This work was originally published by Maynooth University in Ireland in
This is an open access work licensed under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0).
This is a letter from Agnes (Taddie) MacNeill (1874-1953), wife of Eoin MacNeill (1867-1945), to Nancy O'Rahilly (1875-1961). Nancy O'Rahilly was a member of the Provisional Council of Cumann na mBan at the founding in 1914 and the wife of Michael Joseph O'Rahilly, self-described as 'The' O'Rahilly (1875-1916). The O'Rahilly fought in the Easter Rising and was shot in Parnell/Moore Street on 28 April 1916 and died some time later. Nancy was pregnant at the time of her husband's death – the child was born three months later. Eoin MacNeill was chief-of-staff of the Irish Volunteers at the time of the Easter 1916 Rising, although he took no part in it and even tried to prevent it. Mrs MacNeill is glad to hear that Nancy is beginning to feel strong - she has heard what a lovely strong boy the baby is. She would like to visit but she is not in town very often. She remarks on how what they have experienced has changed their perspective, in that they see life in a very different way now. She goes on to list her children and what each one is doing - leaving home for education or work purposes - and leaving the house very quiet. She asks to be remembered to her to Nancy's sister and Sighle Humphreys.
The data in these XML files was generated based on a data dump from the Magellan database (https://github.com/Maynooth-Center-for-Digital-Humanities/Magellan). Each database record has been converted to a JSON file (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/json). The element section of the JSON file contains the TEI-encoded contents of the letters. The TEI XML has been cleaned and made well-formed using a Python script (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/src).