As we enter the last quarter of the 20th centure
our way of life changes at an ever increasing
rate.
Our knowledge of the generation preceding us partially obliterated
by this rate of change and is only revived
for us in an unrealistic
way on television, the detailed records of a man who had a vivid
memory of village life as
it was in the beginning of this outstanding
century is something which posterity will appreciate.
In these essays of Frances William Coleman was able to reconstruct
the living village of Swords
as he knew it 70 years earlier.
Swords a village within the former pale, while so near the former
Metropolis had a Catholic community
who retained and fostered the
Gaelic culture of rural Ireland. It had expanded under our Irish
state from a village
of hundreds to a satellite town of thousands.
Frances Coleman was 81 years old when he died on the feast of
St.Frances 1973, he was the last
surviving brother of 11, most
of whom took an active role in the development of the Irish state.
They joined the Irish
Gaelic League from it's infancy and developed
locally it's idea of patriotism.
