0:01:12 > 0:01:15These young Turks wanted to make it a real conspiracy,
0:01:15 > 0:01:19working towards the realisation of Wolfe Tone's dictum -
0:01:19 > 0:01:23"England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity".
0:05:09 > 0:05:12The Milligans were a most extraordinary family.
0:05:12 > 0:05:13It was a very large family -
0:05:13 > 0:05:16I think she was one of 13 children.
0:05:16 > 0:05:19Her father was involved in the linen trade
0:05:19 > 0:05:21as a salesman from the 1860s
0:05:21 > 0:05:25and then helped to set up the first department store in Belfast,
0:05:25 > 0:05:27in the Bank Buildings.
0:08:41 > 0:08:43Come in, for it's growing late
0:08:43 > 0:08:45And the grass will wet ye
0:08:45 > 0:08:48Come in, for when it's dark
0:08:48 > 0:08:51The Fenians will get ye
0:08:51 > 0:08:53Four little pairs of hands
0:08:53 > 0:08:55In the cots where she led those
0:08:55 > 0:08:57Over their frightened heads
0:08:57 > 0:08:58Pulled up the bedclothes
0:08:58 > 0:09:00But one little rebel there
0:09:00 > 0:09:02Watching all with laughter
0:09:02 > 0:09:05Thought, when the Fenians come
0:09:05 > 0:09:07I'll rise and go after
0:09:07 > 0:09:09Wished she had been a boy
0:09:09 > 0:09:11And a good deal older
0:09:11 > 0:09:12Able to walk for miles
0:09:12 > 0:09:14With a gun on her shoulder
0:09:14 > 0:09:15Able to lift aloft
0:09:15 > 0:09:17The Green Flag o'er them
0:09:17 > 0:09:19Red coats and black police
0:09:19 > 0:09:20Flying before them
0:09:20 > 0:09:22And as she dropped asleep
0:09:22 > 0:09:25Was wondering whether
0:09:25 > 0:09:28God, if they prayed to him
0:09:28 > 0:09:31Would give fine weather.
0:09:32 > 0:09:34When I Was A Little Girl
0:09:34 > 0:09:36is a poem which is
0:09:36 > 0:09:38on the side of a constituency
0:09:38 > 0:09:41which is universal - children.
0:09:41 > 0:09:43It's really saying, OK,
0:09:43 > 0:09:46children have their own way of doing things
0:09:46 > 0:09:48and they may be very different
0:09:48 > 0:09:51from what their allegedly wise seniors think.
0:09:51 > 0:09:53Now, it translates quickly
0:09:53 > 0:09:56into a poem about Irish politics,
0:09:56 > 0:10:00and it has a strange fairy-like quality
0:10:00 > 0:10:02because, of course,
0:10:02 > 0:10:05the Fenians took their name from mythical Irish heroes,
0:10:05 > 0:10:09but it became very quickly, in Protestant Ireland
0:10:09 > 0:10:11and Protestant Britain,
0:10:11 > 0:10:16a synonym for dangerous and untrustworthy Irish Catholics.
0:11:07 > 0:11:11Alice Milligan moved from the rural countryside of west Ulster
0:11:11 > 0:11:13into Ireland's only industrial city.
0:11:13 > 0:11:17Belfast in the 1890s was a soaraway industrial city
0:11:17 > 0:11:22built on that great tripod of linen, shipbuilding and engineering.
0:11:54 > 0:11:57They came from a fairly wealthy family, in Catholic terms.
0:11:57 > 0:12:00They were from that very small Catholic upper-middle class.
0:12:00 > 0:12:04Their father was a rent agent, with offices in Chichester Street,
0:12:04 > 0:12:06in the business heart of Belfast,
0:12:06 > 0:12:09not very far from Alice Milligan's father's business
0:12:09 > 0:12:11in the kind of Victorian Bank Buildings.
