1922
Diary 26th December
What a miserable Christmas Day we had yesterday. I keep comparing this year with last. The bonfires, the songs and celebrations, the vote on the treaty yet to be taken, that ballad of mine celebrating Dan and Barney coming home from the English prison. We could do anything, was what we thought then, for hadn’t we already achieved the impossible? Only here we are this year, living in the “Free” State, as beholden as we ever were to the English Crown.
This year, Christmas is Barney absent from our table. It’s Mammy trying to let on she’s not as sick as she is. It’s Dan estranged and Norah isolated.
All we have to hold to is the knowledge that our cause is true and right. Mammy gave us a small speech as we sat down at the Christmas table: “If Kevin Barry’s mother
