especially in the last few years, the way country is moving forward now.  Rather than looking back all the time I think a Proclamation will always be ahead of its time so and it’s interesting to note, I just copped this in the last few days while reading it and studying it that Ireland to me always was feminine, she’s regarded as ‘she’ and its mentioned 12 times in the Proclamation, the word ‘she’ and ‘her’.  So Pearse was obviously well aware of the inclusiveness and the fact that women were equal and obviously if not more important than men.  We really only sit in the background maybe, the women run the show.  So this confirms that and it was highlighted by Yeats in his play ‘Cathleen Ní Houlihan’ which he wrote in 1902 and staged in the Abbey and this, again, was before the Rising so they obviously knew, this Gaelic Movement, that women had a really important role to play coming forward in the Rising.  And they are just the few words I wanted to say about the Proclamation.  We are absolutely delighted that this was found and restored and we always knew our family would have given away things all the time.  They would have given ... Joseph Plunkett’s suit was given away.  The stuff – you touched on it earlier Mary – people didn’t hold onto things.  They weren’t materialistic like today but it was great that it is there and it’s preserved for all time.So moving on to the main act today which is Elizabeth O’Farrell.  Firstly, I’d like to introduce Antoinette Heery who is a friend of mine.  Not unlike most people in Ireland and in Dublin, Antoinette would have a connection as her grand uncle James Heery was in the GPO with Elizabeth during the week of the Rising.  So Antoinette is going to sing us a song now and it’s a song that would have been heard in our home McGuinness Square which was Elizabeth’s sister’s house and most Sunday nights we would gather there and this song was mostly sung in the house and it’s called ‘The Tri-coloured Ribbon’.Antoinette Heery: And please join in the chorus if you know it.  I’m sure a lot of you do. (Singing)  (Applause)Thanks Antoinette, that was fantastic.  So I’m just going to move on to the story of my Great Aunt, Nurse Elizabeth O’Farrell whom we all know was the woman in this iconic photograph with the leader of the Rising, Padraig Pearse, at the moment of surrender to General Lowe, Commander of the British Forces in Ireland.  I am often asked how she came to be in this position.  Well, I want to share with you the life behind this woman.So Elizabeth was born in City Quay in Dublin on the 5th of the eleventh, 1883.  Her father was Christopher Farrell and her mother was Margaret Farrell née Kenna.  She had one sister Bridget who was our grandmother.  She was christened Elizabeth Farrell without the ‘O’ which was purposely dropped.  This was quite common at the time as a way of avoiding ethnic description in a country that was rife with it.  This was her father’s second marriage.  His first wife was a Mary Connolly and he became a widower when Mary died.  Mary was from Lower Mount Street and Margaret was from City Quay so he kept his courtships to the local area.  (laughter)  He didn’t marry anybody from Ringsend.  (laughter)  Sorry Ann.  (laughter)So Elizabeth in her formative years attended school at the Sisters of Mercy on Townsend Street along with her best friend, Julia Grennan, and Julia would have been known to all of us in our family as our Aunt Sheila.  She was the Aunt Sheila.  Sheila was from nearby Lombard Street and would remain Elizabeth’s best friend throughout her lifetime and the two of them quickly became inseparable as they both developed a love of the Irish language and Irish culture from quite a young age and in fact they were listed as fluent Irish speakers on the Census of 1911 which was highly unusual.  They both became members of the Gaelic League and Inghinidhe na hÉireann which they joined in 1906 and that had been founded by Maud Gonne, and the attempt of this organisation was to help promote all things Irish – as in Irish products, the language and the culture – and at the heart of the Movement was also Irish independence and a right of women and children which years later were also at the core of this Proclamation we see here today.Her father, Christopher, died in 1907 when she was still relatively young and out of necessity she took a job in Armstrong Printers on Amien Street.  So at this stage of her life, along with Sheila and many members of her family – including both my grandmothers – she became very Republican in her thinking.  Many years later she said that her Republicanism was already in her soul at the age of 16.  