Michael Lemon Portfolio

The novelist and Irish Nationalist Erskine Childers was sentenced to death by firing squad during the Irish Civil War in 1922. His died as he had lived, with conviction and charm.

Before his execution, in a spirit of reconciliation, Childers shook hands with each of the firing squad. He also obtained a promise from his then 16-year-old son, the future President Erskine Hamilton Childers, to seek out and shake the hand of every man who had signed his father’s death warrant.His last words, spoken to them, were (characteristically) in the nature of a joke: “Take a step or two forward, lads. It will be easier that way.”

Éamon de Valera said of him, “He died the prince he was. Of all the men I ever met, I would say he was the noblest.”

“… I wish to make this statement in view of the mass of prejudice which has gathered about me owning to false statements, calumnies and innuendos which have been made about me in the press and elsewhere for a year past and to most of which I have been unable to reply. I am making no appeal. Let that be clear. Whatever befalls me I shall suffer gladly and happily, but I think it is due to me and the cause I represent, which has been traduced and slandered through the agency of attacks on me, to make some refutation to these attacks. I have been constantly called an Englishman, who, having betrayed his own country, came to Ireland to betray and destroy Ireland––a double traitor. In the alternative, I have suffered the vile charge of innuendo; instead of betraying England I have been acting as a spy or agent provocateur of Englishmen, trying to destroy Ireland in England’s interest….”

[His own words from his military trial on 17 November 1922.]

from The Riddle of the Sands:

” …A keen wind from the west struck our faces, and as swiftly as it had come the fog rolled away from us, in one mighty mass, stripping clean and pure the starry dome of heaven….”