Palestinian flags fly around the 1916 Easter Rising centenary board in Taghnevan Drive, Lurgan, seen previously in 2024.
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Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
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North Armagh Remembers Palestine
Cumann Na mBan/Cumann Na gCailíní
North Armagh Remembers
North Armagh remembers both the centenary of the Easter Rising – in black and white in the background are (above) the seven signatories of the Proclamation, (bottom left) Cumann Na mBan (see the 2014 west Belfast mural) and (bottom right) the Irish Citizen Army (depicted by the painting The Birth Of The Irish Republic) – but also nineteen local volunteers and activists from the Troubles era: (anti-clockwise from left) Thomas Harte, Michael Crossey, Charles Agnew, Julie Dougan, John Francis Green, Terry Brady, David Kennedy, Peter Corrigan, Sheena Campbell, Sam Marshall, Eamonn McCann, Harry McCartney, JB O’Hagan, Sean McIlvenna, Eddie Dynes, Eugene Toman, Garvase McKerr, Sean Burns.
The emblems in the upper corners of those of Na Fıanna Éıreann and the Irish National Volunteers. The inclusion of the National Volunteers is unusual and perhaps a mistake: they were formed in 1914, when the Irish Volunteers split after Redmond urged Irishmen to join the British Army in the Great War; about 24,000 National Volunteers joined the 10th and 16th (alongside roughly 180,000 other Irishmen) (WP). The intended emblem might instead be that of the Irish Volunteers, which kept the name of the pre-WWI organisation but only a fraction of the volunteers, some of whom participated in the Easter Rising; their emblem is also a harp but with “IV” or “Irish Volunteers” or (for the Dublin brigade) the Fıanna Fáıl sunburst. (If you can clarify, please comment/get in touch.)
Taghnevan Drive, Lurgan
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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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New Lodge Volunteers
Twenty portraits in circular frames have replaced the twenty-one square portraits seen on the ‘Out Of The Ashes Of 1969’ mural in the New Lodge. From left to right, those portrayed are Michael P Neill, Seamus McCusker, Gerard Crossan, Colm Mulgrew, Francis Liggett, Brian Fox, John Kelly, Robert Allsopp, Louis Scullion, Billy Reid, Danny O’Hagan, Michael Kane, Sean McIlvenna, Jim O’Neill, Rosemary Bleakley, Martin McDonagh, James McCann, James Sloan, Dan McCann. Paddy McManus is no longer included, as compared with the earlier portraits.
For the mural without any portraits, at the time of its launch in 2012, see X00857.
See also the New Lodge IRA memorial garden.
New Lodge Road, north Belfast.
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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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800 Years Of Irish Resistance
There is a memorial garden to the history of Irish resistance at the entrance to the Athletic Grounds in Armagh. From left to right, the images presented here show:
“More than 800 years of Irish resistence” – a sword for the Norman invasion under Strongbow, a pike for the 1798 and 1803 rebellions, a bolt-action rifle for the Easter Rising of 1916, and an assault rifle for the Troubles;
Cumann Na mBan, Mairéad Farrell and republican women who made “the supreme sacrifice”;
The Proclamation, Provisional IRA and Na Fianna;
The dying Cú Chulainn and a plaque “in proud and loving memory of all republican volunteers, ex-POWs and the unsung heroes from this area who fought, suffered and died in the cause of Ireland’s freedom, with a quote from James Connolly: ‘If you strike at, imprison or kill us, out of prisons or graves will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you and perhaps raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you England! Do your worst!”;
“Remember Ireland’s hunger strikers – 22 men” – the ten 1981 hunger strikers and Thomas Ashe, Terence MacSwiney, Michael Fitzgerald, Joe Murphy, Joseph Whitty, Andy O’Sullivan, Denny Barry, Tony D’Arcy, Jack McNeela, Seán McCaughey, Michael Gaughan, Frank Stagg;
A stone “in loving memory of men, women and children murdered by British forces in Ireland.”
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Copyright © 2023 Paddy Duffy
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The Corrs
Nell (l) and Elizabeth (r) Corr from 107 Ormeau Road joined Cumann Na mBan in 1915 and travelled to Dublin in 1916 (with Nora Connolly, Ina Connolly, Bridie Farrell, Lizie Allen, Kathleen Murphy, and another girl called O’Neill (Treason Felony)) to serve as messengers in the preparations for April’s Easter Rising. They were in Liberty Hall (shown in the detail above) on the morning of the rising before heading north. Brother George, on the other hand, died at the Somme as a soldier in the Australian infantry, while another brother, Charles, fought in WWI with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. They are pictured on the left-hand side of the mural. (BBC | BBC video)
Elizabeth’s account of Easter Sunday and Monday is available at the Bureau Of Military History.
Essex Grove, south Belfast.
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Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
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Cumann Na mBan
This mural is at the bottom of Teach Na bhFıann/Fianna House (formerly Dill House) in the New Lodge. “Cumann Na mban” in Irish is “the women’s organization/council/society” in English. The organization in question is the republican paramilitary group which was founded on April 2, 1914 and celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.
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Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
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We Bleed That The Nation May Live
Arrayed against the forces of the British Army (which are shown in armoured cars and in sniping positions in the foreground of the mural, along the whole length of the wall) are various symbols of Irish nationalism: Oliver Sheppard‘s 1911 statue of Cú Chulaınn dying; the pikemen of the 1798 Rebellion (featured yesterday: Éırí Amach 1798); the four provinces of Ireland; Érıu the mythological queen of Ireland/Éıre as designed by Richard J King/Rísteard Ó Cíonga; Easter lilies; the emblems of Na Fıanna Éıreann and Cumann Na mBan on either side of a quote from (The Mainspring) Sean MacDiarmada “We bleed that the nation may live; I die that the nation may live. Damn your concessions, England: we want our country”; a phoenix rising from the flames of the burning Dublin GPO (inspired by Norman Teeling’s 1998 painting The GPO Burns In Dublin); the GPO flying an ‘Irish Republic’ flag; portraits of signatories and other rebels — (left) Padraig H. Pearse, Thomas J Clarke, Eamonn Ceannt, Thomas MacDonagh, (right) Countess Markievicz, James Connolly, Sean MacDiarmada, Thomas Plunkett; the declaration of independence, placed over the advertising box of AA Accountants – see the in-progress shot below. For more work-in-progess images, see yesterday’s post, Éırí Amach 1798. At the very bottom is a quote from the mother of Gerard ‘Mo Chara’ Kelly, Harriet Kelly: “We want the freedom of our country and your soldiers out.”
McQuillan Street, west Belfast
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Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
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Cumann Na mBan
Volunteers in Cumann Na mBan (or youth wing Cumann Na gCaılíní) from Ballymurphy and Springhill are remembered in a mural in Ballymurphy Road, Belfast. Anti-clockwise, they are Maura Meehan, Anne Marie Pettigrew, Dorothy Maguire, Eileen Mackin, Catherine (Cathy) McGartland, Anne Parker. All but Mackin are included in the Greater Ballymurphy plaque.
This is the third mural painted as part of the Ballymurphy Mural Project.
The figure on the right comes from a poster for International Women’s Day, 1982, (CAIN). It includes the words, “This is not a man’s war but a people’s war, and very, very much suffering has been borne by the women, be they mothers, wives, political activists or Volunteers, and the men ought to remember that without the sacrifice of women there would be no struggle at all.”
Ballymurphy Road, west Belfast
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Copyright © 2008 Paddy Duffy
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Paddy Duffy Collection 