Doing My Bit For Ireland

Against our soldiers, on the other hand, a great many of whom were very poor, there had not been a single accusation of looting. In the post-office, for instance, they ordered one of the captured British officers to guard the safe. In the streets where windows had been broken, they tried to keep the people from pillaging the shops. Whatever money our men found lying loose in the buildings they occupied was turned over to their superior officers. Again and again I myself had seen men of the Citizen Army, quite as poor as any British soldier, hand over money to Commandant Mallin. Had I only thought of it, I could have taken this with me when I was carried to the hospital. The cause would have been at least one hundred pounds richer.

At the College of Surgeons we had destroyed nothing except a portrait of Queen Victoria. We took that down and made puttees out of it. We did not feel we were doing any wrong, for it was Queen Victoria who, in 1848, wrote to her uncle, King Leopold of Belgium:

"There are ample means of crushing the rebellion in Ireland, and I think it very likely to go off without any contest, which people (I think rightly) rather regret. The Irish should receive a good lesson or they will begin it again."

From this quotation any one can see that the Queen looked upon the Irish as aliens, which, indeed, they are.

We also were very careful of the museum and library at the College of Surgeons. Although the men did not have any covering and the nights were cold, they did not cut up the rugs and carpets, but doubled them and crept in between the folds in rows.

About Jacob's Biscuit Factory, during Easter Week, even though it was a very dangerous spot, the employees had hovered, for fear their means of livelihood would be destroyed. But it was not. The machinery was left uninjured, for we always remembered our own poor.

At Guinness's brewery, where great quantities of stout were stored, none of it was touched. Most of our men are teetotalers, anyway.

Some of the poor of Dublin had tried to pillage at first, but it was a pathetic attempt. I saw one specimen of this on Easter Tuesday, while carrying a despatch. There was a crowd of people about a shoe-shop. The windows had been smashed, and the poor wretches were clambering into the shop at great risk of cutting themselves. Once inside, despite all the outer excitement, they were taking the time to try on shoes! Many of them, one could see, had never had a pair of new shoes in their lives. Visitors to Dublin going through the poorer parts are always surprised at the number of children and young girls who walk about bare-footed in icy weather. It is in this way that their health is undermined.

One day during the week after I left the hospital, I heard that a batch of prisoners was to be taken to England aboard a cattle-boat leaving the pier called North Wall. I went down at once to watch for them. It was a very wet day, and the prisoners had been marched six miles from Richmond barracks through the pouring rain. But they were singing their rebel songs, just as if they had never been defeated and were not on their way to the unknown horrors of an English prison.

The officer in charge seemed much excited, though he had five hundred soldiers to look after a hundred prisoners.

"For God's sake, close in, or we'll be rushed!" he shouted to his men. Then the soldiers, with fixed bayonets, "closed in" upon the wet crowd of rebels, who actually seemed to feel the humor of it.

I knew some of the boys, and walked in between the bayonets to shake hands with them and march a part of the way. They had heard I was dead, and looked at first as if they were seeing a ghost. One of them, a little, lame playwright of whom I had caught a glimpse at Bridewell, had told me at the time that he was writing a farce about the revolution to show its absurdity. He had had nothing to do with the rising, for it was his brother who had been with us at the College of Surgeons. There was not even a charge against him; yet here he was, limping along in the rain and mud, but still cheerful. This chap gave me a bundle of clothes and a message for his mother, so I hunted her up the next morning. She did not know he had been deported, and was in despair, for she had left her little cottage in the country to be near her son in Dublin. When I visited her she was just back from market with fruit she had bought to take to him, as it was visiting day at the barracks.

These are some of the things that made even quiet old mothers grow bitter.

XIII

No one could leave Ireland for Scotland without a special permit from Dublin Castle. This permit was given only when one applied in person, so I decided to go after it. My friends were terrified; it was putting my head into the lion's mouth. But it was the only way, even though I might never come out of that building free.

I took my arm out of the sling, hoping I should not have to raise it; for I couldn't, nor can yet. For greater precaution, just before I reached Dublin Castle, I removed the republican colors I always wore, and put them in my pocket.

I was taken to a room where a police official began to ask me questions. It was, I believe, my "loyal" Scotch accent that put them off guard, when I asked for a permit to go to Glasgow. At the hospital one of the nurses shook her head, following a long talk, and said:

"Your opinions and your accent don't go together."

I have often been told that I look more like a teacher of mathematics, which, indeed, I am, than like an Irish rebel, of which I am more proud.

The officer first asked me my name. I confess that I gave it to him while wondering what his next words would be. He merely asked my address in Dublin, so I gave him the address of friends with whom I was staying. Would that disturb him, I wondered?

"When did you come to Dublin?" he next asked.

"Holy Thursday," I replied.

"Then you've been here during the rising?"

"Yes," I said.

In a tone which showed how deeply he had been moved by Easter Week, he added:

"It's been a terrible business!"

To that I could feelingly agree.