I really believe this was fostered by an era where there was no TV, no internet and probably more importantly no pubs open on Sundays so that meant that people could gather – families could gather – together, sing songs, tell stories and talk about, more importantly, politics and freedom.  All of these feelings of Republicanism and rebellion were fuelled by the poverty and deprivation in Dublin that was particularly prevalent among the Catholic lower or classes and at that time Dublin was the second city of the Empire but was also widely acknowledged as the biggest slum in Europe.  So the only way out for most local boys and men was down to the Docks or join the British Army.  So it was around this time, 1913, that the Irish Volunteers were founded as a direct counter to the UVF that had been formed in the North to fight Home Rule.So Elizabeth joined Cumann na mBan on its foundation in 1914.  Initially 250 women joined the Movement and they came from all sections of society with no discrimination but had one common goal and that was Irish freedom.  They actually considered themselves to be the women’s section of the Irish Volunteers.  Their agenda was to fight alongside the men in the struggle for freedom and during a Rising, if and when it came about.  So like all women in the Movement, Elizabeth would have been trained in the use of fire arms, transport of weapons, dispatches to the Volunteers and nursing and this training was overseen by Countess Markievicz and the great doctor, Dr Kathleen Lynn.  Cumann na mBan was also heavily influenced by the Suffragette Movement in its desire to further the rights of women to vote, hold political sway and improve social conditions for the underprivileged and especially for the children of that time.  So this would manifest itself later in the wording of the Proclamation.  In this respect, their biggest ally among the future leaders of the Rising was James Connolly, given that the backdrop to this was the devastating effect that the 1913 lockout had on the working classes.  It also must be remembered that the generation of the time still had first hand family experience of the Great Famine and all its awful consequences as well as a view, a strong view, that the ruling British were to blame.  All of this led to an immense cultural, socialist and patriotic revival which already had led to the formation of many bodies like the GAA, the Gaelic League and the Trade Union Movement. (Music) Thanks Shay.  (Applause)  Go raibh maith agat Shay.So now to the Rising.  So in the build up to 1916 Europe was in turmoil and without doubt the British focus was elsewhere as they fought a devastating and horrific war on the European western front.  In fact the events of the Great War and the total disregard for human life, particularly for the foot soldiers, probably influenced the subsequent decision to execute the leaders of the Rising.  At this time Home Rule agenda was gathering pace leading to tensions between the southern Catholics and the northern Protestants and it’s possible to believe Home Rule could come about and it could have led to a civil war in Ireland.  So even though there wasn’t a general ground swell of support from the general population the rebel leaders believed that this was the right time to strike for freedom and in the build up to hostilities it must be remembered that communication methods were still pretty basic and given the number of informers that had always been the bane of the Movement this was quite dangerous.So on the eve of the Rising Elizabeth was dispatched by Eoin MacNeill who was originally asked by the IRB to lead the forming of the Irish Volunteers and she was ordered to Galway to inform the Volunteers that the Rising was cancelled and little did she know that Pearse himself had countermanded these orders and was intent on proceeding with the Rising.  So when she got back to Dublin and realised what was happening she headed straight to the GPO along with the other women Volunteers and she set about nursing and feeding the soldiers.  So later in the week as the fighting intensified Pearse ordered all the women to vacate the building except for Elizabeth and two others – Winifred Carney and Julia Grennan.  In fact, they actually refused to leave the building, the GPO, and he couldn’t persuade them otherwise so they remained there until it became futile as the GPO was in ruins and the order was given to evacuate the building.  So they then left the side of the building onto Henry Street with Connolly on a stretcher and under heavy gunfire, with the remaining Volunteers, they made their way down the laneways to 16 Moore Street.  So they witnessed some horrific things, sights, actually on that journey down the laneways.  