Sir, - I was six years of age on the day Kevin Barry was executed in Mountjoy Jail. I have never forgotten the desolate weeping of all the neighbouring women on Ringsend Road where we lived, close to Boland's Mill. My grandmother went on and on, lamenting the bitter day, the bitter day, his poor mother, God help her, the poor, poor woman. My own mother was afraid to show her face; my father was a British officer. She was crying too, and I wanted to console her, but I was afraid to take sides. Those were tough times, either side.
When I was in my late forties I visited a sick friend in the Mater Hospital, Rosaleen McDonnell, who introduced me to Kevin Barry's mother in the same small ward. Mrs Barry had the loveliest face I had ever seen, and the gentlest voice - not a Dublin voice, a country voice. If she was seriously ill, it did not show in her fresh skin and wonderful eyes, nor in the serenity of her folded hands.
"He was only a lad," she told me, "going on to be a famous doctor!" Her tender smile was sad.
Rosaleen said: "Mrs Barry is so sweet, and very funny. You should have heard her singing, 'Oh My Dark Rosaleen, Do not sigh, do not weep, The priests are on the ocean green...' And that was when I was being wheeled off to the theatre!"
The old lady said to me: "Tell your little children that today you met Kevin Barry's mother. Tell them proudly." And I did tell them, in every detail, just as I'm telling you, proudly. One of my sons knew all the words of that old heart-breaking ballad: ". . .High upon a gallows tree, Kevin Barry gave his young life, For to set Old Ireland free. . ."
That was 40 years ago and today I was remembering their faces, and their voices joining in the song, somehow rejoicing in the memory of a boy, a very little older than they were then. - Yours, etc.,
Lillian Roberts Finlay, Dunsany, Co Meath.