Getting women’s perspective on Irish history

The road to the Rising may be paved so far with bumpy, joyful, costumed intentions, but the discussion around it can feel dominated by male voices. There’s no reason why we can’t ensure more women in the classic three-man mix.

Women were not some sideline to the preceding or main events in 1916 (and beyond), and they have not been nonparticipants in the documenting and recording of history for the past 100 years.

In the event our heads were submerged under a table for these past 100 years, Nadia Clare Smith's book A "Manly Study"? Irish Women Historians 1868-1949 rectifies the first 50 years of wooly-eared delusion. She collates the careers and work of: unionist and nationalist women historians, women historians in the NUI, women historians at Trinity College Dublin and nonacademic historians.

Last year my reading highlight was to discover the work of Margaret Ó hÓgartaigh, whose death, in December, was an enormous loss to Irish history. Dr Ó hÓgartaigh's biography of the chief medical officer of the Irish Citizen Army, Kathleen Lynn: Irishwoman, Patriot, Doctor (Irish Academic Press), is a very significant work everyone should read to familiarise themselves with Lynn's life, the history of St Ultan's children's hospital and the rigorous scholar who excavated it all.

If you are struggling with “ah but this is too gendered a reckoning”: consider the 14-year-old girl. Maybe she likes history. Maybe she’s good at history. Maybe she’ll become a historian. Maybe she’s your daughter. It’s vital she hears the public voices of women on all topics, but particularly this one.

In a recent random bookshop encounter, I chanced upon Dorothy Macardle's Tragedies of Kerry, 1922-1923 (Irish Freedom Press) first published in 1924. It concerns the events of that year specifically as they took place in Kerry. Macardle, a prolific historian and novelist, was better known for her 1937 epic The Irish Republic.

It is curious to note the contrast in tone between the two works. The Irish Republic is much more formal, while Tragedies of Kerry, displays the fresh wounds and replays the merciless nature of the Civil War. It also has a passionate immediacy in its recreation, replete with an evocative, theatrical flourish that could engage across the generations. Macardle declares in her introduction "It is Kerry, among the proud and undefeated people that they will hear all the history told."

In a geographical sequence, she provides dramatic re-enactments of what took place, for example, “Wilson, who was in command, rushed at Coffey, shouting abuse, and began to kick and beat him violently; his mother screamed, and Wilson struck her a blow that flung her across the floor. The soldiers rushed about the cottage smashing the crockery on the dresser, smashing the pictures in the room, spilling the milk and flour over the floor.”

Other stories of men being executed and families looking for them are very harrowing. “He saw Stephen Buckley beaten until he could not straighten his back.”

As Macardle recounts these events, touching, occasionally eccentric anecdotes creep in. For instance, the mother of Eugene Fitzgerald, who was killed for refusing to betray his column, says: “He was a great scholar, all the same. He had French and Latin and Irish and typing, and shorthand; a grand boy he was, and a fine tradesman.”

You might be brave, besieged or buried but your mother hasn’t forgotten your shorthand and should a historian come knocking she will supply all the details. There’s something about such detail: the micro within the macro that brings it back to the kitchen table where all are seated. The reminder too that everyone is listening.

Anakana Schofield is the author of Malarky