ANY SAINTS IN THE BUCKET?

Coming  near to All Saints Day  I began thinking and blessing the saints that I have known in my life.
Here is something I found online about the origins of the Holiday"

All Saints' Day

It is believed by many scholars that the commemoration of all the saints on November 1st originated in Ireland, spread from there to England, and then to the European continent. That it had reached Rome and had been adopted there early in the ninth century is attested by a letter of Pope Gregory IV, who reigned from 828 to 844, to Emperor Louis "the Pious," urging that such a festival be observed throughout the Holy Roman Empire.All Saints' Day

This does not surprise me--it is another example of Christian  religion taking over and altering a Celtic Feast Samhain was one of the Major Harvest festivals of Celtic  society and was a time when  one could hope to  communicated with the deceased loved ones ALL SOULS DAY.

I know-- I know many people say-- My mother was a saint--but mine really was. But I won't argue the point.
No, besides the statue of Saint Raphael that stands in front of the school of that name on Walcott Street, what people have I met in Pawtucket who I believe are saints in heaven?

I always mention Modesto Lunadelli and John White because of their stalwart support of our family in time of need. So I have evidence of their works, but I really knew little of their faith.

Ed Hogan and Jenarita Fox impressed me both because of their professional dedication to teaching and improving the lives of Special Needs children.We now take events like the Special Olympics  for granted but they did not exist in the 40s and 50s when my sisters were  growing up. There were not even special ed classes until Jenarita Fox started one at Grove Street School.
Ed Hogan created many activities for handicapped children at the CYO in Pawtucket.

Certainly as a child  I met at least one saint teaching school at Saint Joseph's in Pawtucket.  My Eighth grade homeroom teacher Sister Mary Michaeleen  qualifies. She was a cheerful, playful happy sister and I  think those are traits of a  saint like Saint Francis.
I loved her simplicity and her kindness. I never saw her say anything unkind or  diminish a student in any way.  She also endeared herself to us because she  shared real human  things and she was a great teacher because she was passionate about her subject LATIN  especially the The Aeneid the great epic poem by Virgil.

 She was so  thrilled because her brother was studying to be a priest. AND one day he came outside our classroom and she went out to greet him. Her face was beaming with a happiness that combined an essential shyness with an immense pride in his  accomplishment. She explained to us that he had just been ordained and that he had come at her request to give us his blessing.

 She said that the blessing of a newly ordained priest was very powerful. That it erased all sin and would help us to reach salvation. We all stood and then fell to our knees. I was immensely moved by the event.  He blessed us in a solemn manner turning three times so that we were all included in his gaze. That feeling of certainty that I was saved and the jubilation as that grace arose in me has never left. 

I did reach  a shared answer to this question unexpectedly.
Professor Al Mc Aloon was a friend in my childhood when he visited with his  wife in the neighborhood. Later in life when I taught at Bryant College,  I was pleased to re-make his acquaintance. He was a teacher of psychology and was a fervent Jungian. He was also an active leader in the Irish organizations and was committed to Irish freedom. So we shared many things.  
When  he was old and retired  and I was way off teaching in Cincinnati, we would renew our friendship when I came back to Pawtucket every summer to see my mother, sister and aunts.

One blistering hot day we had arranged to meet for lunch  at the Newport Creamery in Newport where Al lived. I had some trouble with traffic on the bridge and so I was late. When I arrived Al was waiting standing out side and he was pale and looked sick. We went inside to the AC and I chided him for standing out in the heat. When we were seated, he suddenly keeled over in a dead faint.  I called the waiters and they called  911. The responders came fast and placed Al on a gurney.  I rode with him to the hospital in Newport. I told them I was his cousin--I am sure we are cousins if you go back far  enough. Anyway Al remained unconscious and his vitals were poor.

We were taken into a small cubicle in the Emergency area. Again I was asked about  our relationship and I said COUSIN.
I was  holding Al's hand and trying to  rouse him with  gossip and stories about Ireland. Suddenly the hand squeezed back and he said in a hoarse whisper THANK YOU, COUSIN
I laughed and  I saw that he might slip back into that deep sleep again. SO I asked him a question to keep his brain working.

AL in your life have you ever met a person that you think is a saint?
He named a few names and dismissed  each. I did the same. Then suddenly almost in unison we said one name 
FATHER HENRY SHELTON 
a man who devoted his life to helping the poor. That is my  answer and I'm sticking to it.

