A Good Girl from Graigh na Muilte Iarainn

A Story by Gay Lynch

We served a man in Walsh’s bar whose foot had been hacked off with an axe. In famine times, girls in the village wed late. I poured uisge beatha on the High Street. The drink brought succour. No one talked about secret societies but when riders thundered down the hill with news about the house of Clanricarde we cheered. My grandfather watched, he said, from the top of the hill as the smoke and flames devoured Portumna Castle...