Cumann na mBan

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Poem

CUMANN NA mBAN

From memorabilia of Johanna Holahan (nee Harpur). From Cuman na mBan re-union meeting in 1969

Could they ever have managed without them

The women who stood by the men

Loyal and true in the vanguard

Or wherever the need was – then.

Their days were busy and active

Their nights filled with heartbreak and care

But God who knew their urgent needs

Gave them will to dare.

They prayed at jail gates and hospital wait

Where men lay dying or dead

While round them raced the armoured cars

Shots rang overhead.

They tended the the wounded with loving care

The hunted,they sheltered, when,

A footfall after curfew

Could mean death or a prison den.

They carried despatches under fire

Raised funds that orphans might eat

And that men in the jails need not worry

For loved ones they could not meet.

The cause was grand-it was Irelands

Life was all meaning and full

Of purest purpose and ideals

That new nothing of strings to pull.

But fifty years is a long long time

And memories are growing dim

Of women who stod in the danger gaps

And the Battles they helped to win

They spend their quite years now

Unflattered, unhonured, unsung

There is nothing to tend in their lonely lives

But the graves that were filled too young

The tale is being told of fighters fight

History still flows from the pen

But shame if the pen fails to mention

The women who stood by the men

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