1949 (2 page)

Lynch, Liam (1893–1923):
Born in County Limerick. Member of Supreme Council of the IRB; chief of staff of the IRA during the Civil War.

MacArthur, Douglas (1880–1964):
U.S. general who commanded the southwest Pacific theatre in World War II.

MacBride, John, Major (1865–1916):
Born in Mayo. Member of the IRB; married Maud Gonne in 1903; did not join the Volunteers but on Easter Monday, 1916, offered his services to Thomas MacDonagh and was second-in-command in the Jacob's factory garrison; executed by the British.

MacBride, Maud Gonne (1866–1953):
Born in Surrey, England. Famous beauty who inspired W. B. Yeats; founder of revolutionary women's society called Inghinidhe na hEireann; married John MacBride in Paris but the marriage failed; Maud returned to Ireland in 1917 and was actively involved in republican endeavors; opposed the Treaty; organized the Women's Prisoners Defence League.

MacBride, Seán (1904–1988):
Son of Maud Gonne and John MacBride; born in Paris, educated in France and Ireland; accompanied Michael Collins to the Treaty negotiations as his personal aide; served for a time as chief of staff of the IRA; called to the bar in 1937, he defended a number of prominent Republicans; disillusioned with Fianna Fáil, MacBride founded Clann na Poblachta in 1946; became minister for external affairs in coalition government of 1948; involved in many international organizations; chairman of Amnesty International 1973–76; won Nobel Peace Prize in 1974; Lenin Peace Prize in 1977; American Medal for Justice in 1978.

MacDermott, Seán (1884–1916):
Born in County Leitrim, Ireland. National organizer for Irish Republican Brotherhood; member Military Council IRB; one of the signatories of the Proclamation of the Republic; executed by the British.

MacDonagh, Thomas (1878–1916):
Poet, college professor, and revolutionary; one of the signatories of the Proclamation of the Republic.

McLellan, “Mac”:
Doorman at 2RN during its early years.

MacNeill, Eoin (1867–1945):
University lecturer and historian; cofounder, with Douglas Hyde, of the Gaelic League; first president and chief of staff of the Irish National Volunteers.

McQuaid, John Charles (1895–1973):
Born in County Cavan; entered the Holy Ghost novitiate; ordained in 1924; president of Blackrock College; appointed Archbishop of Dublin by Pope Pius XII.

MacRory, Joseph (1861–1945):
Roman Catholic primate.

MacSwiney, Mary Margarite (1872–1942):
Elder sister of Terence MacSwiney, lord mayor of Cork who died in British prison on hunger strike. Member of Sinn Féin; taught school for a number of years until dismissed in 1916 for supporting the Rising; in 1920 was invited to testify in Washington before an American commission investigating conditions in Ireland.

Marconi, Guglielmo (1874–1937):
Physicist and inventor, awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for the development of wireless telegraphy. His father was Italian, his mother was Irish, a daughter of Andrew Jameson of the brewing family. Marconi's first wife also was Irish: Beatrice, daughter of the 14th Baron Inchiquin.

Markievicz, Constance (1868–1927):
Born Constance Georgina Gore-Booth in London. Her mother was an English aristocrat; her father owned large estates in Ireland, where she was raised. After studying art in Paris she married Count Casimir Markievicz of Poland. Later she became deeply involved in the Irish trade union movement and then the struggle for independence. Cofounder with Bulmer Hobson of Na Fianna Éireann. Member of Cumann na mBan and the Citizen Army. Second-in-command to Michael Mallin in Saint Stephen's Green during the 1916 Rising. While in an English prison she became the first woman to win election to the British Parliament but never took her seat there. Subsequently she served in the Irish Parliament as the world's first minister of labor.

Moloney, Helena (1884–1967):
Actress, trade unionist, feminist, Republican; became a member of Inghinidhe na hÉireann in 1903. Joined the Citizen Army and took part in the attack on Dublin Castle in 1916.

Mosley, Sir Oswald (1896–1980):
English politician. In 1932 he founded the British Union of Fascists. A great admirer of Hitler, he was interned after the outbreak of World War II, as was his second wife, Diana Guinness, née Mitford.

Murphy, Seán:
Irish ambassador to France during World War II.

