Yesterday's edition of this newspaper bore a headline "Get In Touch With The Past" on its Transition Times pages. But the truth is that most Irish people would much rather not get in touch with the past, thanks very much all the same. In Ireland the past - the truth about the past - is a bit of an unnecessary complication.
This reluctance to look at what has happened in Irish history comes not just from the descendants and friends of those who perpetrated dreadful crimes but, much more remarkably, from the descendants and friends of the innocent victims.
When Alan Stanley published his book I Met Murder On The Wayyears ago he found a few people within what he calls "the minority community" - in other words, the Protestant community - who wondered why he had bothered. In a phone interview with me this week, Stanley remembered being reminded that the Protestant community had coped with living in Ireland because "we kept our heads down". Luckily Alan Stanley refused to keep his head down, and published his book about the murder of Richard and Abraham Pearson.
This book in turn gave rise to the documentary The Killings At Coolacrease, which was shown on RTÉ 1 television on Tuesday night. Never has the series title, Hidden History, been more apposite. Because the history that is really hidden is not about Dev or Michael Collins, but about the ordinary people who have been written out of history, as the Pearsons were until Alan Stanley wrote them back in again.
Briefly, the Pearsons were a farming family who lived in Co Offaly. After a spate of slanderous rumours, and an outburst of land envy - the Pearsons owned and worked a 340-acre farm - two of the Pearsons' four sons, Richard (24) and Abraham (19), were shot by about 30 IRA men on June 30th, 1921. They were initially approached while out saving hay. A family friend, William Stanley, Alan's father, later erroneously described as both a British officer and as a spy, made a run for it. Both Richard and Abraham were shot in the genital area, and then in the buttocks, in front of their siblings and mother, and the house was burned. It took Richard six hours to die and Abraham 14. Alan Stanley has no record of any pain relief being administered by the local doctor who attended them.
The manner of this shooting is shocking enough, reminiscent to modern eyes of the mutilation of the bodies of black men who were lynched in the southern states of America. Even more shocking was that the television programme managed to find people, in this day and age, prepared to defend and justify the murders. It is perhaps not so surprising that old men, steeped in the dangerous myths of other times, should be prepared to talk about how "the Pearson girls were aggressive - more aggressive than their brothers", and how the Pearson brothers, who died in agony, "were executed and that was that". But to see a young man blithely talking about how the Pearsons had shown profound disdain for local republicans "and in particular for Irish Volunteers" sent a chill through the blood. It was like someone saying: "the Jews had too much money." Terrifying.
Of which other group of crime victims would commentators be allowed to speak in this way in modern times? Certainly not of the victims of rape. These statements made the viewer realise that the murder of the Pearsons could happen again tomorrow.
That, notably in the Border counties, similar murders - miserable, vicious, laden with local gossip - happened yesterday. There was never a shred of evidence to justify the Pearson murders, and there still isn't. Here was an otherwise excellent - a groundbreaking - programme that was far too balanced in its efforts to give both sides of a lamentable story.
The only glimmer of light was provided by the local postman, an IRA man who did not have the stomach for what was planned, and allegedly warned the Pearsons. And by John Joe Dillon, the son of a local IRA man, who spoke of the atrocity with real regret. After the murders the Pearsons tried to stay on their farm. But they weren't the only ones reluctant to let go. Another brother, Sydney, went out to plough one day and found a note on the plough, warning the family to get out. Eventually they went to Australia. And one thinks of the thousands of Protestants who quietly vanished from Ireland at that time, unremembered.
William Stanley went to Wales, a Paddy in Monmouthshire and a West Brit at home. He returned to Ireland, a genial man subject to black moods which his family ascribed to what he had endured at the time of the killings. When he wrote I Met Murder On The WayAlan Stanley told his wife that if it encouraged even one or two similar families to tell their stories he would be well satisfied. The question is whether the rest of us are ready to hear those stories. You can buy a copy of I Met Murder On The Wayby writing to Alan Stanley at Quinagh, Carlow, Co Carlow.