"In God's name, Mr. Teeling," I cried, "What have you brought upon us?"

"Liberty," he replied, in a neutral tone of voice.

"And is this the appearance that liberty takes?" I asked.

He did not reply. He was looking beyond the courtyard to the street, where other peasants were milling about, excited and perhaps confused, as I was.

I cannot recollect my feelings with any exactness, and cannot believe that they would be of any interest to the reader. I was overwhelmed by the suddenness of the event and by its unknown proportions, by my sight of men shot down in the streets of my parish, by my fears for the safety of my parishioners and my family. I was distracted by the hubbub, and by the matter-of-fact manner in which my very house had been taken away from me. But beneath the confusion, and stronger even than my fear, lay sadness like a sodden mass in my stomach. The spirited music of the pipers, the capering peasants, the indifferent soldiers, the bloody aprons, were both the causes and the visible emblems of my grief.

Thus began the first week of the Irish Republic, as I have seen it termed in several French accounts of this adventure, or, as it has remained alive in the imagination of the countryside, Bliadhain na bhFranncach, the year of the French.