Pádraic Pearse who played a prominent part in the 1916 Rebellion declared Ireland a Republic from the steps of the General Post Office in Dublin just over fifty years ago. He was executed, along with the other leafers for his part in the Rising.

But he was a gentle warrior at heart. Men have painted him the revolutionary poet and the cold idealist, inhuman enough to have people suffer in a war whose cause he had espoused.

These five short stories show us that Pearse was a man of deep understanding with an immense human awareness of the way of life or the average person. He analyses the sorrows and joys of the Irish people of his time, and writes of the tragedies of life and death from which they could never escape.

Desmond Maguire, a journalist, well-known for his writings in Irish and English, shows his fascination for the tenderness and dignity portrayed in these stories, particularly in Íosagán, which he describes as the most beautiful short story ever to come out of Ireland.

The stories are:
Íosagán
Eoghainín na nÉan - Eoineen of the Birds
Na Bóithre - The Roads
An Dearg-Daol - The Black Chafer
An Bhean Chaointe - The Keening Woman