INTRODUCTION illustrated with photographs, a map of Dublin city centre and facsimiles of captured Republican documents. It also contained brief biographies of the executed rebel leaders and a largely accurate narrative of the Rising written by J. W. M. which can probably lay claim to being one of the first proper histories of the 1916 Rising. Photographs of Pearse, Connolly and the other Republicans executed in 1916 played an important propaganda role in the aftermath of the Rising and were sold as postcards and framed prints. These quickly replaced the pictures of the Manchester Martyrs, Daniel O’Connell and the leaders of the 1798 rebellion which had hung in pride of place alongside religious icons in many Irish homes. This reflected the political shift from the politics of Home Rule and the Irish Parliamentary Party to support for the new Sinn Féin movement and militant Republicanism. Throughout the War of Independence, attacks on these photographs were a common way for British soldiers and members of the RIC to vent their frustration during raids on the homes of Republican sympathisers. The discovery of such an offending photograph might often give the British forces an excuse to mistreat those present or serve as a pretext to burn the house. During a British military raid on the Blasket Islands, Peig Sayer’s husband implored her to hide photographs of Thomas Ashe and the leaders of the Rising that were hanging on the wall of their home: ‘Hurry and take down those pictures on the wall!’ ‘Musha, defeat and wounding on those who felled them!’ said I. ‘They felled them without mercy and they alive, and it seems I have to hide the pictures from them now, and they dead! May I be dead and as dead as a stone if I’ll take them down in fear of any stranger wretch! And another thing, that big picture is so secure that Oscar 1 couldn’t pull it down, the strongest day he ever was.’ ‘Take it down!’ said he, angry. ‘I couldn’t, I say. It will have to be left where it is, and if it’s the cause of our death, it’s welcome. They fought and fell for our sake, and as for Thomas Ashe’s picture,’ said I, ‘I can’t hide it from anyone.’ 2
The British soldiers arrived to search their house whilst the argument between Peig and her husband was still in full flow and apparently they left after a halfhearted search. In August 1920 thirty Black and Tans went on a drunken rampage through Limerick after the IRA held up and disarmed two members of the RIC. Whilst 1 2
Oscar – a hero from Irish mythology associated with Fionn Mac Cumhal and the Fianna. Peig Sayers, An Old Woman’s Reflections (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000), pp. 118–19.
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