An Irish Good Friday 2

On Friday, 17 May 1974, three no-warning car bombs ripped through the heart of Dublin at 5.30 pm. Twenty-six people and an unborn baby lost their lives. In Monaghan town seven people died. This has been the greatest loss of life in a single day of the Troubles, including even the Omagh atrocity of 15 August 1998. An Irish Good Friday 2 (1988) depicts a small County Monaghan pub in the Republic of Ireland. An Irish banshee, the messenger of death, materializes from the fiddler’s magical violin. After the bomb attack, the people of Monaghan became very suspicious of strangers. Superficially, they were friendly to outsiders who they called ‘Northerners’ or ‘Drop Ins’ but they remained deeply distrustful of them. The figures who gaze directly at the viewer, on the bottom-left and the bottom right of the composition, attempt to depict the Monaghan community’s fears.