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:

"I care not if my life has only the span of a night and a day if my deeds be spoken of by the men of Ireland!"

It was in this spirit of devotion to Ireland that the Fianna boys were drilled. The house in Leinster Road was always running over with them, some as young as ten years. You would find them studying hard or, just as likely, sliding down the fine old banisters. Madam never went anywhere that they did not follow as a bodyguard. They loved her and trusted her, a high compliment, since I have always found that boys are keen judges of sincerity. If her work had been either pose or mere hysterical enthusiasm, as some English "friends" in Dublin have sought to make the world believe, these boys would have discovered it quickly enough. As it was, they remained her friends, and two of the younger men, executed after Easter Week, were volunteer officers who received their first training under Madam in the Fianna.

The countess was one of the best shots in Ireland, and taught the boys how to shoot. After the rising, when we all had surrendered, there still was one house from which constant and effective firing went on for three days. At last a considerable force of British took it by storm. Imagine the surprise of the officer in command when he found that its only occupants were three boys, all under sixteen!

"Who taught you to shoot like that?" he asked them.

"The Countess Markievicz," came the answer.

"How often did she drill you?"

"Only on Sundays," was the reply.

"And these great lumps of mine," exclaimed the officer in disgust, "are drilled twice a day and don't yet know their left foot from their right!"

Madam also took real interest in the personal problems of her boys. While I was staying with her at Christmas, she was teaching a boy to sing. He was slowly growing blind, and nothing could be done to save his sight; but she determined that he should have a livelihood, and spent hours of her crowded days in teaching him the words and music of all the best patriotic songs and ballads. If she heard that any of the boys were sick, she would have them brought over to Surrey House where she herself could nurse and cheer them. Between times she would rouse their love of country to a desire to study its history.

When I told Madam I could pass as a boy, even if it came to wrestling or whistling, she tried me out by putting me into a boy's suit, a Fianna uniform. She placed me under the care of one of her boys to whom she explained I was a girl, but that, since it might be necessary some day to disguise me as a boy, she wanted to find whether I could escape detection. I was supposed to be one of the Glasgow Fianna. We went out, joined the other Fianna, and walked about the streets whistling rebel tunes. Whenever we passed a British soldier we made him take to the gutter, telling him the streets of Dublin were no place "for the likes of him."

MARGARET SKINNIDER

(wearing boy's clothes)

The boys took me for one of themselves, and some began to tell me their deeds of prowess in Dublin. Ever since the war began they had gone about to recruiting meetings, putting speakers to rout and sometimes upsetting the platforms. This sounds like rowdyism, but it is only by such tests of courage and strength that the youth of a dominated race can acquire the self-confidence needed later for the real struggle.

They sang for me Madam's "Anti-recruiting Song," which they always used as an accompaniment to their attacks on recruiting-booths. Its first two lines go thus:

And the last two lines are:

These disturbances by the Fianna were part of a campaign by which Nationalists hoped to keep Irishmen out of the war and ready for their own fight when the time came. Many were kept at home, but hundreds, thrown out of work by their employers with the direct purpose of making them enter the British army, had to enlist for the pitiful "king's shilling." Nothing so illustrates the complete lack of humor of the British as their method of arousing interest in the war. They declared it was the part of England to "defend the honor and integrity of small nations"!

Even before the war the countess had watched for any opportunity to destroy militarist propaganda. Although England has won the world's heart by explaining she never considered there was danger of war, and for that reason the preparedness of her enemy was an unfair advantage, still, we had heard of the German menace for a long time. It was announced in Dublin that the play, "An Englishman's Home," which had had a long run in London, where it pictured to thousands the invasion of England by the Germans, was to open for an equally long run in the Irish capital to stir us to take precautions against invasion.

Madam took her Fianna boys in full force to the opening night performance. They occupied pit and gallery while the rest of the theater was filled with British officers and their wives. The fine uniforms and evening dress made a great showing, for Dublin is the most heavily garrisoned city of its size in the world.

The play went on peacefully enough until the Germans appeared on the stage. At their first appearance as the invading foe, the Fianna, in green shirts and saffron kilts, stood up and sung in German "The Watch on the Rhine," just as the countess had taught it to them.

Of course there was consternation, but after a moment an officer stood up and began to sing "God Save the King." All the other officers and the "ascendancy people," as we call our English upper class in Ireland, rose and joined him. But you cannot safely sing "God Save the King" in Dublin. Eggs and vegetables at once began to fly, and the curtain had to be rung down. So ended the Dublin run of "An Englishman's Home"!

These things the Fianna boys told me on our way to the shooting-gallery where they wanted to see the Glasgow "boy" shoot. I hit the bull's-eye oftener than any of them, much to the delight of the boy who knew I was a girl. He was not much surprised, however, for by her own skill Madam had accustomed them to expect good marksmanship in a woman.