For instance, there was a young girl called Bridget McKane, she was aged 15, and she was shot dead at her home on Moore Street and she was killed by a bullet that pierced her forehead which had already passed through her father’s shoulder and right lung and Padraig Pearse himself, on hearing what happened, said ‘My God I’m sorry this happened, what can we do?’ and it was also on this journey that The O’Rahilly lost his life.So under siege and after another 3 people bearing white flags coming down the laneway of Moore Lane Pearse decided enough was enough.  So in number 16 Moore Street when they broke through all the buildings, and people would be very familiar now with it, they called it mouse-holing through the different buildings and they decided to hold the Council of War there.  So the women were actually set aside to the other room with Julia, Winifred and Elizabeth and the Rising was then going to be called off and this is probably one of the most significant parts of the week.  It probably is the most significant part.So Pearse knew all along himself that the Rising was going to be, in his own words, ‘a glorious failure’ and he needed a trusted Volunteer to approach the British position and offer a conditional surrender.  So the trusted Volunteer was Elizabeth and it’s remarkable because he didn’t pick any of the other Volunteers – the male Volunteers – he went straight for Elizabeth and I think he was making a massive statement to the British that he wanted a woman alongside of him to do this.  So Elizabeth, at 12.45 on Saturday the 29th of April, under heavy fire she approached the British position waving a white handkerchief and with a great deal of good fortune made it to the commanding officer.  So this commanding officer was at the bottom of Moore Street and behind him was all guns pointed down Moore Street, actually where The O’Rahilly was killed.  So they were still firing as she was making her way up that street so she was quite brave to do what she done, like it was amazing how she actually made it up to the barricade and then the officer at the barricade he was flabbergasted that a woman should be in this position and announcing herself as a Volunteer which in no uncertain terms she did announce herself as a Volunteer.  And at first they assumed she was a spy and they removed her Red Cross Insignia and detained her around 2.25pm that afternoon and they said to her ‘Go back to Pearse and tell him there will be no terms and that only an unconditional surrender would be accepted’ and she was also instructed that Pearse was to come with her to the position at the corner of Moore Street and Parnell Street to surrender to General Lowe.  She followed the instructions and at 3.30pm General Lowe received Commandant Pearse and Elizabeth at the designated point leading to this now immortal picture we see here which, for the purpose of newspaper reporting, was unfortunately doctored to remove part of her image.  At this time General Lowe asked that Elizabeth be the one who delivered Pearse’s surrender orders to the various rebel garrisons around the city and she being Pearse’s comrade, for want of a better word, she asked him would that be okay with him and he said yes he agreed that it would be.So in the hours after surrender Elizabeth continued her role as a dispatcher delivering those surrender orders to the rebel garrisons.  So she made her way around a lot of the city still in danger of being shot because a lot of confusion was going on and how she survived it is a miracle.  So all the deliveries went off and she finally needed to get to Boland’s Mills where de Valera was the officer in charge and on the way she came under heavy fire and I live in the area where this shooting took place, it’s on Grand Canal Bridge, and I work between Grand Canal Bridge and my house – I walk it every day – and on this way to Boland’s Mills a man just beside her was running alongside her and he was shot in the back, a fatal injury to himself.  So indeed it is a miracle that she survived.  So when she got to de Valera of course he refused to take the order unless it came from Commandant MacDonagh and it’s no surprise that he wouldn’t take the order from a woman you see.  So she had to track (laughter) ... so we all know the story there.  So she had to go back to town and return with MacDonagh’s orders.  In fact she didn’t get back down with the orders.  MacDonagh delivered the orders back to de Valera himself and I think that instilled, in later life, when talking with the family she had a high disregard for de Valera.  She didn’t put him up on the pedestal that people thought of de Valera and she obviously had a lot of her own reasons for that you know.So after all the dispatches were delivered and the Volunteers had surrendered she was subsequently removed to Kilmainham Jail where despite previous assurances by General Lowe she was strip searched, had all her possessions taken from her and was treated as a prisoner in the true sense of the word.  