Mussolini, Benito (1883–1945):
The youngest prime minister in Italian history, and the first of Europe's Fascist dictators. In 1936 he formed a Rome-Berlin Axis with Adolf Hitler. The Italian resistance movement eventually was responsible for Mussolini's capture and execution.

Ní Ghráda, Mairead (1896–1971):
Secretary to Ernest Blythe in the first Dáil; woman's organizer for 2RN, also in charge of children's programming and a station announcer.

O'Brien, Sir Donough Edward Foster (1897–1968):
Sixteenth Baron Inchiquin; descendant of Brian Bóru.

O'Brien, Vincent (1870–1948):
first musical director and conductor of the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra.

O'Casey, Séan (1880–1964):
Dublin-born playwright; largely self-educated; joined the Gaelic League and learned Irish; was for a time secretary of the Citizen Army.

O'Connor, Rory (1883–1922):
Born in Dublin; fought and wounded in the 1916 Rising; director of engineering for the IRA during the war of independence; opposed the Treaty; was one of the leaders of the Republican garrison in the Four Courts during the Civil War; captured and executed by the Free State.

O'Conor, Owen Phelim (1870–1943):
The O'Conor Don; promoted by the Gaelic Monarchist Party in 1937 as potential King of Ireland.

O'Duffy, Eoin (1892–1944):
GOC and then chief-of-staff in the Free State army during the Civil War; appointed commissioner of the civic guard in 1922; sacked by de Valera in 1933; developed the Blueshirts as a quasi-military organization; elected president of Fine Gael party in 1934.

O'Hegarty, Patrick Sarsfield (1879–1955):
Cork-born; member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood; postmaster with the British civil service until dismissed for his revolutionary activities; author of
The Victory of Sinn Féin;
secretary of posts and telegraphs 1922–44.

O'Higgins, Kevin Christopher (1892–1927):
Born in County Laois; Sinn Féin T.D. in the first Dáil Éireann; supported the Treaty; became minister for economic affairs, then minister for home affairs; largely responsible for the establishment of the Garda Síochána as an unarmed force; vice president of the Executive Council and minister for justice and external affairs in the Cosgrave administration.

O'Kelly, Seán T. (1882–1966):
Born in Dublin. Member of the Gaelic League; member of the IRB; founder member of Sinn Féin; aide-de-camp to Pádraic Pearse during the Rising; envoy to Paris Peace Conference. First elected to the Dáil in 1918; opposed the Treaty; founding member of Fianna Fáil in 1926. When Fianna Fáil came into power in 1932 he became vice president of the Executive Council; later minister for local government and public health, then minister for finance. Second president of Ireland 1945–59.

Pearse, Pádraic (1879–1916):
Born in Dublin of an English father and Irish mother. Educationalist; poet; barrister; member of the Gaelic League; founder of Saint Enda's School in Rathfarnham; chief author and signatory of the Proclamation of the Republic; president of the provisional government of the Irish Republic; commander in chief of the Republican forces in 1916; executed by the British.

Plunkett, Grace Gifford (1888–1955):
Widow of Joseph Mary Plunkett.

Plunkett, Joseph Mary (1887–1916):
Poet and revolutionary; one of the signatories of the Proclamation of the Republic; executed by the British.

Pius XI (1857–1939):
Original name Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti. Elected to the papacy in 1922.

Pius XII (1876–1958):
Original name Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli. Elected to the papacy upon the death of Pius XI in 1939.

Rommel, Erwin (1891–1944):
German field marshal known as the Desert Fox; commander of the Afrika Korps in World War II.

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882–1945):
Thirty-second president of the United States. As a young New York lawyer in 1919, Roosevelt had once been employed by Eamon de Valera to circumvent laws that could stop the Irish from selling Dáil bonds in the United States.

Russell, George “AE” (1867–1935):
Born in County Armagh. Author, editor, and poet.

Ryan, Frank (1902–1944):
Born in County Limerick. Fought on the Republican side in the Civil War; editor of
An Phoblacht
; founder member of Saor Éire; a Republican pressure group; took a party of 200 Volunteers to Spain to fight on the Republican side in the civil war; was captured and sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted to thirty years' imprisonment.

