EIGHTY years ago a young, married couple set out from Maryborough (as it then was) for a weekend in Dublin. Unknown to the other, each of them had a particular reason for going at that time. And each of them believed that the other did not know what that reason was.
Mary Kiersey (nee Curran), my grandmother, told me many times long afterwards that she had heard whispers about the Rising and wanted to see what was happening.
Mary was a Belfast Catholic by birth. She had been radicalised by virtue of her parentage. Her father was a Protestant ship's captain, her mother a" Catholic.
Nationalist atmosphere
Her first - and last - job was in Mountcharles in Co Donegal. There she was known as "MacManus's prenter" because she typed manuscripts for Ethna Carbery and her husband, Seamus MacManus.
It was a nationalist atmosphere. Her output included the first draft of Rody McCorley.
MacManus was to blame - indirectly - for her leaving the job. He had a commission from a US magazine to write a feature on the Lough Derg pilgrimage - and brought the invaluable Mary with him.
When they stepped off the boat they were stopped by a priest and ordered to remove their shoes. MacManus explained the purpose of his mission. The priest was not impressed.
It began to dawn on them both that not only were their shoes at stake, but also two days' food and a night's sleep. Neither of them was the abstemious kind, but MacManus was a dedicated journalist.
And the fasting would not have to show up on his expenses account.
Their first port of call after the ordeal was the Pettigo Inn. As they sat in a corner Mary saw a tall, blond, blue eyed man at the bar complaining that he had been "two nights on the island and not a coort yet".
Mary could not resist the temptation.
Exciting time
The tall man was Jeremiah Kiersey. He had sold his share in the family firm which now makes Flahavan's Oats and taken to the road as a commercial traveller.
He was a brother of Sean Mor Ciarsaigh, founder of the country's first Gaeltacht summer school in Ring, Co Waterford. But to Mary's knowledge, Jeremiah had no republican connections.
So, when they were married, she judiciously told him nothing of her motivation for going to Dublin at the time of the Rising.
It was an exciting, but frustrating, time for her. She was not close enough to any of the leaders to know how to become involved herself. She spent the weekend scurrying through the streets, dodging bullets and helping some of the wounded.
Too dangerous
After a time they both became worried about their children back in Maryborough, where one of the country's major army barracks could have become a rebel target.
They agreed that it was definitely too dangerous for a woman to make such a journey alone. And Jeremiah, in Mary's eyes, had no interest in the proceedings in Dublin.
So he was despatched with a borrowed bicycle and a longs black frieze coat.
As an experienced cyclist, Jeremiah knew that the flattest route was the best, and the flattest lay along the banks of the Grand Canal and Barrow Navigation.
Somewhere along the route - family lore is not specific - he was stopped at a British army outpost. Because of Roger Casement's activities, the Tommies had been warned to be on the lookout for German spies. German spies, they were instructed, were tall, blond and blue eyed.
Jeremiah Kiersey was tall, blond and blue eyed. So he was stopped by the troops.
After hours of questioning they concluded that he was not a German spy and sent him on his way. He eventually reached Maryborough safely and found everything in order at home.
Meanwhile in Dublin, Mary continued seeking contact with rebel leaders and avoiding it with bullets. She failed in the first and succeeded in the second.
She returned home exhilarated but frustrated to find Jeremiah obediently taking care of the children. But the news she brought of the fighting made her the centre of attention in the town.
Jeremiah died of a massive heart attack in his mid fifties. Mary was left penniless.
She moved the family to, Dublin, where she combined patriotism and commercial instinct by launching an export operation called Linen, Lace and Lingerie. She travelled Ireland alone seeking material.
New record
She was a forceful saleswoman. When she sailed the Atlantic for the first time, the USS France set a new record for the crossing.
When we read about it in the newspapers, we knew it was because of her.
The company name was devised by one of her sons, Micheal, who did succeed in joining the IRA. His republican career began at 10, when he painted the family gateposts green white and orange and was knocked off the top of one of them by a passing Tommy.
Five years later he broke into Maryborough jail in the back of a bread van to bring word to Art O'Brien of the escape attempt being organised on the outside. He was spotted and kicked out without revealing his purpose.
When Art O'Brien and his partners finally did get out of Maryborough, they spent their first night of freedom on the floor of Mary Kiersey's sitting room in Baggot Street.
Mary enjoyed her life in Dublin. She made friends with many writers and fighters, swapping dirty jokes with Oliver Gogarty and becoming a director of Ireland's first health food cafe, the Half Door on St Stephen's Green.
She was a confidante of Sinead Bean de Valera and a founding shareholder of the Irish Press.
She continued to think of her husband as a great salesman but a political innocent.
Shortly before she died my father was on business in Waterford and met an old friend of Jeremiah. "Did you know," the man asked him, that Jeremiah Kiersey carried the first IRA dispatches in Easter Week from Dublin to Waterford?"
Mary refused to believe it.