In 1916 Michael O’Beirne was just six years old, living ‘at the top of a respectable house in Clare Street near Merrion Square’. It was many years later that he wrote his autobiography, but his memories of rebellion through a child’s eyes stayed fresh.1
The Green was in sight at last, but we’d have to cross the road, walk up to the corner and cross again.
‘Always look both ways before you cross,’ Maggie said, but there was no sign of motor-cars. There was a peculiar stillness as we neared the corner. Here a few people were standing, staring across in amazement at the shut gates of the Green.
On this perfect circle, my hoop, all my hopes of a glad sunny morning were centred. On the smooth walks of the Green how swiftly I’d speed, driving my hoop on its oval, slim shadow! But something was wrong. The space between the corner of Merrion Row and the Green looked different, oddly vast. It was a deserted space. We realised that the gates of Stephen’s Green were locked, and a wall of sandbags had been piled against them.
A few men, like figures on a distant stage, stood staring from behind the bars.
‘Go home!’ one of them shouted. He was waving at us, and shouted again: ‘Go home or I fire!’
This fellow came out in front of the gates with a revolver in his hand. For a moment I could only gape, not even feeling annoyed. The man had a startling appearance. He was wearing a leopard skin like the big drummer in a band. He waved his gun at us again, threateningly: ‘Clear away home!’
The four or five people near us were just as amazed as ourselves. Like us they had wanted to go into the Green – and here we were, stopped! It was natural to feel angry, but the big people seemed more excited than angry. They had clustered together and were all talking at once in low tones.
‘What’s up?’ Maggie said, going over. ‘What’s the matter?’
Nobody seemed to know. One man said, staring across at the shut gates: ‘There’s going to be trouble.’
Maggie grabbed my hand and said, ‘Come on, Mazie, we’d better be going home.’ It was exciting and strange; we turned away reluctantly. As we moved on we met groups of people all eager and astonished, all talk and questions. Someone pointed along the street. There was a tram there, overturned. Rumours were flying that the Irish Volunteers had marched into Sackville Street, there would be a war.
When we got home Maggie opened up the bottom sash of her window and leaned out, gazing left and right. ‘The city is like a desert,’ she said, ‘not a soul on the streets,’ but I knew them furry fellows were in Stephen’s Green. I got my toy revolver and ran to the window. Maggie pulled me back. ‘I want to shoot them furry fellows!’ I shouted, but she pushed me from the window. ‘Do you want us all to get killed?’
We were all there at home as the holiday Monday wore on, dull and boring. That evening my father said he’d ramble over for a game of housey-housey, but he came back soon. ‘I seen a tram on its side,’ he told us (we had seen it already). ‘There’s a horse was shot dead near the college, and they have King Street barricaded.’
Maggie said all this trouble was caused by the Irish Volunteers. Nobody knew exactly who they were or what they were up to. ‘A lot of hotheads,’ Granny said, ‘that’s what they are, hotheads and firebrands.’
Nobody in our family took an interest in politics, except maybe my aunt. If Maggie was pro anything I would say she was pro-British, reading out about the doings of the Royal Family. But she also knew about the Volunteers; in fact she had a photo of one of their leaders dressed in military uniform. She admired him because he was handsome and was named O’Reilly – her own name was Maggie O’Reilly. Only he named himself in Irish ‘The O’Rahilly’, which meant he was chieftain of all the O’Reilly clan.
At either side of our windows there were tall, narrow shutters which opened out as hinged panels. These were shut and barred. As darkness fell you could nearly feel the silence over the city. I went to bed with no notion of sleeping. Later, in total darkness, I lay listening to a mysterious noise down in the street, and it went on and on – the measured stroke, stroke, stroke of marching feet. Was it the Volunteers – or what?
Now in the darkness rang out the crackle of shooting, far and near. I knew about the war in the papers Maggie read, the fighting on the Western Front, rifle and mortar fire and bayonet charges. This marching and the banging of guns was all part of the war, it seemed, come nearer.
The next morning we peeped from our high-up windows at a line of soldiers on the opposite side. They were at our side too – all the way along Clare Street and Merrion Square, into the distance. The soldiers were suddenly there, ranged along both sides of our street holding their squat, sloped rifles at the ready.
