A Rebel's Romance

Horowhenua Chronicle, 27 July 1916, Page 3

A Rebel's Romance

—« ■ - (London Times;. Dublin, May 0. The rolfowing marriage announcement. appeared on the lront page oi yesterday's Irish Times: — Plunkett-Gifford.—May 3, 1016, at Dublin, Joseph Plunkett to Grace Giflord. Ou an inside page of the same paper was the official statement issued on the previous afternoon that Joseph Plunkett and three other Sinn Fein rebels had been sentenced to death and "were shot this morning." The two announcements, coupled with an incident described to me by a Crafton-stri jeweller, reveals one of the most i inarbable incidents of the pa«t wee. Joseph Plunkett put Iris signal a.s a member of the Provisional Government to the proclamation which declared. Ireland to be a Republic. Of his career little is known outside of tlio circle of "intellectuals" with whom ho consorted. He was a son of Count Plunkett, aiwl the nephew of a prominent member of the Irish Bar who entered the army in the early days of tiie war and Imsi his life at Gallipoli. At one time bo edited the Irish Review, a monthly journal which ceased publication not long ago, and he was also the author of a number of writings in prose atid, verse. Of Miss Grace Gilford i have learned a low particulars from a member of her family. She is a handsome young woman, 28 years of age, one of lour daugters of Frederick Gifford, a Dublin solicitor, who has retired from practice owing to ill-health. She was given a good education, and. devekiping a taste for art, went through a course of training at the Slade Art School in London. T\ ay ward and headstrong by nature, she came several years ago under the influence of Countess Markievicz, ami much against the wishes ot her parents, associated herself with the Sinn Fein movement.

I One of her sisters, .Miss .Muriel Uii-if-ord,' also came iu contact with the 'leaders of tile party, and four years ago married Thomas MaeDunagh,. an _\I.A. at the National university, a tutoi' in English at the University College, audi an intimate friends of I'. H. Pearse, headmaster ol St. En cki school. Both these rebels have now paid the penalty of their crime, and Mrs MaoDonagh is left a widow with a boy of three aad a girl of eighteen months to support. .Shortly before the outbreak of the rebels Miss Grace Gift'ord's parents held indirectly that she was engaged to be married to Plunkett. Probably she S first made his acquaintance when he was editing the Irish Review. At any rate, 1 have seen several political cartoons and other humorous drawings which she contributed to that paper. On one of the originals I noticed that she signed herselt "Grace Giffordski" and on another above her proper signature, the words "Sinn Fein" enclosed in a square. The drawings, to an untrained! eye. seemed crude and full of grotesque distortion. An expert might call them Futuristic. "When Mrs Clifford heard of the engagement she remonstrate I with her daughter, but without Wail. Miss Gifford. who seems to have taken 110 part in the rising. spent mopt of last week at home. On the afternoon of last Wednesday she went out. and since then she has not returned. That evening a young woman, whose description tallies with that of Miss Gifford. bought a ring at a jeweller's shop in Grafton-street. She waft obviously in great distress, and in reply to a sympathetic enquiry she made the startling announcement that her lover. Mr Plu-nket-t. had been sentenced to be shot next morning and that by the permission of the authorities she was to be marriedi to him an hour or two before his death. At midnight that night two officers it a motoT-ear called at Miss GiffordV homo with a, letter for her from Plunkett, and were told that she was probably staying with her married sister. When Mrs Gifford saw her daughter the next afternoon the latter held out her left hand- showing her ring, and told her mother that between 3 and I o'cVwk in the morning she had been married in prison to Joseph "PlunlTctt. The story of the wedding ceremony is known only to those who saw it.