Shaw, George Bernard (1856–1950):
Born in Dublin. Comic dramatist, literary critic, and socialist; winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925.

Skeffington, Hanna (Johanna) Sheehy (1877–1946):
Born in County Cork into a Fenian family. Married Francis Skeffington in 1903.

Stalin, Joseph (1879–1953):
Secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; became premier of the Soviet Union in 1941 and ruled as dictator until his death.

Steinbeck, John (1902–1968):
American novelist; won the Pulitzer Prize for
The Grapes of Wrath
.

Truman, Harry S. (1884–1972):
Thirty-third president of the United States.

von Hindenburg, Paul (1847–1934):
The son of an aristocratic Prussian officer, he commanded German land forces during the Great War; elected as the second president of the Weimar Republic in 1925. Under duress by the National Socialists he appointed Hitler as chancellor in 1933.

Wells, H. G. (Herbert George) (1866–1946):
English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian.

Wilson, Katie Gifford:
a sister of Grace Gifford Plunkett.

Wilson, Thomas Woodrow (1856–1924):
Twenty-eighth president of the United States.

Flaming in the western sky were the banners of a salmon and gold sunset. Birds sang themselves to sleep in the hedgerows; shadows flowed like water across the hills of Clare.

As the gray stallion galloped up the lane toward home, a startled blackbird exploded from a gorse bush. The horse shied violently but the girl on his back merely laughed. “Heart of a lion, you,” said Ursula Halloran.

Reining the stallion to a halt, she stroked his neck. He pawed the ground and snorted with belated courage. “Easy,
Saoirse
,
^*
stand easy now.” Until he was obedient to her will she would not allow him to move forward.

Caught in a bubble of time, they waited.

 

When she was a toddler in the Dublin tenement district, Ursula had been known as Precious. Applied to a scrawny waif with huge blue eyes staring out of a pinched little face, the name was ironic. Irish slum children were far from precious in 1914.

Eleven years—the last five spent on a farm near Clarecastle—had wrought a transformation in the girl. The pale hair of infancy had given way to a heavy mane the color of oak leaves in autumn. Healthy freckles were spattered across glowing cheeks; puberty had brought a hint of gray to her eyes. Her smile revealed excellent teeth, a rarity among the Irish.

Early malnutrition had left its mark, however. She would always be too slender. The angular planes of her face did not conform to the current fashion for feminine beauty, though in old age they would be magnificent. They might have been carved from the stones of ancient Ireland.

In her imagination Ursula never pictured herself as a mythic warrior queen. Her models were living patriots: Maud Gonne, the passionate revolutionary who had inspired W. B. Yeats and personified Caitlín Ní Houlihan, the eponymous spirit of Ireland, in his most famous play. Or Constance Markievicz, the fearless rebel countess who had turned her back on rank and privilege to fight beside the men in the Rising of 1916.

Ursula kept a scrapbook devoted to the countess.

The beauty of those famous women meant nothing to her. It was their inner fire she sought to emulate. When country lads followed Ursula with their eyes she thought they were seeing her as she saw herself. Heroic in her heart.

 

The blazingly yellow blossoms of the gorse smelt like coconut. Atop a hillock in the adjacent field stood a solitary thorn tree; one of the fairy trees enchanted when Ireland was young. The white lace mantle that was its springtime glory had almost gone. When a breeze set the last few petals adrift, bereft branches clawed the sky with empty fingers.

Ursula felt an inexplicable connection to Ireland's ancient magic, as if time were a curve without beginning or end and some remnant of druidry slumbered in her blood.
But there is a new magic now
, she thought.
Invisible waves of power are racing through the air. Uncle Henry says they will change the world
.

His letter in her pocket was like an unexploded bomb.

She slipped one hand into her woolly jacket and withdrew two envelopes. The flap of one had already been torn open. Taking out the letter, she strained to reread Henry Mooney's typewritten words in the fading light.

The deliberate emphasis was disturbing. Newspapermen like Henry never underlined words.

His letters to Ursula invariably included commentary on political events, an interest they shared. This time he wrote sourly: “The partition of Ireland is a disaster, even worse than the Act of Union that forcibly joined this country with Britain. Partition stranded thousands of supporters of the Union within the Irish Free State. But that was the price the Unionist Party was willing to pay to cut off a portion of the north from the rest of the island and turn six counties into what they call ‘a Protestant state for a Protestant people.'