HALLOWEEN IN THE 50'S IN THE BUCKET

MY MOTHER MADE ALL OF OUR COSTUMES

Yes, we went out for Halloween and it was a big deal.  We would spend the week before talking about our costumes.  We often picked ghosts--that was a sheet with eyes  cut out. Or a witch--that was a black long dress and a pointed hat that we made of  construction paper.
Another favorite was a hobo. That was all grime and rags and tatters. We also liked a fairy princess. That was a long tulle under slip worn over our clothes and a crown.  But the one that I like the best was to go dressed as a cow girl--Dale Evans was my favorite. She was also the object of much jealous envy because she was married to ROY ROGERS.  I could not imagine a happier life.
For that I needed my cowboy hat and a holster with two cap guns and  boots and  a sort of bolero that I wore with a short skirt my mother made those. It had taken me months of whining and pleading to assemble the elements of that costume. The boots were rain boots and the hat was way too big so I just slung it down my back. BUT I WAS IN HEAVEN.

SO all three of us would get into costumes and we would descend with our shopping bags. Of course our first stops were the other two tenements in our three decker. They knew we were coming. 

 Then we  would rush out into the cold bracing air of the darkened streets. There were hordes of kids and we knew most of them and they knew me and my sisters Janie and Sheila. I was supposedly in charge. 

We had favorite places to visit. The people at the corner of Brewster and Englewood were a young couple with no children yet. They made a big  deal--welcoming us and  asking us to come into the kitchen. There  they had a big tub of apples for bobbing sitting on the floor. AND on the table were small doughnuts and paper cups of cider waiting for us.  WE went there first and after they had unmasked us all and admired our costumes, we would kneel around the big tub and engage in our own form of voluntary water boarding. 

 I would put my whole face in and try to grab the apple with my teeth  pushing it down to get a firm grip at the bottom of the  barrel. We all made a big mess.  But they had towels on the floor and when we emerged triumphant we would  put that apple into our bag;  dry our hair and move over to the  table with a big carved pumpkin.

 WE  were allowed two doughnuts and two cups of cider. That was a great way to start the evening. We had begun with the best but  I worried that if we saved it for last there might be nothing left.
I was right about that. Their house went dark early. When we walked back to our house heavy laden and I saw the dark house that had been so bright an hour or earlier I was glad that I had been among the first to bob.

When we got home my mother would  have us empty all of our bags and she would take some from each for a candy bowl that stayed on the  kitchen table for the rest of November. She would allot a fair share to each bag with our name on each. We could keep that and eat  it at our own pace.

 My sisters ate theirs  within a  couple of days and would begin to pester me for mine. I was OK with that  because I could use the candy to bribe them to do what I wanted.

MY mother made hot chocolate and we would eat any cookies that we had  been given. That was  a time when we did not worry about any cruel surprises in the treats of Halloween.
 A MORE INNOCENT TIME

CONNECTIONS BETWEEN ARDBOE IN IRELAND AND THE BUCKET

HERE IS AN EXCERPT FROM A POEM WRITTEN BY MY MOTHER'S GREAT UNCLE JOHN COLEMAN OF MULLINAHOE

THE POET GREETS THE COMING OF THE AUTUMN SEASON.

A few lines from "Autumn"

He is coming, we expected him to visit us again,
You can see him creeping, creeping on his path across the plain,
And everything he touches, as with a magic wand,
He turns from green to golden on his passage o'er the land.
He is coming from the southward, from very far away,
Where they never see their shadows at the noontide of the day;
And he visits every nation, he visits every clime,
His lips are stained a crimson with the produce of the vine.

Here the poet imagines the season of Autumn as a man  advancing across the  globe from the Equator to the northern  climes.

My mother was aware in the 1920s and 1930s of this poet in her family because someone in Ireland would send her father a clipping of John Coleman's poems as they were published.  She remembers coming home from school to find her father opening mail from Ireland--always  an exciting event--and reading them aloud. 
Sad to say, my mother did not believe that this poet was her father's Uncle.  I think that she could not imagine the life  they describe of a fishing community settled for centuries around the largest Lake in the British Isles, Lough Neagh.

My mother used the  wickedest Irish weapons -- satire  and sarcasm.  I now see that these are the weapons of an oppressed person who cannot allow herself to believe that there is something to be proud of in her history. 