0:12:11 > 0:12:13They were at that same level of society.
0:12:13 > 0:12:16Elizabeth Corr said she grew up in a long family,
0:12:16 > 0:12:18six brothers, several sisters,
0:12:18 > 0:12:22and their great love, as teenagers, were the Belfast Philharmonic,
0:12:22 > 0:12:26a world of books, the piano in the sitting room, you know,
0:12:26 > 0:12:27on Sunday evenings.
0:12:27 > 0:12:30A sense of Irishness, a pride in being Irish,
0:12:30 > 0:12:32but she says that, until 1915,
0:12:32 > 0:12:35she'd never thought of Ireland at all as an entity.
0:12:35 > 0:12:38MUSIC: Londonderry Air
0:14:10 > 0:14:12When Alice Milligan is in Dublin,
0:14:12 > 0:14:15she is beginning to learn the Irish language,
0:14:15 > 0:14:17she's taking that very seriously.
0:14:17 > 0:14:19She is also very intrigued by Parnell,
0:14:19 > 0:14:23who is leading the Irish National Party at this point,
0:14:23 > 0:14:27and she sketches him over and over in her diary,
0:14:27 > 0:14:32and it's actually whilst she's on a tram going down O'Connell Street
0:14:32 > 0:14:35this evening, just after seeing Parnell,
0:14:35 > 0:14:40she writes, "I became a Parnellite, perhaps it won't last."
0:14:40 > 0:14:42But of course it DID last.
0:17:08 > 0:17:11When Alice Milligan is in Belfast,
0:17:11 > 0:17:14and feeling very politically alienated,
0:17:14 > 0:17:17she writes in her diary at this time,
0:17:17 > 0:17:19"I am in the enemy's camp.
0:17:19 > 0:17:22"If I had but the money, I would go to Dublin
0:17:22 > 0:17:25"to be with people who feel as I feel."
0:17:25 > 0:17:30And she sends a great big wreath to his funeral procession
0:17:30 > 0:17:32and when she's reading the newspaper,
0:17:32 > 0:17:36in her diary she notes that she sees the one that she sent
0:17:36 > 0:17:39on his coffin as it's being led through.
0:18:04 > 0:18:07On a night of sorrow
0:18:07 > 0:18:09I cried aloud her name
0:18:09 > 0:18:12God, who heard, said, hasten
0:18:12 > 0:18:14And in my dreams she came
0:18:14 > 0:18:16She stood
0:18:16 > 0:18:19I saw her clearly by the moon's white flame
0:18:19 > 0:18:22Her eyes were sweet as ever
0:18:22 > 0:18:24Her voice was yet the same.
0:19:19 > 0:19:23# Oh, the French are on the sea says the Shan Van Vocht
0:19:23 > 0:19:28# Ah, the French are on the sea says the Shan Van Vocht... #
0:19:59 > 0:20:01Not only was it run by two women,
0:20:01 > 0:20:05but they also generated a readership in Belfast,
0:20:05 > 0:20:07across Ireland
0:20:07 > 0:20:10and further, internationally,
0:20:10 > 0:20:13so they actually had a readership in South Africa,
0:20:13 > 0:20:16in Canada, in America,
0:20:16 > 0:20:20in Irish communities, you know, this kind of diaspora,
0:20:20 > 0:20:23internationally, which was extraordinary,
0:20:23 > 0:20:26given that they licked every stamp
0:20:26 > 0:20:31and sent off every copy of this journal internationally.
0:22:29 > 0:22:33These young Turks in the northern capital wanted to revive it
0:22:33 > 0:22:35and make it a real conspiracy
0:22:35 > 0:22:39working towards the realisation of Wolfe Tone's dictum -
0:22:39 > 0:22:42"England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity."