So when she protested she was told by a British officer ‘Don’t be silly, sure we know for a fact that you shot 6 British soldiers’.  So it’s remarkable that the General and his commanding officers recognised her bravery and the role that she had played even though she was clearly a committed Volunteer and as a result the General kept his word and she was released from Kilmainham Jail and all her possessions were returned.  So when we were growing up and you’d talk about what actually happened among the family it was agreed that General Lowe actually was a gentleman.  So in terms of the bigger picture of the rebels and the war itself, everybody liked to behave properly in the situation they found themselves in.  So even, for instance, when I heard yesterday that the guys who took the tram into town he paid for 52 tickets, he didn’t just hijack the tram and left it an IOU (laughter) so they were very careful ... say even if they took food from a shop they’d leave an IOU in the shop so everybody got fixed up later on.  So it’s remarkable how they went about their business and behaved properly.And as a footnote to this release from Kilmainham Jail she actually had in her possession £13 in gold coins which was given to her by a young Volunteer and this was this young man’s wedding fund and he was in lodgings and he took the money, the gold with him – the gold coins, to the Rising on Easter Monday rather than leave it in the lodgings he actually gave it to Elizabeth to mind for him.  So in many ways they were simpler times and this is the way the people behaved which was amazing.So I want to move on now to the famous airbrushed iconic photograph and there are many theories as to why this photograph doesn’t show her more clearly but two in particular are most believable.  Firstly, is Elizabeth’s own account when she stated that she wanted to get out of the way as not to detract from Pearse at that historic moment.  And the second accounts for the airbrushing which is believed happened so that Irish men fighting in World War I wouldn’t be stirred against the British by photographs of Irish women fighting for Irish freedom at home.  I think there is so much speculation on the photograph I would actually go with the latter but we might never know the reason.  She wasn’t a very extroverted person.  She was very introverted but I do believe the way she was positioned and the way she was airbrushed was done by the British not to show her in her true light as a rebel as well as a Volunteer.  So post Rising as they say the rest is history.  The execution of the leaders became the most potent weapon in driving public opinion in the formation of a Republic.  So this was Maxwell, we’d all be well aware, there was two Generals, there was General Lowe and then he was replaced by General Maxwell.  Maxwell came over from Britain and had experience all over Asia etc., as a General so he would be the type of guy who would have ... when I think of the young Volunteers that crossed Mount Street Bridge, the Sherwood Foresters, he sent them over the bridge because they were large in numbers and Malone and Darcy who were positioned on Northumberland Road, there was only two of them and they picked off 200 young soldiers and these young soldiers though they were in France but it just gives you an insight into the way this Empire worked with their young foot soldiers.  They were willing to sacrifice 200 young lads over the bridge, they get shot, 30 of them are killed and their bodies, I’ve heard from a funeral director in town – is Nichols Funeral Directors – they say that in their records that they actually placed the bodies in the laneway behind Northumberland Road and the bodies were then taken by the undertakers to Glasnevin and as well they were also placed in a massive grave.  So there was no real regard for ... they were cannon fodder basically.So getting back to Elizabeth and the Women’s Movement, nothing changed as they continued as before with their struggle for freedom.  The revolution had to begin again after the Rising and sadly this was a different revolution and in Elizabeth’s eyes and in most of the women’s – I’d say 100 per cent of the woman in Cumann na mBan – the focus now was Anti Treaty.  So in reality these strong willed women were ‘never going back to the kitchen sink’ as Elizabeth herself was quoted as saying, the war wasn’t over.  But in fairness to them, they had won major victories for the poor and for women’s rights.  So, for example, in 1921 women won the right to vote in Ireland a full 7 years before their British counterparts which was an amazing achievement.  