In fact in Celtic society one of the tasks of the bard was to create satires  of the enemies of the Clan.  There were schools for bards and fili and in those schools the student poets would  create their lines while  lying on beds in darkened rooms and  committing them to memory. The bards were not  literate nor were most of their listeners.

Did you see that? Poems were composed in the dark.

























The students in the poetry schools for bards would  lie on beds in darkened rooms. There they would  compose and recite aloud line by line the poems  they were  creating.
Then they would recite the lines and accompany themselves on the harp.  The poets were the keepers of the clan's memory.At the risk of seeming obsessed, I must point out connections between this way of educating poets in an illiterate society and the enforced way that BOBBY SANDS wrote his poetry and the way the  other  Republican Prisoners in Long Kesh learned and memorized the Irish language.BOBBY SANDS  would lie on his filthy blanket , naked because of their refusal to wear  prison clothes  meant for criminals.He would  say his lines to himself out loud and when teh lights were off and the  sadistic prison guards had gone off the floor, he would stand at  the door of his cell and recite his new lines out loud so the other  prisoners could  hear them, remember them and  find solace  in the fact  that their leader had not been broken.  WHAT MORE HAS ANY BARD DONE FOR HIS PEOPLE?

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MY MILL WORK IN THE BUCKET

WOULD YOU GIVE THIS GIRL A  JOB IN A MILL?

 I usually write about childhood experience; I have often described the  way my parents and my aunts experienced their lives in the  Mills. I have not told of my own mill work and in fact I rarely think about it.
But yesterday I was driving on Cottage Street and there was a block  in the traffic and so I turned  and took a  left right past the Glencairn Manufacturing Company.  It is still in operation and I worked there one summer while I was on  vacation from college.  I wondered what do they make there now. I  googled it and saw pictures of various  treats coming out of an oven. DO they make  food there now?
I don't know--another unsolved mystery in the BUCKET.

But I do know what they made when I worked there in the early sixties.
.They made shoe laces.
And my job was to inspect them and  put them in the clear plastic  blisters that they were sold in. If they were dirty or tangled, I was to remove them.  At first I removed any that had even a speck on them--this took a toll on the white laces. Then they told me if possible to turn the offending laces over so the speck was hidden and not to be so fussy. I followed orders, and  there were no more complaints.
I liked the job but my mother felt a little disgruntled and showed it in two ways.

First she did not want me to work in a  mill.  That was not her hope for me. She was afraid that I would like it and settle for it. The summer before the Glencairn job  she had gotten me a job  where she was working Darlington Fabrics. We were not on the same shift and I did not get anywhere near the knitting machines that she doffed every night.
No, I was  busy  making endless boxes  to pack the finished rubber covered  yarns for shipping.  I would  go in and stand at a table with a mountain of flat boxes at my back and my job was to fold and tape them in a certain  fixed way so they became sturdy boxes.  Not difficult but quite monotonous.

My mother's second objection to my work habits came  midway through the summer. My sisters were going  to summer day camp for two weeks and in the flurry of dressing and getting them ready she  broke the shoe laces on my sisters sneakers.
 She called out to me:
"Norma, we need a shoelace. Brown if  you've got one. "
I answered back--"What makes you think I have  a shoelace?"
My mother "There's no hope for you, Norma. Working in a shoelace factory for  six weeks and you haven't a shoe lace to show for it?"

She told that story to any who would listen.  I did not understand the perks of my job obviously.
  
END OF MILL WORK FOR ME

FACTORIES IN THE BUCKET

Having read  KISSING  THE SHUTTLE by Mary Ann Mayer  made me aware anew of the dangers in those jobs. Mayer  writes about the increase in the Blackstone Valley of TB-- in part due to the custom of women using their teeth to pull the thread through the shuttle.  This poet historian also features pictures of open air schools for tubercular children  in Pawtucket.  This was at the start of the 20th Century and one such school  was on Summit  Street. Where were they and are there any remains of the building there?   This account made me  think again of how little we are told of the real history of our communities.   I often think about  that  cover up that passes for American History and  that we have been force fed.  When I see a  show on THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE which recounts the dark and oppressive  racist  realities of WORLD WAR I or one that details  Eugenics as promoted by Margaret Sanger and other elitists.  How strangely that story has  gotten twisted. Now it seems the truth can be told. Reading about the hazards of  mill work made me think  about and recall  my  family's experience in the factories of Pawtucket and Central Falls and Lonsdale. My mother started when she was only 14 years old sweeping out at Coats Mill on Lonsdale Avenue. My Aunt Anna started working at  Corning Glass Works when she was 19 years old.  She stayed there for 40 years and retired at the age of 59. That  was considered a very good job.  Corning  had a Union and raises and double time for Sundays. Here is a poem about class privilege. Something we  know everything about in Pawtucket. The Factories Margaret Widdemer--another  woman poet that we  are seldom  taught  and is rarely mentioned.

