Ere we go forth to the reaping, shall we not consider with ourselves what culture the buried seeds of freedom received to ensure a yield so rich? It is not alone the blood of the men who died for Ireland that has nurtured the harvest of her freedom. The seed has been abundantly watered by the tears of heartbroken women: mothers and wives, sweethearts and sisters, daughters and comrades. Some of these grieving women I have tried, in the following pages, to make better known to their country-women of to-day, whose joy has been purchased, in such large part, by their sorrow. And not with their tears alone did our sisters of ’Ninety-Eight sprinkle the red furrows of that tragic seed-time. In many a forgotten grave, from Antrim to Wexford, lies the dust of the women who died victims of the brutality of the yeomanry and military, let loose on the country to goad its manhood into a rising. Beneath the unmarked site of many a vanished cabin lie the charred bones of countless women who were burnt to death when the drunken soldiery fired their homes. Among the outrages tabulated by Cloney as having been perpetrated by the military in the county of Wexford alone, we find record of seven young women violated and murdered near Ballaghkeene by the Homperg Dragoons, after the retreat from Vinegar Hill; of four women shot after the flight from Wexford; and of three women bayonetted in Enniscorthy; of nine women and six children slain by the yeomanry between Vinegar Hill and Gorey, on the high road; of three women shot by the yeomanry in the village of Aughrim; of four women murdered by “the supplementary yeomen” between Gorey and Arklow.