Neddy’s Palaver

Neddy's Palaver

I found this musical creation so beautiful that I had to learn more about it and its meaning. I found it on an album at Amazon, which I just ordered: The Irish Tenors / McNamara, McDermott, Kearns, Tynan.

This is what I discovered about the song entitled “Grace.” Give a listen. (The Video)

“As we gather in the chapel here in old Kilmainham jail,
I think about these past few weeks; Oh, will they say we failed?
From our school days they have told us we must yearn for liberty,
Yet all I want in this dark place is to have you here with me.

[Chorus]
Oh Grace just hold me in your arms, and let this moment linger,
They’ll take me out at dawn and I will die.
With all my love I’ll place this wedding ring upon your finger,
There won’t be time to share our love for we must say goodbye.

Now I know it’s hard for you my love to ever understand,
The love I bear for these brave men, my love for this dear land,
But when Padraic called me to his side down in the G.P.O.
I had to leave my own sick bed, to him I had to go.
[Chorus]

Now as the dawn is breaking, my heart is breaking too,
On this May morn, as I walk out, my thoughts will be of you.
And I’ll write some words upon the wall, so everyone will know,
I loved so much that I could see His blood upon the rose.”

Joseph Mary Plunkett was an Irish nationalist, poet and leader and planner of the 1916 Easter rising. It was largely his plan that was followed in 1916, which ended in a military disaster. Plunkett was held in Kilmainham Jail and faced court martial. Hours before his excecution by firing squad, at age 28, he was married in the prison chapel on 4 May 1916, to his sweetheart Grace Gifford, a Protestant convert to Catholicism.

Grace remained loyal to the republican movement while earning a living as a commerical artist.She voted against the treaty which divided Ireland and during the civil war she was imprisoned in Kilmainham jail for three months. She died in 1955.

Christianity first arrived at Ireland’s shores in 431, when Palladius was sent by the Pope as the first bishop of Ireland. Saint Patrick, probably the most celebrated and famous figure in Ireland’s history, was not himself Irish. He was born in northern Britain to a wealthy Roman official. At the age of sixteen he was captured by Irish pirates and sold into slavery. After escaping from Ireland, he went to France, became a bishop and then made his life’s work the conversion to Christianity of the homeland of his slave-masters. His great success was aided by many other Irish saints including Saints Enda of Arranmore (died 530), Edna (died 516), Finnian (circa 470–550), Columba of Iona (7 December 521–9 June 597), Brendan the Voyager (circa 484–578), Brigid (453–1 February 523), Comgall (circa 515-600), Finbarr (circa 550-623), and Ciaran (circa 515-556). Together they melded the Christian religion with the pagan religion in Ireland and built the monasteries that preserved Christianity and its culture during Europe’s Dark Ages.