I have shut my little sister in from life and light    (For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair), I have made her restless feet still until the night,    Locked from sweets of summer and from wild spring air; I who ranged the meadowlands, free from sun to sun,    Free to sing and pull the buds and watch the far wings fly, I have bound my sister till her playing-time was done—    Oh, my little sister, was it I? Was it I? I have robbed my sister of her day of maidenhood    (For a robe, for a feather, for a trinket’s restless spark), Shut from Love till dusk shall fall, how shall she know good,    How shall she go scatheless through the sin-lit dark? I who could be innocent, I who could be gay,    I who could have love and mirth before the light went by, I have put my sister in her mating-time away—    Sister, my young sister, was it I? Was it I? I have robbed my sister of the lips against her breast,    (For a coin, for the weaving of my children’s lace and lawn), Feet that pace beside the loom, hands that cannot rest—    How can she know motherhood, whose strength is gone? I who took no heed of her, starved and labor-worn,    I, against whose placid heart my sleepy gold-heads lie, ’Round my path they cry to me, little souls unborn—    God of Life! Creator! It was I! It was I! To lighten the mood, I offer a sort of comic  take on an Irish style poem by the same  poet. Another poem  by Margaret Widdemer  IRISH LOVE SONG. Well, if the thing is over, better it is for me, The lad was ever a rover, loving and laughing free, Far too clever a lover not to be having still A lass in the town and a lass by the road and a lass by the farther hill -- Love on the field and love on the path and love in the woody glen -- (Lad, will I never see you, never your face again?) Ay, if the thing is ending, now I'll be getting rest, Saying my prayers and bending down to be stilled and blest, Never the days are sending hope till my heart is sore For a laugh on the path and a voice by the gate and a step on the shieling floor -- Grief on my ways and grief on my work and grief till the evening's dim -- (Lord, will I never hear it, never a sound of him?) Sure if it's done forever, better for me that's wise, Never the hurt, and never tears in my aching eyes, No more the trouble ever to hide from my asking folk Beat of my heart at click o' the latch, and throb if his name is spoke; Never the need to hide the sighs and the flushing thoughts and the fret, And after awhile my heart will hush and my hungering hands forget . . . Peace on my ways, and peace in my step, and maybe my heart grown light -- (Mary, helper of heartbreak, send him to me to-night!) AS THE NUNS OFTEN TOLD US THE SPIRIT IS WILLING BUT THE FLESH  IS WEAK.  HOORAY!

OSCAR ROMERO A NEW SAINT FOR PROGRESSIVES

LEADER  of Liberation Theology Canonized by Pope Francis

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Oscar Romero Archbishop of El Salvador was killed while he celebrated the Mass  by an  American supported  anti-revolutionary faction.

Here are some  thoughts that Saint Oscar shared in a sermon :

The shepherd must be where the suffering is. [1]

My soul is sore when I learn how our people are tortured, when I learn how the rights of those created in the image of God are violated.  [2]

SEE  how Saint Oscar connects the spiritual and the political:

A Gospel that doesn’t take into account the rights of human beings, a Christianity that doesn’t make a positive contribution to the history of the world, is not the authentic doctrine of Christ, but rather simply an instrument of power.

We . . . don’t want to be a plaything of the worldly powers, rather we want to be the Church that carries the authentic, courageous Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, even when it might become necessary to die like he did, on a cross.

THE GOSPELS  show us what to do with our pain, with the absurd, the tragic, the nonsensical, the unjust and the undeserved—all of which eventually come into every lifetime.

 If only we could see these “wounds” as the way through, as Jesus did, then they would become sacred wounds rather than scars to deny, disguise, or project onto others. I am sorry to admit that I first see my wounds as an obstacle more than a gift.

