Table of Contents

• DOING MY BIT FOR IRELAND
  • INTRODUCTION
  • LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
  • I
  • II
  • III
  • IV
  • V
  • VI
  • VII
  • VIII
  • IX
  • X
  • XI
  • XII
  • XIII
  • XIV
  • SONGS SUNG BY THE IRISH BEFORE AND AFTER THE EASTER RISING

MARGARET SKINNIDER

School-teacher, suffragist, nationalist:
wounded while fighting in the uniform of
the Irish Volunteers

DOING MY BIT FOR IRELAND

BY MARGARET SKINNIDER

INTRODUCTION

When the revolt of a people that feels itself oppressed is successful, it is written down in history as a revolution—as in this country in 1776. When it fails, it is called an insurrection—as in Ireland in 1916. Those who conquer usually write the history of the conquest. For that reason the story of the "Dublin Insurrection" may become legendary in Ireland, where it passes from mouth to mouth, and may remain quite unknown throughout the rest of the world, unless those of us who were in it and yet escaped execution, imprisonment, or deportation, write truthfully of our personal part in the rising of Easter week.

It was in my own right name that I applied for a passport to come to this country. When it was granted me after a long delay, I wondered if, after all, the English authorities had known nothing of my activity in the rising. But that can hardly be, for it was a Government detective who came to arrest me at the hospital in Dublin where I was recovering from wounds received during the fighting.

I was not allowed to stay in prison; the surgeon in charge of the hospital insisted to the authorities at Dublin Castle that I was in no condition to be locked up in a cell. But later they might have arrested me, for I was in Dublin twice—once in August and again in November. On both occasions detectives were following me. I have heard that three days after I openly left my home in Glasgow to come to this country, inquiries were made for me of my family and friends.

That there is some risk in publishing my story, I am well aware; but that is the sort of risk which we who love Ireland must run, if we are to bring to the knowledge of the world the truth of that heroic attempt last spring to free Ireland and win for her a place as a small but independent nation, entitled to the respect of all who love liberty. It is to win that respect, even though we failed to gain our freedom, that I tell what I know of the rising.

I find that here in America it is hard to imagine a successful Irish revolt, but there was more than a fighting chance for us as our plans were laid. Ireland can easily be defended by the population once they are aroused, for the country is well suited to guerilla warfare, and the mountains near the coast form a natural defense from attack by sea. Nor do the people have to go outside for their food. They could easily live for years in the interior on what the soil is capable of producing. And there is plenty of ammunition in Ireland, too. If we had been able to take the British as completely off guard in the country districts as we did in Dublin—had there not been the delay of a day in carrying out concerted action—we could have seized all the arms and ammunition of the British arsenals on the island.

To-day it would be harder, for the British are not likely to be again caught unaware of our plans. Besides, they are taking precautions. Drilling of any sort is forbidden; foot-ball games are not allowed; all excursions are prohibited. The people are not allowed to come together in numbers on any occasion.

For a long time after the rising, I dreamed every night about it. The dream was not as it actually took place, for the streets were different and the strategic plans changed, while the outcome was always successful. My awakening was a bitter disappointment, yet the memory of our failure is a greater memory than many of us ever dared to hope.

In all the literature of the Celtic revival through which Ireland has gained fresh recognition from the world, there is no finer passage nor one that can mean so much to us, than that paragraph of the last proclamation which Padraic Pearse wrote in the ruined Dublin post-office when under shell and shrapnel fire. At a moment when he knew that the rising had been defeated, that the end of his supreme attempt had come, he wrote:

"For four days they (the men) have fought and toiled, almost without cessation, almost without sleep; and in the intervals of fighting, they have sung songs of the freedom of Ireland. No man has complained, no man has asked 'why?'. Each individual has spent himself, happy to pour out his strength for Ireland and for freedom. If they do not win this fight, they will at least have deserved to win it. But win it they will, although they may win it in death. Already they have won a great thing. They have redeemed Dublin from many shames, and made her name splendid among the names of cities."

