The author, Patrick McDermott, is a third cousin of Seán Mac Diarmada, the 1916 Easter Rising leader who was one of the signatories to the Proclamation of Irish Independence. Patrick was born in the townland of Blackmountain, which is the ancestral townland and home of Seán Mac Diarmada’s people. He grew up doing the same farming tasks as Seán Mac Diarmada’s relatives, namely, John and Bizzie McDermott, who remained in the ancestral home, when other members of the family moved to Corranmore, nearer Kiltyclogher. This is where Seán Mac Diarmada was born.
Life in rural Ireland in any townland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was far from easy. There were few opportunities for any kind of work outside farming. And few were the farmers who could remunerate anybody to help on the farm.We are in danger of forgetting the struggle these p...
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