The Easter Rising 1916 - Molly's Diary (Hands-on History) Read online

  “You can always walk, you lazy galoot,” jokes Anto.

  Now they’re quiet for a bit as Jack deals their cards.

  “Come on, Jack, you have to raise me a stake,” says another voice that I recognise as Gerald Keogh’s. He is older than the others, maybe twenty-two and also very handsome. His father used to own a shirt and glove factory in Sackville Street. He now lives in Cullenwood in Ranelagh and is from a most respectable family.

  “But I’m clean out of money,” moans Jack.

  “Let’s play for your new Sam Browne belt,” says Gerald.

  “Get up the yard!” jeers Anto. “That’s Jack’s pride and joy. He’s saved up all his gambling winnings to pay for it.”

  “You don’t have to tell me it’s a beauty,” says Gerald. “I was apprenticed to a draper.”

  A cart rattles by and they all stay quiet for a minute.

  “Go on then, Gerald, double or quits,” says my brother.

  I hear the faint rattle of a dice and then my brother groan, followed by Gerald Keogh’s laugh.

  “Hey, do you want to hear me poem about our leaders?” Anto says and goes on without waiting for a reply.

  “Pádraig Pearse is not so fierce

  And has a squinty eye,

  But he has a dream of Ireland free –”

  He is interrupted by a loud cheer and a whistle. Mercy! It is his “national bard” poem he was boasting about earlier. I can barely hear it with all the clapping and “Go on, boy!”

  He’s going on now about being prepared to die. Then more guff about “Old Fenian Clarke” lighting the spark from his tobacco shopand Mac Diarmada having a gammy leg. Now it’s brave Connolly and history, and hark, he’s on to Countess Markievicz but I cannot hear how he resolved the rhyme with all the caterwauling and “Hear, hear!” I don’t know why because it sounds like the worst poem ever written.

  There’s more! About Joseph Plunkett being born to a life of leisure and Thomas MacDonagh wanting to revive the Gaelic and Ceannt being a piper and rooting out tyranny. Does he mean to go through every single one of the leaders?

  No, he’s finishing . . . with being slaves of empire no more. That’s set off the most shocking rowdy hullabaloo. I fear one of them will fall off the roof!

  Well, upon my life! Anto couldn’t have had a more appreciative audience if he’d performed it at the Abbey Theatre itself! But they would wake the very dead with their hooplas and whistles. I can hear a noise on the stairs so I’d better stop.

  11.30 p.m. Saturday 22nd April.

  My bedroom.

  t was my mother on the stairs earlier.

  “Molly, Molly, what’s all that racket?” she called up to me. “I could have sworn I heard a bugle!”

  I stuck my head out the back window and whistled. Five startled boys stared down at me over the parapet – Jack, Anto, Gerald Keogh, Matthew Connolly and Martin Walton, who is about fifteen and has a shock of black hair like a gypsy. The surprised look on each face was frozen like Mr James’s waxworks.

  “You lot better leg it and, Jack, get into bed while I put her off the scent,” I hissed. Jack’s bedroom is in the attic, so it’s easy for him to get in through his window.

  I pulled the curtains shut and ran out to the landing.

  “Mama, I just had a funny dream. The ghost of Ireland banged the window, saying: ‘Ochone, ochone! We are in terrible trouble!’ It must be because we’re going to see Yeats’s play . . .”

  “A likely story, Miss Molly O’Donovan. Now go back to bed and tell the ghost of Ireland to be a bit more quiet!”

  Midnight, Saturday 22nd April.

  My bedroom.

  I’ve just had the most terrible fright! There was a rustle and I really did think the ghost of Ireland was coming to get me! But I had left a gap in the curtains and after my nerves calmed down I saw in a shaft of moonlight that there was a note pushed under my door. I was almost too afraid to get out of bed but my curiosity got the better of me. So I dashed out to retrieve it.

