Five in a row in Springhill Park, Strabane (with a badly damaged sixth out of shot to the left). Fıanna and óglaıgh in front of Sunburst and Tricolour flags; a kneeling volunteer with RPG launched “Armed resistance 1916-1987”; a lark ferrying a rifle; a raised fist; “unity is strength”.
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Copyright © 1990 Peter Moloney
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Anyone know these artists? A mural in progress in Drumleck Gardens, Derry. Bobby Sands’s use of the lark as the “spirit of freedom” is combined with a James Connolly quote: “There is no power on Earth [or: There is no outside force] capable of enforcing slavery on a people really resolved to be free, [and] valuing freedom more than life.”
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Copyright © 1990 Peter Moloney
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Lines from Bobby Sands’s poem Rhythm Of Time, alongside portraits of the ten deceased 1981 hunger strikers and a lark in barbed wire. “There’s an inner thing in every man/Do you know this thing my friend?/It has withstood the blows of a million years/And will do so to the end.”
Fountain Street, Strabane.
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Copyright © 1990 Peter Moloney
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“Freedom: For freedom you fasted & died/For the five rights you were denied/For the evil we know to blame/For England shrouded in shame/For the deaths of young Irish lives/For the oath of a country that cried/For the murder of a lark in the sky.” This poem seems to be unique in Irish muraling – if you know anything about it, please leave a comment. The sword with wings appears to be the insignia of the SAS, but its presence in this is inexplicable; the harp might be taking a poke at it. Fountain Street, Strabane.
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Copyright © 1990 Peter Moloney
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1990 image of Lark Of War, which includes the shields of the four provinces and their Irish names. (To the right of The Foreign Oppressive British Presence.)
Ballycolman, Strabane
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Copyright © 1990 Peter Moloney
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This 1990 wide shot of (1989) Slan Go Foıll + Long Kesh shows at trio of armed volunteers on the bottom wall.
South Link, Andersonstown, west Belfast
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Copyright © 1990 Peter Moloney
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A smiling Bobby Sands on the side of the Sınn Féın offices on the Falls Road, (also the west Belfast office of An Phoblacht/Republican News), with his famous statement that “Everyone, republican or otherwise, has his [here: “his/her”] own [particular] part to play” [Diary, March 14th, 1981] (and the lark with its “spirit of freedom“).
This version was painted by Mo Chara in 1989, and an image of Sands has been on the wall continuously since then.
Sevastopol Street, west Belfast
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Copyright © 1990 Peter Moloney
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A mural (unfinished) by Mo Chara on the Falls Road, Belfast, at the old Linden Street, with a barefoot woman carrying a large Tricolour and a lark overhead. Probably based on the Women’s Day (“Frauen Tag”) poster shown below, from 1914. “Heraus mit dem Frauenwahlrecht” – “Forward with women’s suffrage”. German women were given the right to vote in 1918. (The image was also used in Toronto in 1982 for International Women’s Day.)
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Copyright © 1990 Peter Moloney
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Chief sitting Bull with his back to the flag of the United States, with a lark (for the Irish struggle) and an eagle (for the Native American) and a border of the colours of humankind. Painted by Mo Chara on the wall of the (then) Ballymurphy Community Centre just off the Whiterock Road, Belfast. The wide shots show a small “Tıocfaıdh ár lá” and Tricolour to the right-hand side.
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Copyright © 1990 Peter Moloney
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Another armlatite-carrying lark, between a clenched fist and a strand of barbed wire. To the right (in the second image), a celtic cross.
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Copyright © 1989 Peter Moloney
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Peter Moloney Collection 