Malarkey by Sheila Simonson Page A

not my father, who had participated in the Peace Movement
of the 60's and 70's.
    "Possibly not. I didn't ask. You know I was a conscientious
objector, don't you?"
    "Yes. Ma said you were drafted after the Second World War."
I took the sharp turn for Aughrim.
    "I did my national service with the American Friends Service
Committee—in Europe."
    "Refugees?"
    There was another interlude. At last, he said bleakly, "We
interviewed survivors of the concentration camps. When I came
home, I found I was still in agreement with the Friends, that coercion
of any kind was an evil. Unfortunately, I no longer believed in
God."
    I glanced at my father. His eyes were closed. I drove along a
stretch of green fields. "But you still find the Friends worthy of
study?"
    "Of course, though their numbers continue to decline and, I
suppose, their influence. There were never many Friends in
Ireland."
    The little I knew of Irish history had come to me indirectly,
in an English history course and in bits and pieces in literature
classes that focused on Irish writers. None of my reading had so
much as mentioned the Society of Friends, though there was a great
deal about religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants. I
gained the impression that the Protestants were mostly Anglicans in
the south, and that the Scottish Kirk was strong in the north.
    "Mary Leadbeater," Dad murmured.
    "I beg your pardon?"
    "She lived at Ballitore, a granddaughter of the founder. Mary
was a poet of some repute, like your mother. She wrote the most
lucid account we have of the rebellion of 1798, Napper Tandy's
rebellion."
    So he had noticed the nationalist connection.
    He added, "The librarian showed me one of Mary
Leadbeater's manuscripts while you were looking at the display
cases."
    "1798. The United Irishmen?"
    "Yes. It's sometimes called the Wexford Rebellion, though
violence occurred in Wicklow, Tipperary, and Kildare, too. It began
as a high-minded political revolution, modeled to some extent on
ours and also on the French Revolution. But it degenerated rapidly
into sectarian slaughter of Protestants by Catholics and vice versa.
An appalling failure."
    I shivered, remembering Liam's comments on sectarian
killing in Bosnia. "And Mary Leadbeater was an eye-witness?"
    "Oh, yes." He sat up straighter and his voice strengthened.
"Before the revolt broke out, the Friends had refused to support
coercive measures against their Catholic neighbors. During the
rebellion, the community at Ballitore nursed the wounded of both
sides. There was some looting, and the government hunted the
insurgents down ruthlessly, but no one harmed the Quakers."
    I said, "No wonder you found the museum interesting."
    "It's not academically interesting. There's not much left in
Ballitore for a scholar. The records of the Dublin Meeting are more
useful for my purposes, but I found the museum touching. The
building was restored by the Kildare County Council, even though
there are fewer than fifty Friends left in the area."
    "That's impressive."
    "Yes. The local people want to remember the Quaker
community." He sat silent for a while. "And, of course, they
remember the role of the Friends during the Great Famine. That's
what I'm studying. Quaker efforts in America to organize famine
relief were the genesis of the American Friends Service
Committee."
    We were approaching Woodenbridge. I slowed and crossed
the bridge, bound for Avoca. "I thought you were just studying the
Dailey family."
    "The Daileys left Ireland after the Wexford Rebellion. The
brutality was too much for them. In fact, the whole Quaker
population of Ireland began to dwindle from that time on, mostly
through immigration to America. There were less than five thousand
Irish Friends by the 1840s."
    Maybe Quaker women had hereditary fertility problems, I
mused, irreverent. "But small as it was, the Dublin Meeting still had
enough energy to organize an international famine relief
effort?"
    "They had help from the London Meeting, from