" Healing is a long journey." as Franciscan Richard Rohr observes "If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become cynical, negative, or bitter. This is the storyline of many of the greatest novels, myths, and stories of every culture. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children."

Scapegoating, exporting our unresolved hurt, is the most common storyline of human history. The Jesus Story is about radically transforming history and individuals so that we don’t just keep handing on the pain to the next generation. Unless we can find a meaning for human suffering, that God is somehow in it and can also use it for good, humanity is in major trouble. Because we will suffer. Even the Buddha said that suffering is part of the deal!

Here is one of Saint Oscars  brief meditations

A Future Not Our Own

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of
saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession
brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives include everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one
day will grow. We water the seeds already planted
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects
far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of
liberation in realizing this.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,
a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's
grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the
difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not
messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

From Xavarian Missionaries:

Oscar A. Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, in El Salvador, was assassinated on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass in a small chapel in a cancer hospital where he lived. He had always been close to his people,

I have read that  short meditation  over a few times. At first I did not see its power. But I did see that reading it calmed me in some way. That calmness pulled me back to re-read it. 
 It reminded  me of when I would be teaching a play and  in class we would be discussing it, suddenly at a certain point I would feel a new understanding sweep over me.
 Later I would re-read that section and try to find what I had  found in the moment of  class-room explication and illumination.
It is an elusive thing -- insight.
I think that the big  idea is that we are part of something larger than us.  That we are building, but we don't know what the final structure will be. But we are part and a necessary part of making it. We are WORKERS not MASTER-Builders.

When you read it over, where do you pause, where do you hear the faint promptings of GRACE?

It makes me think of that  spiritual that Elvis and BB King often sang.
I'm working on the building
It's a true foundation
I'm lifting up a bloodstained
Banner for the Lord

I'll have a good time
Working on the building
I'm going to heaven
To get my reward

REMEMBERING OUR WOMEN POETS --Ethna Carberry and BOBBY SANDS

BOBBY SANDS WANTED TO WRITE LIKE ETHNA CARBERRY

One of the sad-funny things I learned when I read more recent accounts of Bobby Sands Hunger Strike  was that he loved the poetry of Ethna Carberry.  He was inspired by her poem that was  a patriotic song "Roddy McCorley" and in his last  days he asked his jail neighbor Brendan Hughes whom he called the Dark if he  could give him a letter to mail to Ethna. He added that he did not have her address. The Dark answered  "I hope you have a ouija board in there because she  does not have an address. She died in 1902"

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Here's how one reference work described the popular song:

RODDY McCORLEY. Irish, Air or March (cut time). D Major (Miller & Perron): G Major (Carlin). Standard tuning (fiddle). One part (Miller & Perron): AABB (Carlin). There were two songs named "Roddy McCorley" (spellings vary). One is older, and may have been written soon after the Irish rebellion of 1798. The other was written in 1898 for the centenary of the rebellion, and while the tune is traditional (also used for the song "Sean South of Garryowen") the words are the product of County Antrim-born Ethna Carberry . Her poetry was published by her husband after her death in The Four Winds of Eirinn (1902), and proved a popular volume that contained, among many other pieces, her "Rody M'Corley" (pp. 82-83).

The words in her version commemorate a martyr of the 1798 rebellion. They begin:

O see the fleet-foot host of men, who march with faces drawn,
From farmstead and from fishers' cot, along the banks of Ban;
They come with vengeance in their eyes. Too late! Too late are they,
For young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.

Oh Ireland, Mother Ireland, you love them still the best
The fearless brave who fighting fall upon your hapless breast,
But never a one of all your dead more bravely fell in fray,
Than he who marches to his fate on the bridge of Toome today.

The truth of Roddy McCorley is more complicated and confused than Carberry's portrayal. Despite some assumptions he was Catholic, the best information is that he was a County Antrim Presbyterian. He also seems to have come late to the cause of the United Irishmen, and while he may have fought in Antrim, it was for his participation in an organized patriotic gang (The Archer Gang) afterwards that seems to have been the reason for his death sentence. The song was recorded and popularized by the Clancy Brothers, the Kingston Trio and others. It is a frequently heard in march medley’s played by Irish musicians and is considered a ‘grand old chestnut’ of a tune. 

Here is a verse from the lyric written by Bobby Sands:

Oh! I am Rodai of Duneane 

And those of no property bear my name. 