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

DOING MY BIT FOR
IRELAND

THE IRISH CROSS PRESENTED TO THE
AUTHOR

The inscription reads: "The Cumman-na-mBan
and Irish Volunteers, Glasgow, present this to
Margaret Skinnider for the work she did for Ireland,
Easter Week, 1916."

DOING MY BIT FOR
IRELAND

I

Just before Christmas a year ago, I accepted an invitation to visit some friends in the north of Ireland, where, as a little girl, I had spent many midsummer vacations. My father and mother are Irish, but have lived almost all their lives in Scotland and much of that time in Glasgow. Scotland is my home, but Ireland my country.

On those vacation visits to County Monaghan, Ulster, I had come to know the beauty of the inland country, for I stayed nine miles from the town of Monaghan. We used to go there in a jaunting-car and on the way passed the fine places of the rich English people—the "Planter" people we called them because they were of the stock that Cromwell brought over from England and planted on Irish soil. We would pass, too, the small and poor homes of the Irish, with their wee bit of ground. It was then I began to feel resentment, though I was only a child.

In Scotland there were no such contrasts for me to see, but there were the histories of Ireland,—not those the English have written but those read by all the young Irish to-day after they finish studying the Anglicized histories used in the schools. I did it the other way about, for I was not more than twelve when a boy friend loaned me a big thick book, printed in very small type, an Irish history of Ireland. Later I read the school histories and the resentment I had felt in County Monaghan grew hotter.

Then there were the old poems which we all learned. My favorite was, "The Jackets Green," the song of a young girl whose lover died for Ireland in the time of William III. The red coat and the green jacket! All the differences between the British and Irish lay in the contrast between those two colors. William III, too! Up to his reign the Irish army had been a reality; Ireland had had a population of nine millions. To-day there are only four millions of Irish in Ireland, a country that could easily support five times that number in ease and comfort. The history of my country after the time of William III seemed to me to be a history of oppression which we should tell with tears if we did not tell it with anger.

But I believed the time was at hand to do something. We all believed that; for an English war is always the signal for an Irish rising. Ever since this war began, I had been hearing of vague plans. In Glasgow I belonged to the Irish Volunteers and to the Cumman-na-mBan, an organization of Irish girls and women. I had learned to shoot in one of the rifle practice clubs which the British organized so that women could help in the defense of the Empire. These clubs had sprung up like mushrooms and died as quickly, but I kept on till I was a good marksman. I believed the opportunity would soon come to defend my own country. And now I was going over at Christmas to learn what hope there was of a rising in the spring.

After all, I did not go to the quiet hills of Monaghan, but to Dublin at the invitation of the most patriotic and revolutionary woman in all Ireland. Constance Gore-Booth, who by her marriage with a member of the Polish nobility became the Countess Markievicz, had heard of my work in the Cumman-na-mBan and wanted to talk with me. She knew where all the men and women who loved Ireland were working, and sooner or later met them all, in spite of the fact that she was of Planter stock and by birth of the English nobility in Ireland.

CONSTANCE GORE-BOOTH, COUNTESS DE MARKIEVICZ

One of the leaders of the rising. (Her death sentence was
commuted to life imprisonment)

It was at night that I crossed the Irish Sea. All other passengers went to their state-rooms, but I stayed on deck. Leaning back in a steamer-chair, with my hat for a pillow, I dropped asleep. That I ever awakened was a miracle. In my hat I was carrying to Ireland detonators for bombs, and the wires were wrapped around me under my coat. That was why I had not wanted to go to a state-room where I might run into a hot-water pipe or an electric wire that would set them off. But pressure, they told me when I reached Dublin, is just as dangerous, and my head had been resting heavily on them all night!

It is hard now to think of that hospitable house in Leinster Road with all the life gone out of it and its mistress in an English prison. Every one coming to Dublin who was interested in plays, painting, the Gaelic language, suffrage, labor, or Irish Nationalism, visited there. The Countess Markievicz kept "open house" not only for her friends, but for her friends' friends. As one of them has written: "Until she came down to breakfast in the morning, she never knew what guests she had under her roof. In order not to disturb her, they often climbed in through the window late at night."