0:23:04 > 0:23:10Grandpa always said that, as a young man,
0:23:10 > 0:23:12he was sitting in the window of Dufferin Villas
0:23:12 > 0:23:15and he saw his elder sister
0:23:15 > 0:23:19just suddenly decide to run
0:23:19 > 0:23:21and she ran straight into the sea
0:23:21 > 0:23:25and, unfortunately, he was the only one of the family
0:23:25 > 0:23:28who witnessed what happened to her.
0:23:28 > 0:23:31When they went to try and save her,
0:23:31 > 0:23:34unfortunately, she had passed away.
0:23:49 > 0:23:51She continued to write her poetry,
0:23:51 > 0:23:55cycle from Antrim to Cork, promoting the Irish language,
0:23:55 > 0:23:58not perhaps a fior Gael, but she'd more than a couple of focail,
0:23:58 > 0:24:02but she didn't write poetry as Gaeilge during that period.
0:24:02 > 0:24:03But she remained firm.
0:24:24 > 0:24:26The major intervention that she made
0:24:26 > 0:24:31was to radicalise what we call "tableau".
0:24:31 > 0:24:34Tableau shows... People would be very familiar with them
0:24:34 > 0:24:36through Irish melodrama.
0:24:36 > 0:24:39It's where a moment of pause and stillness takes place,
0:24:39 > 0:24:42and silence, and it's almost as though it takes it out of
0:24:42 > 0:24:44the localised moment of the drama
0:24:44 > 0:24:47and enables people to recognise something broader.
0:26:41 > 0:26:44They were a mixture of romantics and revolutionaries
0:26:44 > 0:26:48and of course, these meetings were often the front for more important
0:26:48 > 0:26:51kind of tete-a-tetes between revolutionaries.
0:26:51 > 0:26:54So he used culture as a cover for revolution?
0:26:54 > 0:26:57He used culture and yet there was a naivety about Bigger.
0:26:57 > 0:26:59The great romantic, the antiquarian.
0:26:59 > 0:27:03He thought that a Gaelic-speaking, independent, united Ireland
0:27:03 > 0:27:07could be achieved, you know, on music and Gaelic tales
0:27:07 > 0:27:09and conviviality.
0:27:51 > 0:27:54What really encouraged Clarke and Mac Diarmada
0:27:54 > 0:27:58and all of these people was really the Ulster Crisis of 1912-14,
0:27:58 > 0:28:01because who would have imagined that Edward Carson, you know,
0:28:01 > 0:28:04the upper-middle-class unionist lawyer
0:28:04 > 0:28:07would inculcate to the hearts of Ulster unionism
0:28:07 > 0:28:11a movement called the UVF, which would threaten to use force
0:28:11 > 0:28:16against the King's Army in the event of Home Rule coming to Ireland.
0:28:56 > 0:28:59Suddenly, you had the leader of the Irish race, John Redmond,
0:28:59 > 0:29:01and his Belfast lieutenant, Joe Devlin,
0:29:01 > 0:29:05urging Irishmen to go wherever the firing line extended
0:29:05 > 0:29:08to fight for the freedom of small nations.
0:29:08 > 0:29:10And to somebody like Elizabeth Corr,
0:29:10 > 0:29:13Ailish na Corra, as she preferred to call herself,
0:29:13 > 0:29:15and her sister Nell,
0:29:15 > 0:29:16but Ireland was a nation.
0:29:16 > 0:29:19Why were they going to fight for the freedom of other nations?
0:29:19 > 0:29:22What about the freedom of Ireland? She disliked, she said,
0:29:22 > 0:29:26girls she knew, at parties, talking about "our soldiers"
0:29:26 > 0:29:30and the British Army's triumphs on the battlefront.
0:30:08 > 0:30:11They weren't actually able to get near the graveside,
0:30:11 > 0:30:13but they heard about the grand funeral,
0:30:13 > 0:30:16they saw the serried ranks of the volunteers.
0:30:16 > 0:30:19They saw the leaders - Clarke, McDermott, Major John MacBride
0:30:19 > 0:30:21who was educated in Belfast.
