.
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.