“As you know, Protestants in the south are not discriminated against. Sadly the same is not true for the Catholics who now find themselves stranded in the north. The government of the Free State—most of them Catholics themselves—has abandoned these unfortunate people to their fate. Mobs describing themselves as ‘loyalist'—meaning loyal to the king of England, I suppose—are attacking them with impunity.

“Have you heard of the B-Special militia in Northern Ireland? It is composed of Protestants who belong almost without exception to the Orange Order. The B-Specials have undertaken to solve the problem of sectarian violence in the north by the simple expedient of eliminating the Catholics. According to the latest figures I've seen, over six hundred have been killed in the last couple of years. Ten thousand have lost their jobs and twice that number have lost their homes.

“In the dictionary I once gave you is the word
pogrom
. Look it up. You will find that originally a pogrom was the organized massacre of Jews in Russia. It now describes what is happening to Catholics in the north. When we began the struggle to free this island from foreign domination, who could have foreseen it would turn out this way?”

Henry's letter concluded, “Next month I shall be off to London for a few days. I hope to sell a feature article on the British Broadcasting Company, which is about to liquidate as a private corporation and go public. I have mixed feelings about broadcasting. As a print journalist I am committed to the written word, yet I predict that one day all communications will be carried on radio waves. Wireless transmission will change the world, Little Business.”

Ursula smiled at Henry's use of the old pet name. No one else ever called her Little Business.

On the back of the letter was a postscript in his wife's graceful handwriting. “You really must come soon. We have something to discuss which cannot be put into a letter. Henry wanted to travel to Clare to talk to you, but I would not allow it. I was afraid for him. You understand.”

I do understand, Ella
, Ursula thought sadly as she tucked the letter back into its envelope.
There would be trouble if Uncle Henry came to the farm
.

The Irish Civil War, which some called the War of Brothers, was only two years in the past. The wounds to the Irish soul were still bleeding.

Gathering the reins and clucking to her mount, Ursula sent him forward at a trot. A gentle blue twilight soon enfolded them. When they reached the long lane off the Ennis road Saoirse pricked his ears and broke into a headlong gallop, eager for his bucket of oats.

The stallion was kept in the barn at night. By the time Ursula unsaddled him, rubbed him down and fed him, the pungent smell of lamb stew was drifting across the walled farmyard between the kitchen at the back of the house and the barn.

Ursula gave her horse a parting caress, rubbing her cheek against his silky neck. Sitting on a stile was considered enough amusement for teenage youngsters in rural Ireland. But Ursula Halloran had a horse.

Saoirse raised his head from his oat bucket long enough to nicker after her as she closed the barn door.

With boyishly long strides, Ursula crossed the farmyard to the house. Her own stomach was rumbling with hunger. Yet she paused for a moment before going in.

Framed by the open top of the half door was a familiar picture. At a large kitchen table covered with an oilcloth sat a lanky, dark-haired man, sipping a glass of
poitín
. An old woman as plump and soft as a buttered scone was cooking a meal on the black iron range set in the mouth of the cavernous fireplace.

Every evening Ned Halloran and his Aunt Norah repeated this scene. Every, every evening. As predictable as the tick of the clock on the wall.

Radio waves can travel to faraway places
, Ursula thought as she gazed into the kitchen,
places where people live different lives. Exciting lives. Things happening. If I could ride on radio waves…

When she entered the room, Ned Halloran and his aunt looked up in anticipation. Ursula could light a room with the candlepower of her smile. Tonight, however, she merely gave a preoccupied nod. “I'm back, Papa.”

“What's wrong?” Norah Daly asked sharply.

“Nothing's wrong.”

“Did ye call at the post office?”

“I did of course. There was a letter from Kathleen in America.” Ursula dug into her pocket and produced the two envelopes, dropping the unopened one onto the table.

“What's that other one?” Ned Halloran wanted to know.

“Just a note for me, Papa.” She stuffed it back into her pocket.

The look he gave her was a dagger of green glass. “From where?”

“Dublin.”

“Dublin.” He spat out the word.

“Don't be starting on the girl,” the old woman admonished.

