Poor Dev. He tried. In that famous St Patrick’s Day address of his 80 years ago, on March 17th, 1943 – as the rest of the world killed all around them in a war that cost the lives of an estimated 3 per cent of the Earth’s population – he propounded his Irish idyll.
Keeping his head, he said: “The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens ... ”
Ah, yes, those “happy maidens”, referred to in printed versions of his speech as “comely maidens”.
[ Were de Valera's maidens 'happy' or 'comely'? The answer is not simpleOpens in new window ]
It was one of Dev’s great achievements to keep Ireland out of the second World War, but the Ireland of the time was hardly paradise for “maidens”. In 1937, just six years beforehand, one happy maiden was sentenced to a month in prison for kissing a, presumably athletic, youth in Dundalk. Then, of course, Julia Clarke was from Glasgow. What would you expect?
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According to a newspaper report from the time, she “was seen kissing a boyfriend in public at Black Rock (Co Louth)” and sentenced by a court in Dundalk. Worse, the incident took place “on church property”. Appalling!
“The local vigilance committee was shocked and the Dundalk Justices were so scandalised that, although Miss Clarke had returned home to Glasgow, they passed the sentence ‘with a view to keeping her out of the country forever’.”
Proper order too. Down with that sort of thing!
The boyfriend was ordered in court “to give £2 to the St Vincent de Paul Society”. Poor lad, no match for the Scottish strap.
“Miss Clarke,” the report said, “goes down in legal history as the first girl to be prosecuted under a two-year old statute known as Mr Éamon de Valera’s `Vice Act’.”
It continued, plaintively perhaps, that “the sentence cannot be enforced unless she returns to Black Rock”. She didn’t.
Comely, from Old English cymlic, for “lovely, splendid, finely made”.
