Grace

by **Madra Rua** Fri Aug 13, 2010 2:00 pm

Grace - by Frank and Sean O'Meara (1985)

As we gather in the chapel here in old Kilmainham Jail
I think about the last few weeks: Oh, will they say we've failed?
From our schooldays they have told us we must yearn for liberty
Yet all I want in this dark place is to have you here with me.

Oh Grace just hold me in your arms and let this moment linger
They 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

Now I know it's hard for you, my love, to ever understand
The love I bear for these brave men, my love for this dear land
But when Padraic called me to his side down in the G.P.O.
I had to leave my own sick bed, to him I had to go.

Oh Grace just hold me in your arms and let this moment linger
They 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

Now as the dawn is breaking, my heart is breaking too
On this May morn as I walk out, my thoughts will be of you
And I'll write some words upon the walls so everyone will know
I loved you so much that I could see His Blood Upon the Rose.

Oh Grace just hold me in your arms and let this moment linger
They 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

The story of this song are based on events of the Easter Uprising of May 1916.

Grace Gifford, a highly educated, successful artist, was engaged to be married to Joseph Plunkett, a teacher, scholar, poet, and Irish patriot. They planned to be married on Easter Sunday, May 1916.

A few days before they were to be married, Joseph, who had always struggled with respiratory problems, was hospitalized for TB, and underwent an emergency operation. Their wedding was postponed.

But on Easter Monday 1916, the day after they should have been married, the call came that the Uprising was imminent. Plunkett left the hospital and joined Padraig Pearse and the others at the General Post Office (GPO) in Dublin in the doomed Easter Uprising.

After the surrender of the rebels, Joseph was arrested and imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol. Grace and Joseph decided to go ahead with the wedding.

Kilmainham Gaol Chapel

Grace bought the rings and arrived at the Gaol at 6:00pm. She was kept waiting in the prison chapel until 11.30pm when, with two soldiers as witnesses, she and Joseph were married by candlelight, as there had been a power failure in the prison. They were not allowed any time together. Grace left the prison, but returned a few hours later, when they were allowed 10 minutes together in a cell with British guards. At 3:30 am Joseph was shot.

Grace never remarried.

The reference to "His Blood Upon the Rose" refers to a poem written by Plunkett:

I see His Blood Upon the Rose
by Joseph Plunkett

I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.

I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice—and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.

All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.

Grace did return to Kilmainham Gaol in February 1923, when she was held prisoner there herself for three months for her part in the Irish Civil War. She painted this Madonna and child on the plaster wall of her prison cell.

Grace Gifford Plunkett died in 1955.