  With great excitement I lit a candle and saw it was written on paper from the Imperial Hotel. But I was sorely disappointed to see it was only Anto’s poem, dedicated to “dear bootyful Molly”. At least he got my name spelt right this time. He must have got the notepaper from May, his sister who works there as a scullery maid. And someone must have helped him with the rest of the spelling, because it is much improved – in fact, it is good. Not Jack obviously!

  This is what he wrote.

  “Pádraig Pearse is not so fierce

  And has a squinty eye,

  But he has a dream of Ireland free,

  And is prepared to die.

  Old Fenian Clarke,

  Has lit the spark, from his tobacco shop,

  Mac Diarmada has a gammy leg,

  But has the British on the hop.

  Brave Connolly,

  Believes history,

  Says no more masters and slaves,

  He founded the Citizen Army,

  And now the Republic is his craze.

  Countess Markievicz around Ireland flits,

  With her noble Fianna Boy Scouts,

  Now the boot is on the other foot,

  And we’ll kick the British out.

  Son of a Count, Joseph Plunkett,

  Is very sick with the T.B.

  He was born to a life of leisure.

  But will fight for his dear country.

  Poet and scholar, Thomas MacDonagh,

  Wants the Gaelic to revive,

  He too will fight and die,

  To keep the dream of free Ireland alive.

  Then there’s Ceannt the piper,

  All sons of Erin’s shore,

  We will join them to root out tyranny,

  And be slaves of Empire no more.”

  Well, perhaps it is a little bit good. Except Countess Markievicz is a daughter not a son of Erin’s shore. Lively certainly, though I will never tell him that. Anto is too full of himself already and if he thought I admired his poem, well, his head would swell so much he’d never get through the door!

  10 p.m. Sunday morning, 23rd April 1916.

  Our house.

  It is Easter Sunday! The day the Lord is risen and also the O’Donovan family, up and out bright and early even though it is a holiday. Mother told me Jack left to go to the mountains at the crack of dawn with his pals. That’s the first I’ve heard about a trip to the mountains. I wonder if that is true or if there is going to be some sort of march after all, and that’s his excuse.

  Mother and I set off at seven o’clock with baskets of eggs for some of the families in the slums around us. The blind basket-makers up the road had given us some dear little baskets, which we had decorated with ribbons, and we had painted the boiled eggs.

  We didn’t have time for breakfast, so my mother gave me a sticky bun as a special treat from the Dublin Bread Company (saints don’t have much time for cooking). I ate half and put the other half in my hankie in my pocket beside my tin of humbugs.

  We were out so early I saw the milkman for the hotels come rattling his scooper against the churn.

  “No rest for the wicked!” he called out.

  “Nor the good neither,” my mother replied.

  First, we called into Henry Place to our char Nancy. Their hallway was open as it is a tenement where many people live in different rooms. I was relieved we didn’t have to step over any drunks, who sometimes take refuge in such doorways. I have seen them when passing by other Dublin tenement houses and they scare me with their unfocused eyes and clumsy movements.

  We only meant to leave the gifts outside Nancy’s door without disturbing the family. Nancy usually rushes out to meet us at the front door, as if she has been watching out for us – Mother says she is probably embarrassed about her poor living quarters and doesn’t want us to see them. But this morning we were earlier than usual and there was no sign of her. So we climbed to the second floor and met her daughter May just as she was coming out their door on
her way to her work as a scullery maid at the Imperial.

  We did not go in but I could see into their poor room as May stood in the doorway and I must admit I was shocked. Poor is a cold, damp room with peeling paintwork and sagging ceiling in a dingy street. A room that smells of potato peel and smoke. I understand now why my parents are so kind to Nancy and pay her even when she doesn’t turn up, which is often. I saw three of the younger boys asleep on a mattress on the floor. The room was almost bare with a few tea chests for furniture. One upturned box was used as a table and had our old chipped cups and jam jars with cold tea on it. A line was hung across the room draped with a filthy cloth and the boys slept on one side and the girls on the other. They had no curtains but old newspapers over the windows to keep out the light. There was a glow of embers in the fire grate so May who is quiet and kind must have lit a fire before she went out.