The place was full of books; you could not walk about without stumbling over them. There were times, too, when the house looked like the wardrobe in a theater. You would meet people coming down-stairs in all manner of costume for their part in plays the count wrote and "Madam"—as we called her—acted with the help of whoever were her guests. These theatrical costumes were sometimes used for plays put on at the Abbey Theater, near by. They served, too, as disguises for suffragettes or labor leaders wanted by the police. The house was always watched whenever there was any sort of agitation in Dublin.

I remember hearing of one labor leader whom the police hoped to arrest before he could address a mass-meeting. He was known to visit Madam, so the plainclothes men made for Surrey House at once. When they arrived they found a fancy-dress ball going on to welcome the count back from Poland. All windows were lighted, music for dancing could be heard, and guests in carriages and motors were arriving. This was no likely haunt for a labor agitator, so they went away. But caution brought them back the next morning, for rumor still had it that their man was hiding there. They waited about the house all that morning and afternoon. Many persons came and went, among them an old man who walked with difficulty and leaned upon the arm of a young woman. The police paid no more attention to him than to the others, but it was the labor leader in one of the disguises from the theatrical wardrobe. He made his speech that night surrounded by such a crowd of loyal defenders that he could not be arrested.

During the Transport Workers' strike in 1913, Madam threw open her house as a place of refuge where strikers were sure to find something to eat or a spot to sleep, if only on the drawing-room floor. In addition, she sold her jewels to obtain money to establish soup-kitchens for their families. Her energy and courage always led her where the conflict was hottest. I do not think she knew what it was to be afraid, once she decided upon a course of action. Although belonging to the most privileged class in Ireland by birth and education, as a little girl she had thrown herself into the Irish cause. She and her sister Eva used to go to the stables, take horses without permission, and ride at a mad pace to the big meetings. There they would hear the great Parnell or the eloquent Michael Davitt tell the story of the wrongs done to Ireland, and urge upon their hearers great courage and self-sacrifice that these wrongs might be righted. If all those at such meetings had heeded the speakers' words as did this little daughter of Lady Gore-Booth; had they surrendered themselves as completely as she did, I verily believe we would to-day be far along the road toward a free Ireland.

As a child all the villagers on her father's estate loved Madam, for they felt her sincerity. When she was sent away to school or went to Paris to study painting, for which she had marked talent, they missed her. It was while she was in Paris that she met and married another artist, a member of the Polish nobility. Poland and Ireland! Two countries which have had their great history and their great humiliation now have their hope of freedom!

Neither the count nor countess were willing to permanently give up their country of birth, so they decided to live part of the time in Dublin and part of the time on his estates near Warsaw. It was while Madam was in Poland that she learned some of the fine old Polish airs to which she later put words for the Irish. Upon her return to Ireland she was at last expected to take her place as a social leader in the Dublin Castle set. Instead, she went more ardently than ever into all the different movements that were working towards the freedom of Ireland.

About this time Baden-Powell was organizing his British Boy Scouts in Ireland. He was so much impressed with the success Padraic Pearse was having with Irish boys that he asked him to help him in the Boy Scout movement. Pearse did not care to make potential British soldiers out of Irish boys, however, and refused this invitation. The incident stirred Madam to urge an Irish Boy Scout movement. She could not find any one to take it up with energy, so she decided to do it herself with Pearse's coöperation. Madam had never done work of this sort, but that did not deter her. Since it must be an organization that would do something for Irish spirit in Irish boys, she named it after the Fianna Fireann, a military organization during the reign of Cormac MacAirt, one of the old Irish heroes. Its story was one of daring and chivalry such as would appeal to boys. With this name went instruction in Ireland's history in the days of her independence and great deeds, as well as instruction in scouting and shooting.

At Cullenswood House, where Padraic Pearse had his boys' school until it outgrew these quarters, there is a fresco in the hall that pictures an old Druid warning the boy hero, Cuchullain, that whoever takes up arms on a certain day will become famous, but will die an early death. The answer, which became a motto for the boys in that school and also a prophecy of their teacher's death, is in old Irish beneath the fresco: