Women of Ninety-eight

INTRODUCTION

" Alas! how sad by Shannon¿s ¿lood, The blush of morning sun appears! To men who gave for us their blood, Ah! what can women give but tears! DRENNAN: Lament of the Women after the Battle.

¿THEY tell a beautiful and poetical story about the croppies graves in Wexford. Many of them carried in their coat pockets wheat seed gathered in the ¿fields to satisfy their hunger. When they were buried in their shallow graves the seed sprouted and pushed its way up to the light, and the peasants, seeing the patches of waving grain here and there by ¿field or wayside, knew that there a poor croppy slumbered. Was not the waving grain an emblem that the blood they shed for Ireland would yet nurture the harvest of Freedom?¿