Those kingly freemen who sweat and toil 

And yet who never gain nor reign. 

I love these wretched gentle souls 

They! condemned to death from birth, 

I stand by Tone and I stand by truth 

And the wretched of this earth!

From the poem Rodaí MacCorlaí written by Bobby Sands,

Bobby has transformed it into a  marching song for world socialism, Wasn't he a great one!

Roddy McCorley

Here is the version made popular by  The Clancy Brothers

O see the fleet-foot host of men, 
Who march with faces drawn,
From farmstead and from fishers' cot, 
Along the banks of Ban;
They come with vengeance in their eyes. 
Too late! Too late are they,
For young Roddy McCorley goes to die 
On the bridge of Toome today.

Up the narrow street he stepped, 
So smiling, proud and young.
About the hemp-rope on his neck, 
The golden ringlets clung;
There's ne'er a tear in his blue eyes, 
Fearless and brave are they,
As young Roddy McCorley goes to die 
On the bridge of Toome today.

When last this narrow street he trod, 
His shining pike in hand
Behind him marched, in grim array, 
A earnest stalwart band.
To Antrim town! To Antrim town, 
He led them to the fray,
But young Roddy McCorley goes to die 
On the bridge of Toome today.

There's never a one of all your dead 
More bravely died in fray
Than he who marches to his fate 
In Toomebridge town today; ray
True to the last! True to the last, 
He treads the upwards way,
And young Roddy McCorley goes to die 
On the bridge of Toome today.

Songwriters: J Baird / Pd Tra

YES,  Bobby Sands was so taken with Ethna;s work that he wrote his own ballad version of Roddy Mc Corley. He recognized a fellow patriot in the woman from Antrim.

Ethna Carberry was the pen name used by a 19^th century Irish poet and journalist whose short life was ended by illness at the age of 35. She collaborated on the production of two Irish Nationalist magazines with another Irish poet, her friend Alice Milligan.

Born Anna Johnston on the 3^rd December 1866 in Ballymena, County Antrim. Her father was a timber merchant by trade but also a prominent Irish Republican in the Fenian movement. She was writing verse from a very young age and had her first piece published at the age of fifteen. She went on to have a number of other pieces of work published in periodicals such as the Nation, Catholic Fireside and United Ireland.

The Irish Nationalist cause was very close to her heart and she lectured up and down the country on the subject, along with Alice Milligan and Maud Gonne, the latter being the leader of a revolutionary women’s organisation called Inghinidhe na hÉireann, which translates as “Daughters of Ireland”. With Milligan’s help, she wrote plays to promote the organisation’s cultural activities. The pair were also responsible for The Northern Patriot and The Shan Van Vocht, both well-read nationalist publications. The latter title has been acknowledged as a major contributory factor to the “Irish Revival” in cultural activities.

Alice only started using the pen name Ethna Carberry in 1901 when she married fellow writer and folklorist Séamus MacManus. She explained that she did not wish to write using her now married name as she wanted to avoid being confused with him. Tragically the marriage only lasted a year as Alice fell ill with gastritis and died. Séamus lived for a further 58 years and never re-married. The impact on his life of his wife was so great, and he wrote a memoir in her honour. He published the work of Ethna Carbery in The Four Winds of Erin after her death and this collection was extremely popular.

She was, without doubt, loved throughout her native land and much further afield. 
The fame of Ethna Carbery spread across the Atlantic.
 As well as being a prominent and fervent supporter of and writer about Irish Republicanism, she wrote poetry as if her mind was:
 

One of her most poignant poems is reproduced here. My Dearest appears to show Ethna searching deep into her own soul for inspiration:

 

Ethna Carberry was a deeply patriotic individual whose love for all those who had contributed to, and died for, her country was an almost all-consuming passion and this fervour was to be found in much of her work. She wrote fluently, easily and with infectious enthusiasm. Her body of work would, no doubt have been greatly enhanced had she lived a longer life.

Ethna Carberry died on the 21^st April 1902 at the tragically young age of 35.

BOBBY SANDS DIED ON MAY 6 1981 AT THE TRAGICALLY YOUNG AGE OF 27.

Two kindred spirits  her work reached across a century and soothed the tortured body and soul of  a fellow REPUBLICAN PATRIOT.  

SHE SPURRED HIM INTO SONG.