It’s small if we look at it nowadays but at that time it was an amazing achievement.So Elizabeth herself then returned to normal life, if you could say it was normal life.  She still was very active in the background during the War of Independence and post Treaty.  But she had a lifelong ambition to have an education and become a Midwife.  So in early 1921 she started her training in Holles Street Hospital and she passed her basic exams with a 69 per cent score and was described by the matron as ‘a fair nurse with a fair education’, right, so that was quite funny at the time.  I suppose matrons being matrons that’s the way they were.  But before I move on regarding the matron, I just want to go back to Holles Street itself, the hospital, the family – we were invited to Holles Street there just 3 weeks ago by the Master who is great to see is a woman, Rhona Mahony.  She is the first lady Master of the hospital and we were allowed ... I was allowed access to the records in the hospital of what happened in Easter week and one young girl came in to have her baby but she had been shot in the leg and it’s recorded during the week but in fact a healthy baby was delivered.  But in the middle of the women giving birth during the week there was also the Rising going on all around the area – whether it be Mount Street, Grand Canal Street, the back of Holles Street.  And I just came across something there, this lady would have been neighbour of Elizabeth’s and she is from a place called Grant’s Row which is actually, again, just around the corner from us.  So she explained.  Margaret Jordan* was her name.  She was from Grant’s Row near Holles Street.  She has given an account of the British Army attack in the family home and shooting her father and brother.  This was within 15/20 feet of the hospital.  So the father died in Holles Street Hospital because he was taken in there and her brother never recovered and died 2 years later and she was 12 years of age and she had witnessed the removal of 100 bodies from Holles Street Hospital by the British and they were also taken and buried in a mass grave in Glasnevin.  So as a 12 year old this had a huge influence on her, for want of a better word, but she actually ended up herself becoming a member of Cumann na mBan on witnessing this.  So the activity around the local area was incredible, what was going on.So getting back to Elizabeth’s subsequent idea of becoming a Midwife.  She as I said, she passed her score with a 69% score.  And I say the Matron herself, getting back to the Matron, I don’t think she has a plaque named in her honour, and a nurse of the year award, which Elizabeth has in recognition of her decades of devoted service to the hospital. And for that matter, Elizabeth this month coming in May, has her face with Kathleen Lynn on a stamp. So even to this day she’s still delivering, right.  (Applause)So she lived in 37 Lower Mount Street, is where she set up residence with Julia Grennan, her Aunt Sheila and they lived there and Julia was a dressmaker. She went back to her dressmaking days and worked away. And Elizabeth became one of the major midwives in Dublin, not just in the area. She actually delivered babies in the locality and also delivered all the babies in my own family, and they’re all here today. And Moya being the eldest girl, and Brid being the youngest, or sorry the last baby that Elizabeth delivered is Brid and she’s here today. (Applause)So throughout this time, Elizabeth never lost her devotion to republicanism and in the 50’s after the border campaign went wrong and Sean South was killed, she delivered a speech where I thought was on College Green, but in fact it was outside the GPO because a gentleman just pointed that out to me on the way in here today, Simon’s brother. This man down here. He was actually present when Elizabeth gave one of her last speeches and it was a massive crowd outside the GPO. And she wasn’t one for turning as Thatcher said later on. But she wasn’t one for turning at all. She believed in the 32 county, which she stood alongside Pearse for. And as well as that, I’m noticing nowadays that we’re living in a society where we’re all equal, which is fantastic. And a lot of people don’t know that Elizabeth was actually engaged to be married to a chap called Eamonn Kelly. And Eamonn was intent on moving to Chile to mine for silver. But when push came to shove Elizabeth couldn’t leave Ireland with unfinished business. So to every extent her marriage was to the cause.Recently, I also met, you meet some amazing people when you’re on this journey, it’s great. We were invited up to Arbour Hill and I met a lady by the name of Nuala Fitzgerald at a commemoration in Arbour Hill. And she’s the Niece of Michael Malone, who I would have mentioned earlier on from