The refreshment was long in coming, and she went down to see why.

She found her cook up in arms: "Is it me boil the kettle for Englishmen coming in to shoot down Irishmen ?" Yet that was still the voice of a minority.

When I came home from France a few weeks later, a shrewd and prosperous Nationalist man of business said to me with fury: "The fools! It was the first rebellion that ever had the country against it, and they turned the people round in a week." Nothing could have prevented the halo of martyrdom from attaching itself to those who died by the law for the sake of Irish freedom: the tradition was too deeply ingrained in Ireland's history.

Yet Redmond did not go beyond the measure of average Irish opinion when he accepted the first three executions as just.

People at least knew who these men were, and their signatures to the proclamation of an Irish Republic proved their leadership.