“All I said was Dublin, Aunt Norah.”

“It was how you said it. I'll have no rows in here.”

Ned's cleft chin jutted at a dangerous angle. “I'll fight where I like.”

The old woman left her cooking for a moment to pour an additional inch of
poitín
, colorless as water and potent as fire, into his glass. “Wrap yourself around this now and don't be making trouble.”

She returned to the range and thrust a long-handled spoon into the pot. A critical sip, a shake of the head. “There's no flavor to this lamb at all. Frank butchered it too young, so he did. Chop another onion or two,” she said to Ursula, “and would you ever make some dumplings?”

Ursula hated cooking. “Can't Lucy and Eileen make the dumplings?” she asked hopefully. Ned Halloran's sisters liked to cook. Or so they claimed.

Norah Daly pushed a lock of gray hair back from her forehead with one liver-spotted wrist. “Eileen's walking out with her latest young man and Lucy's gone down the fields to fetch Frank for his tea. He'd not eat otherwise. The poor crayture works all the hours God sends. Unlike some not a hundred miles from here,” she added, shooting a narrow glance at Ned, “who waste their time drilling with the Mid-Clare Brigade.”

“I think Papa's very brave to remain active in the Irish Republican Army under the circumstances,” Ursula said. “It's almost as bad as it was after the 1916 Rising, except now it's other Irish men, instead of the British, who're jailing our patriots. What Papa's doing is more important than milking cows and planting cabbage. He's fighting for the Republic that was stolen from us.”

Norah retorted, “Don't be preaching Republicanism to me, girleen. Did I not join
Cumann na mBan
^*
meself? But that was then and this is now. Do ye not read the newspapers? They're beginning to print
Republican
with a small
r
.”

“Changing a capital letter to lower case doesn't mean a thing.”

“Our side lost the war, Ursula!” Norah cried in exasperation. “The IRA Volunteers were ordered to bury their weapons! The Free State government is perfectly within its rights to arrest those who won't accept its authority. I agree with your Uncle Frank. He says we should be planting crops that fill the belly instead of filling the churchyard.”

Ned Halloran picked up his glass and the letter from America and strode from the kitchen. The stairs creaked. A door slammed overhead. A furious fist thudded against a wall. Again and again and again.

There was no more political talk in the kitchen. Ursula took a sulphur match from the box beside the range, and, clenching the matchstick between her teeth to keep her eyes from tearing, she began chopping onions.

After a time Norah said, “What was in Henry's letter?”

Ursula removed the match. “Only the usual Dublin
goster
.
^*
He sent you his love, though.”

The old woman's face pleated into a smile. “He's not the worst in the world, is Henry. He's almost as dear to me as my poor dead sister's children, may God a' mercy on her. It's a terrible thing entirely, this quarrel between Henry and your father.”

“Half the families in Ireland aren't speaking to one another,” said Ursula. “The Civil War's too recent.”

“You think that's the trouble?”

“What else could it be?”

Norah did not answer. Difficult questions were best ignored.

There was a scraping of feet outside. Frank, the oldest Halloran, balding and bony, clomped into the kitchen. “Stones in the high field wanted clearing,” he said. Thanks to a new set of badly fitted false teeth, he spoke with a whistle. He hung his cap on its customary nail and dropped wearily onto a chair. The farm was killing him. Wearing him down, demanding more than he had to give. Although he hired men to help with the work they never stayed very long. In the end Frank felt it was all up to himself.

His father had sown and planted according to the stars in the sky and the phases of the moon. In those days the farm had flourished. On the death of his parents, the land had come to Frank as the oldest son. He dismissed his father's theories as “pagan airy-fairy” and would have nothing to do with them. Month by month and year by year, the place was slowly failing and he did not know why.

In his secret heart Frank hated the farm.

His sister Lucy followed him into the room. A sober, stolid child, she had grown into a sober, stolid woman, with thick eyebrows and a graceless body. Lucy was the second of three Halloran daughters. Kathleen, the family beauty, had married a prosperous American and was living in New York. Eileen, the last born, was a dimpled flirt who was expected to make a good match locally.

No young men took Lucy walking out. People said of her, “She won't have a man on foot and the men on horses pass her by.”