Northumberland Road. And she’s also a Niece of Leo Fitzgerald, who are famous in a way from the area, the local area where we come from. And this lady was also a great friend of Elizabeth and Sheila, and I would know this, and she was one of the last people to see Elizabeth before she died. Elizabeth went out to Enniskerry to visit Nuala and her husband and on this trip she took ill. In those days as well it was quite simple, Nuala got the husband to go down and get the bus man to drive the bus up to her house, collect Elizabeth and bring her back into town. But they got as far as Loughlinstown, she was dying at the time, and they got as far as Loughlinstown and Sheila actually remarked to them in Loughlinstown Hospital that she wanted her brought back into the city, through Bray into Patrick Dunn’s. So she reminded the man who was driving the ambulance of who Elizabeth was, because Sheila was, if I could just go on to her for a second. She had a more outgoing personality, she was the more jollier of the two. Elizabeth would have been quite stern, would have been non-dramatic, where Sheila in other words she could talk for Ireland, so basically that’s what she could do. So they made their way back into town and Elizabeth, she died on the 25th of June 1957, and is buried in the republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, alongside Julia Grennan. And her great friend Eamonn Mac Thomais gave the oratory at her graveside and Eamonn Mac Thomais would have been a fellow republican, and his son became one of the historians, just recently in the last number of years, Shane Mac Thomais, and he tragically died just recently as well. And he’s actually buried with Eamonn beside Elizabeth and they loved Elizabeth through Eamonn, you could sense that often when I met them.So the Elizabeth O’Farrell Foundation was set up in Holles Street and a medal is awarded to the student nurse of the year each year. And in fact it’s going to be awarded again this year and I think Maria or Frances is going to attend the hospital. They want people in the family to acknowledge this and award the medal to the student of the year this year. And also within Holles Street, if you’re familiar with Holles Street Hospital, when you go in the door of Holles Street Hospital you see a plaque and that was designed by an architect artist called Gary Trimble. These would have been friends of Elizabeth’s originally, hence they lived in Mount Street, and this plaque was unveiled on the 50th anniversary of the Rising in 1966. And our Mother Una is the face that was used for Elizabeth, such was her likeness. So when I go into Holles Street and my daughter just recently had a baby there, I can see my Mother there on the wall so, that’s good you know. And my Grandson is called Padraig, I thought she called him another name, it’s a long story but that was just quite unintentional so it’s great to see that there’s still a great presence there. And I must say that the people in the hospital actually really recognise the women who were involved, Kathleen Lynn, Elizabeth O’Farrell, Stopford Price, all of these amazing women. It’s great to see that their story is being told now and it’s coming to the fore, which is fantastic. And I just spotted here, this lady over here is called Mary Murray. So in 2006 a chap called Donal O’Kelly and a lady called Barbara Ni Caoimh approached me about the story of Elizabeth O’Farrell, and he wanted to stage a play in Kilmainham Jail. And so the play was to run for a week and the last play that was held in Kilmainham Jail was actually by the Volunteers back in the day, the put on the odd show if they were allowed. So Mary played Elizabeth O’Farrell in the play and she done such a remarkable job the likeness that my sister Moya thought Mary was Elizabeth, she in fact she was, so it was fantastic.So the Proclamation which Elizabeth had in her possession in the GPO which is on display here today was originally donated to a republican museum Mary tells me in south Frederick Street and in 1966 I’m told by my sisters it was leant in trust by our family to the people of Dublin. And it’s fantastic to see that it’s restored and it’s amazing that it’ll be there and we’re happy that it’s with the people of Ireland and the people of Dublin because there’s few artefacts around that you can honestly say that you can be proud of. And I think we’re all proud of the Proclamation in itself, it’s remarkable. So Elizabeth herself, I think her life’s ambition can be summed up in the conversation she had with my Grandmother in the mid ‘50s. Now my Grandmother’s name was Bridget. And I have to really state this, she is the only sister that Elizabeth had. There was two sisters, Bridget and Bridget herself was a strong republican. And