0:30:21 > 0:30:23They were all there.
0:30:23 > 0:30:27And she said that more importantly, they were aware of Pearse's
0:30:27 > 0:30:31ringing words, "The fools, the fools they have left us our Fenian dead."
0:30:31 > 0:30:33And suddenly she was drawn into it.
0:30:33 > 0:30:37Immediately afterwards she and her sister joined Cumann na mBan,
0:30:37 > 0:30:40which was a kind of women's auxiliary to the Irish volunteers.
0:31:05 > 0:31:09It was actually in a conversation in the 1970s, an elderly Miss Corr,
0:31:09 > 0:31:12in a nursing home, happened to say,
0:31:12 > 0:31:14"You know, I was in Dublin in 1916."
0:31:14 > 0:31:16And suddenly the words flowed
0:31:16 > 0:31:20and she took us back to the very very cusp of the Easter Rising.
0:33:25 > 0:33:30They been dispatched from Belfast to Cole Island
0:33:30 > 0:33:33to meet the Irish Volunteers there,
0:33:33 > 0:33:37the Tyrone men would meet the Belfast men,
0:33:37 > 0:33:39and the Armagh men and they would march west
0:33:39 > 0:33:42through Inniskillin into Connaught and take part in a rising there,
0:33:42 > 0:33:44so the North would not be disturbed.
0:33:44 > 0:33:47Connolly and Pearse had said no shot must be fired in Ulster.
0:33:47 > 0:33:49Connolly knew the North as a trade unionist,
0:33:49 > 0:33:51he knew its deep sectarian divisions
0:33:51 > 0:33:54and he feared that the slightest sort of emeute
0:33:54 > 0:33:56in the Province of Ulster
0:33:56 > 0:33:58would spark perhaps a sectarian conflagration.
0:34:15 > 0:34:19The six Cumann ma mban girls from Belfast where irate.
0:34:19 > 0:34:21Nora Connolly was raging that men were going
0:34:21 > 0:34:24to risk their lives in Dublin, including her father,
0:34:24 > 0:34:28James Connolly, while the Ulstermen were going home on the train
0:34:28 > 0:34:30with their guns and bandoliers.
0:34:30 > 0:34:31So they decided to go to Dublin.
0:35:18 > 0:35:21And he said that he couldn't bring
0:35:21 > 0:35:23the proclamation up to Belfast
0:35:23 > 0:35:25but he had some messages
0:35:25 > 0:35:28for leadership to say that things were to continue
0:35:28 > 0:35:31and they were to take them up to Belfast.
0:35:31 > 0:35:34They were secreted into Nora's hatband,
0:35:34 > 0:35:35as we understand it.
0:35:35 > 0:35:39Then I think Pearse came in and wished them good luck.
0:35:40 > 0:35:42And...
0:35:42 > 0:35:45they were on their way back up to Belfast,
0:35:45 > 0:35:49and on the train some woman must've detected they were up to something
0:35:49 > 0:35:53and leaned forward and said, "Good luck with your enterprise."
0:37:31 > 0:37:34Alice Milligan immediately went to London
0:37:34 > 0:37:37to attend his trial and to support him.
0:37:37 > 0:37:42She began to write extensively about him.
0:37:42 > 0:37:45So she wrote poems that were published
0:37:45 > 0:37:49and censored in the Irish Nationalist presses.
0:37:49 > 0:37:53She wrote to the Home Office, she was one of many extraordinary women,
0:37:53 > 0:37:57like Eva Gore-Booth and many women who supported Roger Casement.
0:37:57 > 0:38:01Many of them being northern Protestant women who had made
0:38:01 > 0:38:05an intensive kind of cultural journey themselves.
0:38:05 > 0:38:09Alice Milligan hoped that their intervention would save
0:38:09 > 0:38:11Casement's life.
