Blog by Helen Murray of the Save Kilkenny Campaign

September 15th 2014

As expected. No surprises here. Contrary to some statements, no decisions made today. Except to lift the injunction pending, not finalised. For this is the nature of them, they are temporary. A measure in which to give time to all involved to state their case. So now with that achieved, eyes watching, it is tempting to place a flag, for some, irresistible. And flags themselves are temporary, as history will support. What is not, is the will of the people and the march for what is right. It is to be found in the stout of heart, those who believe, those who come from an honest place (et el PC*). The impact of gaining an ex parte injunction and to follow with an interlocutory one in attendance had barely begun to dawn before it was gone. This by no means diminishes it. Unprecedented in Ireland, an arm of the government injuncting another by consequence of the sheer grit and stamina of a few. O’Leary may slumber better this night. The fight is coming to the people. The fire is burning strong and all who have ever fought knows the good fight burns long. Pauline Cass ‪#‎savekilkenny‬‬

                          September 1913

What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone?
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You’d cry, ‘Some woman’s yellow hair
Has maddened every mother’s son’:
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they’re dead and gone,
They’re with O’Leary in the grave.

[William Butler Yeats]

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