Extract from Labhrás Ó Nualláin: Memoir of an Irish Economist – Working Class Manchester to Irish Academia.
Available online from http://www.kennys.ie
Trinity College
Harry Craig, the Fáinne 1943-‘44
Soon after enrolling at Trinity, I met Harry Craig, who was a history student at the college. His younger brother was serving in the British army at that time. He had seen me walking into the college by the main entrance gate facing on College Green, and as he said to me, “I wondered who was this rebel coming into college?” He had observed that I was wearing the Fainne, a gold-coloured ring which indicated to any other person that I was competent enough, and willing to speak Irish to that person.
Fáinne wearers, apparently, were seldom seen within the walls of Trinity at that time.
Labhras, M.Econ. Science. 1945
Indeed, as I walked into Trinity for the first time, I was wondering whatever was I doing entering into what I would have considered to be a stronghold of Unionism and British affiliations, that institution that was established by Queen Elizabeth, and which was considered by Irish nationalists down through the centuries, as an Anglo-Irish institution and a bastion of the Ascendancy class which had dominated Irish society for so long, despite the fact that it recorded, among its alumni, individuals who had long been accepted by the majority of Irish people, such as Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmett, Thomas Davis and many others.
© Labhrás Ó Nualláin
