Professor CaitrĂona Beaumont says her memories of her paternal grandmother, MáirĂn Beaumont, mostly involve sweets. Little wonder, then, that the discovery of an old photograph showing her beloved MaimeĂł holding a fishing rod in one hand and a rifle in the other shocked her to the core.
What was the woman she remembered as a gentle dispenser of butterscotch and sugar cubes doing dressed in a Cumann na mBan uniform, sitting astride a bicycle and grinning at the camera? Her grandmother had never spoken of her activism during or after the Irish Revolution. Yet, here was proof of it, staring out at her from a photo dating to 1918. “I wasn’t aware she was a supporter of physical-force nationalism. It was quite a shock,” she says.
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