At length he gave me a permit, not one to leave Dublin, but merely to see the military authorities. Here was another ordeal.

I went up to a soldier in the corridor and asked him where I should go.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"It's on this permit," I replied, holding it out to him.

But, as he seemed afraid to touch it, I told him my name, and he took me to the office where the military authorities were located. I shivered a little at the chance of his going in with me and telling them I was a rebel. But he left me at the door.

To my relief, the questions put to me here were the same as before. I had only to tell the truth, and the polite officer handed over my pass.

As soon as I was outside the castle I replaced my republican colors and went home to friends who really did not expect to see me again.

I did not go directly to Glasgow, however, for I heard that the police were watching all incoming trains. Instead, I went to a little seaside resort to recuperate. My sister, who had come over to Dublin to be with me after I left the hospital, went along, too. She was terrified when we got off the boat because police were watching the gangway. But nothing happened. My mother came to see me, and took it all splendidly, though from the first I had given her an anxious time of it. She is a good rebel.

I was proud that I could tell my mother I had been mentioned three times for bravery in despatches sent to headquarters. The third time was when I was wounded. Commandant Mallin had said then:

"You'll surely be given the republican cross."

But the republic did not last long enough for that. I was given an Irish cross. This was the joint gift of the Cumman-na-mBan girls and the Irish Volunteers of Glasgow. They arranged, as a surprise for me, a meeting with addresses and songs. Since I had no hint of it, I was out of Scotland on the day set. They had to repeat part of the ceremony when I came back. It all was meant to be very solemn, but somehow I felt strange and absurd to be getting a cross for bravery that had led to death or prison so many others.

I had left Scotland very quietly to go to England and see some of our boys being held in Reading Jail without any charge against them. I had had a good talk with them, even though a guard stood near all the time. He was a pleasant-enough person, so we included him in our conversation, explaining the whole rising to him. The boys were in good spirits, too. They laughed when I told them I had always boasted I would never set foot in England. And here, on their account, I was not only in England, but in an English prison.

We had very few Irish revolutionists in the Scotch prisons. Two hundred of them were brought, during August, to Barlinnie Prison, but they were allowed to stay only a short time. Far too much sympathy was expressed for them by the Irish in Glasgow and by Scotch suffragettes, who made a point of going to visit them and taking them comforts. Presently they were removed to the camp at Frongoch, Wales, where several hundred others who had taken part in the rising were interned. As they marched through the streets of Glasgow, we could not help noticing how much larger and finer looking they appeared than the British soldiers guarding them. They were men from Galway,—men who for six long days had put up a memorable fight in that county, and with less than forty rifles had held six hundred square miles! Three thousand of the rifles that went down with the Aud had been promised to Galway. Yet five hundred men had been ready to "go out" when they heard that, despite the countermanding order, Dublin forces were rebelling, no matter what the odds.

XIV

When I went back to Dublin in August, it was to find that almost every one on the streets was wearing republican colors. The feeling was bitter, too—so bitter that the British soldiers had orders to go about in fives and sixes, but never singly. They were not allowed by their officers to leave the main thoroughfares, and had to be in barracks before dark,—that is, all except the patrol. The city was still under martial law, but it seemed to me the military authorities were the really nervous persons. Much of this bitterness came from the fact that people remembered how, after the war in South Africa which lasted three years instead of five days, only one man had been executed. After our rising sixteen men had been put to death.

Everywhere I heard the opinion expressed that if the revolution could have lasted a little longer, we would have been flooded with recruits. As it was, the rising had taken people completely by surprise. Before they could recover from that surprise, it was over, and its leaders were paying the penalty of death or imprisonment. One week is a short time for the general, uninformed mass of a dominated people to decide whether an outbreak of any sort is merely an impotent rebellion, or a real revolution with some promise of success. Besides, there have been so many isolated protests in Ireland, doomed from the first to failure.

There was evidence everywhere that the feeling of bitterness was not vague, but the direct result of fully understanding what had happened. At a moving-picture performance of "The Great Betrayal," I was surprised at the spirit of daring in the audience. The story was about one of those abortive nationalist revolts in Italy which preceded the revolution that made Italy free. The plot was parallel in so many respects to the Easter Week rising in Ireland that crowds flocked every day to see it. In the final picture, when the heroic leaders were shot in cold blood, men in the audience called out bitterly:

"That's right, Colthurst! Keep it up!"

Colthurst was the man who shot Sheehy Skeffington without trial on the second day of the rising. He had been promoted for his deeds of wanton cruelty, and only the fact that a royal commission was demanded by Skeffington's widow and her friends, made it necessary to adjudge him insane as excuse for his behavior, when that behavior was finally brought to light.

