Offaly features among Last Voices of the Irish Revolution
Eighty years after the Irish Civil War ended in 1923, author and documentary maker Tom Hurley wondered if there were many civilians and combatants left from across Ireland who had experienced the years 1919 to 1923, their prelude and their aftermath.
In early 2003, he recorded the experiences of 18 people, conducting two further interviews abroad in 2004 which have been published in his new book, 'Last Voices of the Irish Revolution.' Tom spoke to a cross-section (Catholic, Protestant, Unionist and Nationalist) who were in their teens or early twenties during the civil war. The chronological approach he has taken to his book spans 50 years, beginning with the oldest interviewee's birth in 1899 and ending when the Free State became a republic in 1949.
Portarlington native Ellen Troy née Maloney was among the people that Tom spoke to for his book in 2003. She was aged 102 at the time and was a mine of information on the 1919-23 revolutionary years and indeed the things she experienced and witnessed.
The topics Ellen discussed included her brother who died before she was born, her mother going abroad, her early life, communion, meeting Countess Markievicz, her husband, the British army, Black and Tans, IRA, Cumann na mBan women she knew and the customers who frequented her aunt's pub in Portarlington.
Another interviewee was centenarian Patsy Homes from Cork who spoke about his time as an internee in Ballykinlar Camp, Co. Down in 1921. Father Thomas Burbage from Geashill was interned there at the same time. Meanwhile, Dan Keating from Kerry, aged 101, discussed being interned in Maryborough (Portlaoise) Gaol during the civil war. He recalled the execution of Thomas Gibson from Cloneygowan in 1923.
100 years after the Civil War ended, these 20 interviews recorded by Tom Hurley come together to create a unique oral account of the revolutionary period and the tensions that were brewing in the run-up and aftermath.
'Last Voices of the Irish Revolution' by Tom Hurley is available in bookshops throughout the country and can also be ordered online. It was published by Gill Books.