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"Oh Grace just hold me in your arms and let this moment linger They'll take me out at dawn and I will die With all my love I place this wedding ring upon your finger There won't be time to share our love for we must say goodbye."
Everyone in Ireland must know the words of the love-ballad Grace, which tells the story of the final hours of the poet, journalist and revolutionary Joseph Mary Plunkett. Plunkett was executed in May 1916 at Kilmainham Gaol for his part in organising the Easter Rising of the previous month.
While awaiting execution a badly injured and ill Plunkett marries his long-time sweetheart Grace Gifford, to whom he had proposed to a year before. The couple had planned to marry on that Easter Sunday but the ceremony had been postponed due to the uprising. On Learning that Plunkett was to be executed at dawn on the 4th of May, Grace purchases a ring from a Dublin jeweller's shop and persuaded the authorities to allow her and Plunkett to wed on the night before Plunkett was executed. Grace never remarried and died on the 13th of December 1955.
2. Michael Collins and Kitty Kiernan
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There must have been something in the water in the GPO that Easter Week of 1916 that resulted in ill-fated romances.
The legendary Michael Collins who during the Easter Rising served as Plunkett's Aide de Camp in the GPO had his own romantic story to tell. In 1921 he met Kitty Kiernan They fell in love and became engaged with plans to marry in November of 1922.
In July of 1921 during the War for Independence, Collins as Adjutant General of the Irish Volunteers, and Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army was sent to London to negotiate peace terms with the British Government.
While Collins was in London, he and Kiernan keep up their love affair via a constant stream of love-letters during what must have been for him a stressful time.
They never got to marry as Collins was killed in August of 1922 in his home county of Cork, during the subsequent Civil War. Kitty Kiernan married someone else but is buried very close to Collins in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.
