Grace - The Wolftones with lyrics (Joseph Plunkett and Grace Gifford)
(
Song written by Sean And
Frank O'Meara)
Joseph Mary Plunkett (
Irish: Seosamh
Máire Pluincéid,
21 November 1887 -- 4 May
1916) was an
Irish nationalist, poet, journalist, and a leader of the
1916 Easter Rising.
Sometime in
1915 Joseph Plunkett joined the
Irish Republican Brotherhood and soon after was sent to
Germany to meet with
Roger Casement, who was negotiating with the
German government on behalf of
Ireland. Casement's role as emissary was self-appointed, and, as he was not a member of the
IRB, that organisation's leadership wished to have one of their own contact Germany to negotiate
German aid for an uprising the following year. He was seeking (but not limiting himself to) a shipment of arms. Casement, on the other hand, spent most of his energies recruiting Irish prisoners of war in Germany to form a brigade to fight instead for Ireland. Some nationalists in Ireland saw this as a fruitless endeavor, and preferred to seek weapons. Plunkett successfully got a promise of a German arms shipment to coincide with the rising.
Plunkett was one of the original members of the IRB
Military Committee that was responsible for planning the
Easter Rising, and it was largely his plan that was followed. Shortly before the rising was to begin, Plunkett was hospitalized following a turn for the worse in his health. He had an operation on his neck glands days before
Easter and had to struggle out of bed to take part in what was to follow. Still bandaged, he took his place in the
General Post Office with several other of the rising's leaders such as
Patrick Pearse and
Tom Clarke, though his health prevented him from being terribly active. His energetic aide de camp was
Michael Collins.
Following the surrender Plunkett was held in
Kilmainham Gaol, and faced a court martial. Seven hours before his execution by firing squad at the age of 28, he was married in the prison chapel to his sweetheart
Grace Gifford, a
Protestant convert to
Catholicism, whose sister,
Muriel, had years before also converted and married his best friend
Thomas MacDonagh, who was also executed for his role in the Easter Rising.