Search Results for 'Grace Gifford'

Geraldine Plunkett was a daughter of Count George Noble Plunkett and a sister of Joseph Mary Plunkett. She became Joe’s aide-de-camp and knew all the 1916 leaders. She and Joe lived in Larkfield cottage in Kimmage where they stored guns and ammunition, and a lot of drilling, etc, occurred. Joe brought in Michael Collins to help her with the family accounts.

Joseph Plunkett and Grace Gifford were to have a joint wedding with his sister Geraldine Plunkett and her fiancé Tom Dillon, at the Rathmines church, Easter Sunday, April 24 1916. The confusion about the on/off Rising, the rumours about the possibility of Roger Casement being taken prisoner in Kerry, kept the couples guessing as to what would happen. But Joseph, one of the principle organisers of the Rising, probably knew more that what he said to his sister, that Grace ‘did not know the smallest thing about the political situation, and had no idea whatever of such things’.*

Padraic Pearse, the self-identified President of the Provisional Government, and Commandant-General of the Army of the Irish Republic was rushed to the gallows, or in this case to the grim stonebreakers yard at Kilmainham jail.

Poetry more than any other art form is intimately connected with the events of Easter 1916. Three of the executed signatories of the Proclamation, Padraic Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh (Tomás Mac Donnchadha) and Joseph Mary Plunkett were recognised poets of their day, who had used their poems to espouse the cause of revolutionary nationalism.

From now until March 12, the Aidan Heavey Public Library in Athlone is showcasing an exhibition borrowing its title from the famous line by W.B. Yeats: A Terrible Beauty is Born. This will be the first of two library exhibitions focusing on the 1916 Rising.

During the past few weeks I have tried to give some of the formative influences on the life of the writer Eilís Dillon as she grew up in Galway. The impact of her parents’ (Professor Tom Dillon and Geraldine Plunkett) commitment to the War of Independence, and her nightly fears of sudden raids on their home by the Black and Tans was a nightmare that stayed with her all her life.