SNIPPET: Lovely Constance GORE-BOOTH (1868-1927) grew up as a privileged child of the Ascendancy. Born in London and educated near the family estate in Sligo, she met Queen Victoria when she was 19. An artist, she went to Paris in 1898 to study painting and there met Count Casmir DUNIN-MARKIEVICZ, a painter and member of a wealthy Catholic Polish family. They married in 1900 and moved to Dublin in 1903 where she soon found herself drawn to the Gaelic League and Abbey Theatre. She became a staunch nationalist and in 1908 joined Sinn Fein. At some point she separated amicably from her husband. In 1913, during the Dublin lockout, she worked closely with James CONNOLLY and operated a soup kitchen in Liberty Hall for out-of-work laborers. She participated in the Easter Rising (1916) as commandant in the "Irish Citizen Army." and was condemned to death. Her sentence was reduced to life in prison, but she was released in 1917 under a general amnesty, and she became honorary president of the "Irish Women Workers" union. Soon after her release she converted to Catholicism and began a political career. In the 1918 general election she became the first woman elected to the British Parliament/House of Commons but refused (in line with Sinn Fein policy) to take her seat. She served as minister of labour in the first Dail Eireann (the Parliament of the Irish Republic) and served two terms in prison, and sided with de VALERA in opposing the Anglo-Irish Treaty, as did most women active in politics. After the Civil War (and another term in prison) she continued to be active in Republican circles, joining de VALERA's Fianna Fail party in 1926. She died in July 1927 in a public ward of a Dublin hospital shortly after winning reelection to the Dail.. Working-class people of Dublin lined the streets for her funeral. In several poems, William Butler YEATS mentions her directly or indirectly - i.e., "On a Political Prisoner" (1921), and "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz" (1933) - Eva being her sister, and their home at Lissadell. ON A POLITICAL PRISONER She that but little patience knew, >From childhood on, had now so much A grey gull lost its fear and flew Down to her cell and there alit, And there endured her fingers' touch And from her fingers ate its bit. Did she in touching that lone wing Recall the years before her mind Became a bitter, an abstract thing, Her thought some popular enmity: Blind and leader of the blind Drinking the foul ditch where they lie? When long ago I saw her ride Under Ben Bulben to the meet, The beauty of her country-side With all youth's lonely wildness stirred, She seemed to have grown clean and sweet Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird: Sea borne, or balanced on the air When first it sprang out of the nest Upon some lofty rock to stare Upon the cloudy canopy, While under its storm -beaten breast Cried out the hollows of the sea. -- William Butler YEATS