Bridget had all the babies. So Bridget was the woman who got married and Elizabeth stayed single. So our Grandmother was also a remarkable woman, and was also a great woman for delivering babies as well. And actually my Mother was also handy at delivering babies too. So they didn’t need to go to hospitals or anything like that. So they took a trip out to Sandymount Strand and I think the way they thought in those days that my Grandmother would have predeceased Elizabeth. But in fact Elizabeth died before Bridget. So one of the days they had off which was very unusual, the place you would go to if you lived in our area was up to Sandymount Strand. So they sat on the beach in Sandymount Strand and looking back on life, how lucky were we said my Grandmother to Elizabeth. And you were very lucky Bridget, you had all your children around you, but I didn’t get what I wanted. And that was a 32 county Ireland. So on that note I’d just like to dedicate this poem, it’s called “We saw a vision” by Liam Mac Uistin and I think it’s very appropriate because I think it nails exactly what the Proclamation is all about and the vision for the country and what it will do for future generations. So he wrote this for the 50th anniversary in 1966 and it’s on display up in the Garden of Remembrance. So it’s “We saw a vision”."In the darkness of despair we saw a vision.We lit the light of hope and it was not extinguished.In the dessert of discouragement we saw a vision.We planted a tree of valour and it blossomed.In the winter of bondage we saw a vision,We melted the snow of lethargyAnd a river of resurrection flowed from it.We sent our vision aswim like a swan on the river,The vision becomes a reality.Winter becomes summer, bondage becomes freedomAnd this we left you as your inheritance.Oh generation of freedom, remember usThe generation of the vision."(Applause)Mary Clark: And we’re just going to finish now with another poem about Elizabeth O’Farrell and this here is my colleague Anne Marie Kelly, who is a self confessed Elizabeth O’Farrell groupie, I think perhaps even more so after today. But Anne Marie is also a divisional librarian with Dublin City Libraries and she has been one of the people who has delivered the wonderful 1916 programme that was done by the libraries. So there you are, Anne Marie, whenever you’re ready.Anne-Marie Kelly: Thanks Mary. I don’t know if I’ll match Liam Mac Uistin’s poem now, I think it’s a bit more bawdy. The title of this poem sketch is "Elizabeth looks back""Drastic and all that this may seem,But I think the women of Dublin should stop having childerYou see, I know they’re jaded with itBut not half as jaded as us midwives,Although if they stopped having childer, I’d be without a job I supposeAnd that would be bad, but worse still the country would be without future rebels.And of course it’s in the deliverin’ of rebels that was, is and always will be the aim of this midwife.And who are you says you in all that’s good and holy to be telling us what this country needs?Well sorry, I should have said the name’s Elizabeth O’Farrell, of City Quay.Some say history airbrushed me,A printer, a rebel, a midwife am I,A woman who looked General Lowe in the eye,You see I was there that week in the GPO, a proud Cumann member who fought the foe.MacNeill, he really set the cat among the pigeons with the decision, a decision and an unholy revision.And no luck for Casement and the ammo, and you see that did make the fight a tale of woe,Yet still we struggled against the Empire.You see we were dreaming of a world beyond this quagmire.Well by the end of the week the city was in chassis, the fire brigade, they’d saved it for the masses.The rebels’ names were mud for upsetting the applecart.And sure what cared we, weren’t we doing our part.Pearse surrendered with me in tow,And sometimes you can see my feet below.Rebel woman in the photo who helped permission was rubbed out.Did somebody say rubbed out?Yes, says I, rubbed out when the struggle was won."(Applause)(Recording ends here) *In the audio recording Ian Kelly refers to Margaret Hennessy. Margaret's great-nephew Diarmuid Gannon subsequently got in touch to correctly identify the girl in question as Margaret Morrissey (nee Jordan).  This transcript was corrected on October 8th 2018.Thank-you for listening to the Dublin City Public Libraries and Archive Podcast. To hear more, please subscribe on iTunes or SoundCloud. You can also visit our website - dublincitypubliclibraries.ie and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

When May Finn died after 50 years of widowhood, her family found a hidden trove of more than 90 love letters carefully tied in ribbons. They had been written in 1916 as she and her fiancé approached their wedding day that June.