0:40:43 > 0:40:47It seemed that he was threatened if he didn't leave Dublin
0:40:47 > 0:40:51and so this is while she was fund-raising for the Irish language
0:40:51 > 0:40:54and for the Irish political prisoners
0:40:54 > 0:40:57and then she abandoned pretty much everything she owned
0:40:57 > 0:40:58and left with him.
0:40:58 > 0:41:02They went to the North and she continued to look after him
0:41:02 > 0:41:04for many years.
0:41:16 > 0:41:20"Since the opening of 1919, I have been more or less of a prisoner,
0:41:20 > 0:41:23"entirely secluded by circumstances
0:41:23 > 0:41:27"among relatives entirely opposed to the Republican cause."
0:41:49 > 0:41:51These were the years of the pogroms in Belfast,
0:41:51 > 0:41:54intensive sectarian and political violence,
0:41:54 > 0:41:56in which 500 people died
0:41:56 > 0:42:01between the summer of 1920 and the autumn of 1922.
0:42:01 > 0:42:04These were black days in Belfast.
0:42:04 > 0:42:07Churchill described the city as an underworld
0:42:07 > 0:42:09with violent passions of its own.
0:42:09 > 0:42:14He said that the perpetrators perpetrated
0:42:14 > 0:42:17everything except devouring the flesh of their victims.
0:42:17 > 0:42:21This shocked respectable, middle-class Protestant nationalists
0:42:21 > 0:42:23like Alice Milligan,
0:42:23 > 0:42:26as it did middle-class Catholics like Ailish na Corra.
0:45:18 > 0:45:20She continued to be incredibly active
0:45:20 > 0:45:22in the anti-partition movement.
0:45:22 > 0:45:26She was still writing prolifically for the presses.
0:45:26 > 0:45:29She was still engaged in that kind of theatre process
0:45:29 > 0:45:34of trying to engage people around the Irish language and culture.
0:45:34 > 0:45:37My father-in-law, Charles Milligan,
0:45:37 > 0:45:40looked after her in old age, of course.
0:45:40 > 0:45:43She was completely dependent moneywise,
0:45:43 > 0:45:47having spent and given away
0:45:47 > 0:45:48everything she owned
0:45:48 > 0:45:53and if she saw someone who needed something on the road,
0:45:53 > 0:45:56she would just have taken her coat off
0:45:56 > 0:45:59and passed it to them without a second thought.
0:48:30 > 0:48:33"A most distinguished Irishwoman who had devoted her great talent
0:48:33 > 0:48:34"to the cause of Irish independence
0:48:34 > 0:48:37"and the preservation of the national language.
0:48:37 > 0:48:39"Ireland mourns her loss."
0:49:26 > 0:49:28Both of them applied for pensions
0:49:28 > 0:49:31and they were subject to examination in Dublin.
0:49:31 > 0:49:33Elizabeth could go for examination
0:49:33 > 0:49:35and had to produce references
0:49:35 > 0:49:36and so force and so on.
0:49:36 > 0:49:41Nell wasn't well enough and couldn't travel for the examination.
0:49:41 > 0:49:44Elizabeth did and was awarded the pension,
0:49:44 > 0:49:48and subsequently then received various medals, three medals.
0:51:58 > 0:52:02I, having gone to a good Catholic grammar school, St Malachy's,
0:52:02 > 0:52:04did no Irish history.
0:52:04 > 0:52:07I actually didn't know anything about 1916
0:52:07 > 0:52:10so I read avidly
0:52:10 > 0:52:13before doing the painting, and the result is in a sense
0:52:13 > 0:52:16a fundamentally romantic image of 1916,
0:52:16 > 0:52:21hence the use of Celtic tracery, zoomorphic figures.
0:52:21 > 0:52:23In this case, the GPO is there,
0:52:23 > 0:52:28and sweeping up in front and behind it, this Celtic tracery,
0:52:28 > 0:52:31which becomes a green, white and orange image.