  Her eyes filled with tears when my mother handed her the basket of eggs, a loaf of bread and a pound of butter.

  “Me ma will be thrilled,” she whispered. “She’s fast asleep. She was up all night with the babby.”

  I confess, I was surprised that Nancy has a new baby. She seems to me to be already an old woman. Her three-year-old, Alice, who is small for her age, peeked out from behind the curtain and cried to see May leave. I felt so sad when I saw her worn little nightdress, all patched and frayed, that I gave her the rest of my sticky bun. Well, you’d think I had given her a hundred pounds!

  “Can I eat all of it?” she asked.

  “Just for you,” I whispered. “Now be a good girl and go back to bed.” She crept back in behind the curtain.

  “Is Anto gone to the mountains with Jack?” I asked May as we went down the stairs.

  “I wouldn’t put anything past that little bowsie since he fell in with them eejits with their Irish Republic,” said May quietly to me. “Ma needs the money that comes from Da and Jemsie fightin’ in the army in Flanders.”

  “I think he wants to be a hero,” I said.

  “He’s not a bad lad. Gives my mother most of his earnin’s. But he’s got some quare notions in his head.”

  “I know,” I said. “He’s even written a poem about our ‘leaders’.”

  May smiled at this. “Is that the one about Mac Diarmada with the gammy leg and the Countess flitting around Ireland with her Boy Scouts?”

  We shared a little laugh at this.

  “I gave him the paper, and helped with his spelling,” she continued. “I’d be happy if he sticks to writin’ the poems. Our poor ould Anto hardly ever went to school because he had to go to out to work so young. So maybe it’ll encourage him to get a bit of educatin’.”

  I felt bad for always being mean to Anto, so I gave May my tin of humbugs for him.

  We visited Mr Hanrahan, an old man of over eighty. His room was in an attic with barely enough space for a bed. It had no fire and it’s a mercy he doesn’t freeze to death. He was so happy to see us, he gripped my hands in his old worn ones. My mother also gave him Father’s old tweed jacket that is frayed and patched.

  “Mrs Bessie,” he said to my mother, “you may be a Cracker but you’re the best class of Christian I know.”

  They both laughed.

  I was about to ask what was so funny when Mother silenced me with a look. She thinks it impolite when I pepper her with questions in front of people. But she explained the joke as we strolled back home.

  “He mixed up ‘Quaker’ with ‘cracker’!” I said.

  “No, he didn’t,” said my mother in her soft Northern Irish accent. “The Dublin people are great wags so they are. Cream Crackers are made by a Quaker family, the Jacobs, in Bishop’s Street, so he was pulling my wee leg.”

  “The Jacobs don’t make the crackers by themselves, do they?” I said. “Don’t they have that big factory up near Saint Patrick’s Cathedral? Daddy and I cycled by it last week and it must make a million crackers a day!”

  “True for you. There’s two thousand women and over a thousand men there,” laughed my mother. “They are better employers now but there was a strike in 1913 led by little Rosie Hackett – you know her from the First Aid. The women workers weren’t paid much more than seven shillings a week.”

  My new kilt at eight shillings and eleven pennies cost more than that. My new coat was thirty shillings! No wonder the poor have to wear rags.

  My mother is going to Belfast today to see her Great-aunt Bessie. She is the only relative who has kept in contact with her, because she too ‘married out’ – outside her own religion, that is. Some people really don’t like this, the “so-called Christians” that my mother talked about. But I think Jesus wouldn’t mind because he thought everyone should love one another – even Great-aunt Bessie!

  Aunt Bessie bewitched a very rich Protestant factory owner to marry her (for she does indeed look like an old witch) and is a staunch Unionist who believes Ireland should still be part of England. My father jokes that even her unmentionables are red, white and blue – the colours of the Union Jack! The Ulster Protestants also have their own army as Jack explained. They are so keen on being part of the United Kingdom that they are prepared to fight the government to stay in! But they too have gone to fight the Germans. So the only ones who like the Germans are the Irish Volunteers who want to kick the British out by force. I think I have got that right.

