1. James Cassidy’s 1922 The Women of the Gael goes to great lengths to identify Dervorgilla as an exception to his claim that the virtuous women of Ireland are “the continuous and unfailing products of their race and civilization.” James F. Cassidy, The Women of the Gael (Boston: The Stratford Company, 1922) 4. Wanting to combat the argument that the “Anglo-Norman came in the guise of a religious reformer,” he declares that “the ladies alone could prove the hypocrisy of the would-be evangelists” (107). Dervorgilla’s life is reduced to seven sentences and much of the blame deflected from her. Cassidy writes that her desertion was “induced …by the cruelty of her own lord” and reads Diarmuid’s banishment as evidence of the morality of the Irish: “so much did public opinion deem the action of the Leinster King responsible for her fall and so high was the standard of female morality that its armed forces drove the delinquent monarch from his realm to a Saxon shelter” (106–07). Cassidy concludes Dervorgilla’s brief appearance with her “very considerable” donations to churches that “eclipsed those of all generous givers before her,” including Brian Boru “whose munificence towards the church was one of his prime characteristics” (106–07).
2. In his autobiography, Mac Liamm6ir would write: “But apart from its last act, there is little in the thing that gives me pleasure now except the poem I translated for Hilton to sing to Dr. John Larchet’s lovely setting, a lament for Diarmuid Mac Murchadha who was banished by the High King and who later in revenge brought over the conquering English.” Micheal Mac Liammóir, All for Hecuba: An Irish Theatrical Autobiography (Boston: Branden Press, 1967) 83. Mac Liammoir credits the revival of The Ford of the Hurdles as the inception of his and Hilton Edwards’s friendship with Gonne.
3. Cf. Donal MacCarron, Step Together! The Story of Ireland’s Emergency Army as Told bylts Veterans (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1999) 113–20. Clair Wills, That Neutral Island: A Cultural History of Ireland During the Second World War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007) 89, 97–105, 136, 164, 273.
4. In Clair Wills’s That Neutral Island: A Cultural History of Ireland During the Second World War (2007), she emphasizes the significance of pageants and spectacles about Irish medieval history for uniting populations fractured after the Civil War behind the cause of neutrality. “One of the attractions of these pageants, particularly when they featured a generalized ‘Mother Ireland’ figure, or representations of ancient, mythic battles, was that they were able to make their appeal across a wide political spectrum. Both proand anti-treaty forces could respond to representations of the eleventh century Battle of Clontarf.” Wills, That Neutral Island: A Cultural History of Ireland During the Second World War 98.
5. The Behans moved from 14 Russell Street to 70 Kildare Road, Crumlin. In his autobiography, Teems of Times and Happy Returns, Brendan’s brother Dominic includes the story of how the tram conductor ordered them to board “A bus! To Siberia!” during the move. Behan replicates this idea of moving to “Siberia” in play, highlighting the impact of his family’s own move on these plays, which have been read as comic and inconsequential. E. H. Mikhail, ed., Brendan Behan, Interviews and Recollections (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books, 1982) 7.