Irish Lady (31 page)

Northern Ireland is a country of soft rain, gray mist, turbulent clouds, and long winter nights. This cold and sometimes bleak setting is home to the wittiest, warmest, most hospitable population on earth. Ask an Irishman for directions or the time of day and you'll be sharing afternoon tea and some
craic
in front of a cozy turf fire. Ask for parking change and he'll dig into his pocket to find what you need or he'll walk to the nearest news agent or off-license to make sure you find the way. Ask a waitress for her opinion on a menu item and she'll sit down beside you while you eat to be sure you're pleased or else she'll take the food away and bring back something else, no charge, of course.

Poverty, revolution, emigration, famine and subjugation have molded the Irish into people of great character, great loyalty and great tenacity. For centuries the native Irish have fought, starved, died, and buried their children, refusing to give up their religion, their culture, their language, and their principles.

Unlike the Scots and the Welsh, who also have a history of English resistance, only the Irish fought on into the present century to win their independence, their own republic, a complete separation from the British state with the exception of the Six Counties of Northern Ireland, a partition formed in 1921 to satisfy a small minority of the population who wished to remain British.

Ulster, the ancient name of the original nine counties of Northern Ireland, was the last Catholic enclave to surrender to Elizabeth Tudor in 1607. It is in Ulster where Irish history and Irish legend come together. Emain Macha, Deirdre of the Sorrows, King Conor, the Warriors of the Red Branch, Cuchulain, Red Hugh O'Neill and Red Hugh O'Donnell are not only heroes of Ireland, they are heroes of Ulster.

I have taken tremendous liberties with Irish history. Nuala O'Donnell was not one person, but several people. There was a Nuala O'Donnell married to the first Red Hugh O'Donnell who commissioned the writing of
The
Annals
of
the
Four
Masters
in the fourteenth century. She was an O'Brien. Another Nuala, married to Niall Garv O'Donnell, sailed for Rome with Red Hugh O'Neill and his family after his exile.

The Rory O'Donnell of my story was really Red Hugh O'Donnell, and he was bound by friendship and marriage to his father-in-law, the O'Neill featured in
Irish
Lady.
He died in Spain, probably of food poisoning, after the Battle of Kinsale. Rory O'Donnell was a distant cousin who played a less significant role in the fight against English invasion.

Red Hugh O'Neill, known as the Great O'Neill, was a thorn in Elizabeth Tudor's side for decades. She lived to see him defeated but never subdued.

Bernadette Devlin, a Catholic from mid-Ulster, was the youngest MP in the history of Westminster. Her relationship to the Devlin family in my story is pure fiction. Meghann McCarthy and Michael Devlin do not exist outside of this book.

Internment, the holding of suspected terrorists without trial in Northern Ireland, no longer exists. It was used in 1922, 1939, 1956, and 1971–75. The hunger strikes of the early eighties, resulting in the deaths of thirteen prisoners, including Bobby Sands, gave political prisoners privileges denied to those convicted of other crimes. Among these were the right to wear their own clothing, the right to freely associate with each other at all hours, and exemptions from all types of penal labor.

Diplock courts and torture as a means of securing confessions from suspected terrorists were exposed by Amnesty International in 1978. Ninety percent of all Diplock convictions were found to be the result of confessions signed under such conditions.

The conflict in Northern Ireland is not, nor has it ever been, a religious war. It began as a power struggle between Catholic Spain and Protestant England over dominion of Europe. In a country of huge unemployment, insufficient housing, and a population whose average citizen is under twenty-five years of age, it is still a power struggle between those who wish to keep what they have and those who would like to share a limited amount of resources and wealth.

Ireland was England's first colony, and Northern Ireland may very well be her last. But there is no doubt in the hearts and minds of those who strive for self-determination that one day it will all be “sorted out” and everyone, Catholic and Protestant, will be the better for it.

craic
conversation, fun

the Falls
Catholic Area of Belfast

Fenian
derogatory name for an Irish person, from the Fenian nationalists of the nineteenth century

Long Kesh (the Maze)
British prison where political prisoners are housed

marching season
weeks surrounding July 12; parade season commemorating the Battle of the Boyne, King William's victory over Catholic King James; a time of tension and violence in the North

Orange Order
founded in 1795 to preserve Protestant supremacy and links with Britain; no Catholics or those with Catholic relatives may be members

peelers
police

RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary)
Six County Police Force

SAS (Special Air Services)
elite undercover unit of British Army trained to shoot to kill

screws
prison guards

the Shankill
Protestant area of Belfast

Sinn Fein
nationalist political party

Taig
derogatory name for a nationalist

UDA
Protestant paramilitary organization

A very special thank you to Patricia Perry and Jean Stewart, who continue to provide valuable insight and support and who greet every one of my new projects with the same enthusiasm and energy as the first one.

Thanks to:

Kate Collins, my editor, for envisioning this wonderful cover, and to Peter Fiore for creating it.

Loretta Barrett, my agent, whose words of wisdom go above and beyond the call of duty, and to Karen for her immediate response to everything I ask her to do.

Leslie and Lena McCalmont from Whitehead, County Antrim, who, over Irish coffee, put the Northern Irish conflict into perspective and later offered the hospitality of their home to my daughter.

the young man from Derry who, after learning that I was an American, excused himself and decided not to hijack my rented automobile after all.

the RUC officer at the checkpoint at Newry who didn't confiscate my film and didn't ticket me for not wearing my seat belt.

the two men from the Republic who were rating the quality of railroad stations. Without them I may still have been stranded in Rosslare.

Marguerite O'Conor Nash and her daughter Barbara, who made our stay at Clonalis House one of the highlights of my visit.

Michéal, a history graduate of Trinity University, who on his guided tour of Dublin brought new meaning to the word
storyteller.

Author of fifteen novels, including the RITA Award–winning paranormal,
Nell
, Jeanette Baker has been hailed by
Publishers Weekly
as a forceful writer of character and conflict whose novels are “irresistible reading.” She graduated from the University of California at Irvine and later earned her master's degree in education. Jeanette lives in California during the winter months where she teaches literature and writing and in County Kerry, Ireland, during the summer.