  My father was reassured when he saw in the Sunday Independent the notice from Eoin MacNeill for the Irish Volunteers. It said no marches were to take place. There was also news that arms had been seized in Kerry! Along with some fellow called Roger Casement who was bringing them in from Germany. So they can’t fight if they have no guns.

  After Mass, Father and I accompanied Mother to Amiens Street Station. When we got back home, there were several messages for Father to go straight into the GPO to run some maintenance checks. Our own telephone line wasn’t working either. So he sent one of his boys to fetch Miss Nugent to mind me and left straight away. But she sent a message that she had a headache even though she had promised my mother she would be on hand to help out if an emergency arose.

  My father had already gone out and I was on my own. Not that I minded. I looked out the window and saw Jack’s shadow, Hyacinth, pretending to window-shop in Dunn’s Hatters. Since it was Easter I felt sorry for her wasting her time.

  “Jack’s gone to the mountains since the crack of dawn,” I called out the window.

  “I’ve just seen him go down by the Quays with Anto,” she said, saucy as you please.

  So he was lying about the mountains! Since Father has already gone out and Miss Nugent isn’t here, I’m going to look for Jack with his new friends at Liberty Hall. This is being a bit daring – I don’t normally go so far afield on my own without Jack or my parents. But I really must find out what is going on and I am a big girl now.

  9 p.m. Easter Sunday.

  My bedroom, after a busy day in Dublin.

  Well, I came to no harm even though I went into the Lion’s Den and didn’t have Jack to guide my steps. Liberty Hall is on the River Liffey on the north side of the quays, just beside the Custom House. It used to be a hotel, Jack told me, but now that it is the headquarters of the Irish Trade and General Union it is more like a fortress. They have the Irish Citizen Army because the police beat them all up in 1913 when they went on strike. The bosses sacked all the workers who were in the Union, and wouldn’t let them back to work, which is why it was called “the Lockout”. Now the government say it is a hotbed of revolution my father says!

  I was surprised to see a great many people coming and going on a Holy Day. I snuck in the door when no one was looking. There are always so many children about that nobody pays much attention to us.

  Goodness! What a commotion there was inside! Their leader James Connolly was running around like his trousers were on fire! He once patted my head when I was in the Post Office, so I think he is a kind man.

  I ducked under the stairs when he stopped to talk to young Martin
King, who is a cable joiner in the Post Office. He has called to see my father sometimes. I didn’t know that he was a member of the Irish Citizen Army.

  “So cutting all the cables will cut off communication with England?” said James Connolly.

  Martin King handed Connolly a piece of paper. Connolly glanced at it quickly.

  Then King lowered his voice. “There may be other secret cables so you’d have to cut off the underground wires to the Telegraph Room to make sure. The Instrument Room on the first floor has an armed guard.”

  My ears pricked up. But I would not be able to tell my father because I was not meant to be here. And Jack would never ever speak to me again if I did.

  “But it doesn’t matter as we are not to do anything,” said Martin King.

  I was happy to hear that, for then I didn’t have to feel guilty.

  “When the time comes we will find out who is for Ireland,” said Mr Connolly.

  As I crouched under the stairway, I saw the Countess rush in. She was dressed as if for a play, in a uniform of green with gold buttons, a black velvet hat with a heavy plume of cock feathers, men’s knee breeches and heavy boots. Around her waist was a cartridge belt and over her shoulder a bandolier, which is a belt with bullets in it. She is a handsome woman, very aristocratic. Jack says she doesn’t really like girls, so her Fianna scouts is only for lads.

  She was distraught.

  “I was all ready to go at half past six this evening!”

  “MacNeill has cut the ground from under our feet. But it will only mean a little delay,” Connolly said.