It was like a dream that went on, all the time more bewildering. Of course nobody could go to work. The fact that my father was there, at home, didn’t seem to matter because he was only ordinary compared with a drama like this. He would sometimes take a quick peep through the curtains.
Maggie wondered if she could slip out to get milk and bread. I came beside her in the hall, saw the door swing open and the soldier outside with his leather-strapped rifle. He had a funny way of talking, not like us.
The soldier said in a grand voice that Maggie could go out if she wanted to, at her own risk. He was keeping a sharp look-out. ‘Hit’s the snipers on the roofs,’ he said. ‘’It and run, that’s their mottaew.’ Maggie was raging, because ‘hit and run’ sounded so cowardly.
‘You can’t deny that they’re brave men,’ she said indignantly. ‘Whatever else!’
‘They’re barmy,’ the soldier said. ‘That’s wot they are.’
Waving her milk-jug, remembering her namesake hero, Maggie retorted: ‘I don’t care what you say. The O’Rahilly is a splendid man, and a real gentleman.’
Later, when Granny was told about this it upset her. ‘You and your O’Rahilly! You’ll have them raiding the place next. And if they found that photo–’
‘Well they won’t!’ Maggie put the photo down inside her blouse.
‘All the same,’ she went on, ‘you’d really pity some of them poor Tommies. Sure they’re only boys. There was one in the dairy drinking a glass of milk, and sis he, “Crikey,” sis he, “it’s werse than Flawnders!”’
Some of the people opposite – the quality – stood at their doors and chatted with the soldiers.2 They even brought out tea and sandwiches to them, which Maggie said was Irish hospitality.
The sky greyed over and all afternoon the rain pattered, dimpling the shiny pavements. We knew by now that there were Irish Volunteers barricaded in the Post Office in Sackville Street. We heard – which seemed a hard and brutal thing – that they had shot down looters thieving from shops. Also that crowds had gathered to watch the big shop, Lawrence’s, go up in flames. There had come a lull in the shooting, but it only made the interval more tense as we waited for what must happen next.
Maggie said it was a good thing, anyway, that Miss O’Leary was not in evidence. She had gone home to the country for Easter, and with luck would be unable to get back.
Late that night, when I had gone to bed, we heard the thunder of big guns. By Wednesday morning the war had really started. The city seemed to shake. The terrible noise went on, sometimes wavering, then suddenly strong and intense: the yap-yap-yap of machine-guns, the crack of rifle-fire, the shuddering crump of artillery.
For a house-bound child of six it would be hard to imagine a more thrilling or marvellous experience. The way at night they would shout: ‘Put out that light!’ Soldiers on horseback clattering along – the cavalry – had been shot down in Sackville Street. When I peered out a Tommy opposite stared up at me from under his cap’s peak, before his gaze went roving on along the rooftops.
On Thursday night the Far Room was in darkness. We knew that a great battle was being fought across the city. Pressing close against the window we could see the left side of Lincoln Place and Fanning’s pub. High up, the ornamental roof of this building stood out in silhouette against a bright red sky.
We were beginning to feel sad, to feel a kind of sympathy for the Irish Volunteers. They were foolish men – hotheads all right, but they were fighting a losing battle now. You couldn’t but feel sorry for them, even feel a sneaking pride.
Saddest of any news for Maggie was that The O’Rahilly was dead. He had been shot in Moore Lane, off Moore Street; she stood at the window and muttered a prayer for his soul. ‘The whole of Dublin will be levelled,’ she said. ‘God have mercy on them – Jesus, Mary and Joseph protect them!’
The Volunteers in the GPO were holding out, though by this time the building and most of Sackville Street was blazing. Still the big guns pounded and the rifles cracked. Then all of a sudden it was finished. Quiet had spread over the city by Saturday evening, a great stillness. They had at last laid down their arms, a soldier said.
I remember being taken for a walk the next day by my father. We saw the tram on its side again, shop-windows broken by looters, bullet-marks in walls. We came to Westmoreland Street, and saw beyond it the piles of blackened rubble and the sky, an open space that showed the backs of houses in streets far away.
The walls that stood in Sackville Street looked ragged, as if my story book giant had lumbered along punching holes in them with his fist. Where the roads and pavements had been level people were climbing and stumbling, and standing to stare. From the acrid-smelling ruins a plume of smoke was here and there still rising.