0:52:31 > 0:52:35It suggests something being reborn
0:52:35 > 0:52:38so it became a Phoenix rising out of the ashes.
0:52:38 > 0:52:40On the other side here,
0:52:40 > 0:52:44we have the other side of the Irish dimension, in a sense.
0:52:44 > 0:52:47Cos this was the Red Hand of Ulster,
0:52:47 > 0:52:51but in many ways it's clinging on to the orange sash,
0:52:51 > 0:52:55indicating that, even then, this clinging on to the North
0:52:55 > 0:52:58was still very much part and parcel of...
0:52:58 > 0:53:00I was going to say the problem.
0:53:00 > 0:53:04I was imposing quite clearly a kind of romantic image -
0:53:04 > 0:53:07the Phoenix rising, everything emerging out of this
0:53:07 > 0:53:13which is perfect and today I realise that that hasn't been the case
0:53:13 > 0:53:17and we're still trying to solve the Irish question, as it were.
0:53:32 > 0:53:36Aunt Elizabeth was thrilled and delighted to be involved in it.
0:53:36 > 0:53:38She was so proud to receive the invitations
0:53:38 > 0:53:41and she went off to Dublin with her friends
0:53:41 > 0:53:48and she went to every single event round that 50-year celebration.
0:53:48 > 0:53:53It brought her back to the 1916, it sort of acknowledged
0:53:53 > 0:53:56and validated her moment then.
0:53:56 > 0:54:01And I think it was her moment then because Nell and Harry had gone.
0:54:01 > 0:54:04And she was full of pride for that.
0:54:04 > 0:54:07There is no doubt that the high point of her life
0:54:07 > 0:54:12was from the Cumann na mBan
0:54:12 > 0:54:14through 1916,
0:54:14 > 0:54:18and it more or less pinned her down and transfixed her.
0:54:34 > 0:54:37She bristled and said, "Oh, no, I wouldn't want that."
0:54:37 > 0:54:40But in any event, she did become 100,
0:54:40 > 0:54:45and she did get a telegram from the Queen of England.
0:54:45 > 0:54:48But sadly, she didn't get a telegram from the President
0:54:48 > 0:54:50which she would have liked.
0:54:50 > 0:54:54That did annoy her. She died shortly afterwards.
0:56:18 > 0:56:21I think one of the greatest tributes to Alice Milligan
0:56:21 > 0:56:23as a nationalist poetess of this period
0:56:23 > 0:56:27came from her unionist brothers who didn't share her outlook at all.
0:56:27 > 0:56:30When she died in 1953, they erected a tombstone
0:56:30 > 0:56:33over her grave in Drumragh Cemetery in County Tyrone...
0:56:33 > 0:56:36As Gaeilge agus as Bearla.
0:56:36 > 0:56:39Nior car fod eile ac Eirinn.
0:56:39 > 0:56:42"She loved no land but Ireland."
0:56:47 > 0:56:51I think their place is secure, both Elizabeth and Nell.
0:56:51 > 0:56:54I think they wouldn't have done it any other way.
0:56:54 > 0:56:58I didn't know Aunt Nell, she died when I was very young
0:56:58 > 0:57:03but Aunt Elizabeth, this is someone who is a dreamer.
0:57:03 > 0:57:05A romantic dreamer.
0:57:05 > 0:57:10Maybe that's what she was, but she was comfortable with her part
0:57:10 > 0:57:14in Cumann na mBan and Sinn Fein in her time.
0:57:14 > 0:57:18In some ways I'm ashamed that I have all these writings
0:57:18 > 0:57:24of this woman and they're not properly conserved.
0:57:24 > 0:57:28And they really should be because reading through them
0:57:28 > 0:57:31you explore another period other than your own life
0:57:31 > 0:57:33and you find them all interesting.
0:57:33 > 0:57:36So I'd say we're very proud of them.