It was on the occasion of my visit to the moving-pictures that I was annoyed by the knowledge that a detective was following me. His only disguise was to don Irish tweeds such as "Irish Irelanders" wear to stimulate home industry. He had been following me about Dublin ever since my arrival for my August visit. To this day I don't know why he did not arrest me, nor what he was waiting for me to do. But I decided now to give him the slip. In Glasgow I have had much practice jumping on cars going at full speed. The Dublin cars are much slower, so as a car passed me in the middle of the block, I suddenly leaped aboard, leaving my British friend standing agape with astonishment on the sidewalk. Doubtless he felt the time had come for me to carry out whatever plot I had up my sleeve, and that he had been defeated in his purpose of looking on. I never saw him again.

Even the children of Ireland have become republicans. There was a strike not long ago in Dublin schools because an order was issued by the authorities that school children should not wear republican colors. The day after the teachers made this announcement some few children obeyed the order, but they appeared in white dresses with green and orange ribbons in their hair or cap. When this, too, was forbidden, the pupils in one of the schools marched out in a body, and proceeded to other schools throughout the city to call out the pupils on strike. Any school that did not obey their summons promptly had its windows smashed. Finally, the police were called and marched against them. The children, as the sympathetic press put it, "retreated in good order to Mountjoy Square, where they took their stand and defended their position with what ammunition was at hand, namely, paving-stones." The end of it all was that the children won, and went back to school wearing as many badges or flags as they wished.

Irish boys are showing their attitude, too, for at Padraic Pearse's school, conducted now by a brother of Thomas McDonagh who taught there before the rising, there are several hundred boys on the waiting-list. The school never was as crowded before; the work that Pearse gave his life for, the inspiriting of Irish youth, is still going on.

Out on Leinster Road one day, I walked past that house where, not nine months before, I had met so many people of the republican movement. The house was empty, with that peculiar look of bereavement that some houses wear. It had been an embodiment of the Countess Markievicz, and, now that she was gone, looked doomed. Where was she? Over in England in Aylesbury Prison, but fortunately at work in the kitchen. I could not fancy her depressed beyond activity of some sort that in the end would be for Ireland's good.

"A felon's cap's the noblest crown an Irish head can wear."

This was one of her favorite quotations, and I knew that in wearing the cap, her courage would not desert her. Her sister had seen her, and told me she was in good spirits; grateful that they had put her to work and not left her to inactivity or brooding thoughts. She had repeated what an old woman in Mountjoy Prison had said to her:

"Man never built a wall but God Almighty threw a gap in it!"

Last November I paid another visit to Dublin. The bitterness had increased.

SONGS SUNG BY THE IRISH
BEFORE AND AFTER THE
EASTER RISING

Here is one of my favorite songs as a child:

O'DONNELL ABOO

This was the other:

THE JACKETS GREEN

Here is a song that Madam liked very much. It was the most popular song of the Fenians:

THE FELONS OF OUR LAND

This is one of the songs of earlier risings which we all sang during the last one:

WRAP THE GREEN FLAG 'ROUND ME, BOYS

This song, written by the Countess Markiewicz to the tune of "The Young May Moon," had a great effect in Dublin, before the rising, in preventing the British from getting Irish recruits. It was sung everywhere and went thus:

ANTI-RECRUITING SONG

Here is another satirical song, very popular just before and during the rising. The man who sung it, called Brian na Banba, was deported by the English after the rising:

HARP OR LION?

Another song, written to discourage recruiting for the English army in Ireland, goes thus:

EIGHT MILLIONS OF ENGLISH MEN

This is a song that includes the Irish leaders in Parliament in its satire on Irish "loyalty" to England:

(Same as first stanza. The first line is a parody on the loyalist toast: "Here's a health to the King, and God save Ireland!")

The Irish Citizen Army song was written by Jo Connolly, a young workingman, whose brother, Sean Connolly, was killed while leading the attack on Dublin Castle Easter Monday. Jo was the boy who cut loopholes in the roof of the College of Surgeons. He was deported to Wandsworth Prison, but after a few months was released. The song is sung to the tune which you know as "John Brown's Body":

THE IRISH CITIZEN ARMY

Here is the song of the Irish Volunteers, sung at all concerts held before the rising to get funds for rifles and ammunition. The Volunteers sang it whenever they marched, and I have been told the men in the rising of '67 also sang it. It was sung everywhere during the last rising. When we first withdrew to the College of Surgeons, Frank Robins sang it, and we all joined in the chorus:

VOLUNTEER MARCHING SONG

The Fianna also had their songs. One of them, written by one of the Fianna boys, goes:

Almost before it was over, the rising became part of the great patriotic tradition of Ireland, and on all sides new songs were heard celebrating it and those who took leading parts in it. Some of these songs were heavy with a sense of the nation's tragedy. Others—those written by men who had taken part in the rising—were often full of wit, that dauntless Irish spirit that does not forsake men even in defeat and imprisonment. But the most moving, now the most popular of them all, was written by a nun. It is sung to the tune of "Who Fears to Speak of '98?" and begins:

Here is a song written by a member of the Irish Republican army while he was confined in Richmond Barracks, Dublin, a month after the rising. It is sung to the tune of "The Mountains of Mourne":