It was bearable to have a republican professor as a son-in-law, particularly since he had been offered a post and a house in University College, Galway, at £1,000 per annum (an offer MacDonagh refused); it was allowable that another republican, son of a wealthy papal count, should come courting; even ‘John’s’ republican journalism might be borne – after all, she was hobnobbing with some of the Protestant intellectuals her parents knew, and, anyhow, it was unlikely that her parents ever read the journals in which her work appeared. Nellie’s involvement with James Larkin, however, was something else. They were unlikely, to say the least, to subscribe to Larkin’s own assessment that he was fighting ‘a holy war’ or others’ assessment that he was a visionary seeking dignity for the poorest or that he would obtain a very special niche in the folklore of Dublin. They read, in fact, in the establishment press, that he was leader of ‘the rabble’. Nellie herself summed up the predicament: ‘Poor mother, she was like a hen who had hatched out ducklings.’ [1] To put it another way, they were unlikely rebels, these Gifford girls.
