"Grace" tells the true story of Joseph Mary Plunkett and Grace Gifford, who were married in the chapel of Kilmainham Gaol late on 3 May 1916, hours before Plunkett was executed at dawn on 4 May for his part in the Easter Rising. It is the song people ask us about most, and the question behind most searches for it — "Grace song true story" — is simple: yes. It happened, and the record of it survives in detail.
Who wrote "Grace"? The song is far younger than the story. It was written in 1985, by Frank O'Meara, who composed the melody, and his brother Seán O'Meara, who wrote the lyrics. Jim McCann's recording reached No. 2 in the Irish charts in 1986 and stayed charted for 33 weeks, and Rod Stewart recorded the song on his 2018 album Blood Red Roses. A ballad written 69 years after the event became the way most people now meet Grace Gifford.
Grace Gifford and Joseph Plunkett: Married in Kilmainham Gaol, 3 May 1916
The wedding was not arranged in the shadow of the execution. Plunkett and Gifford were due to marry on Easter Sunday 1916 — the day the Rising began. Grace, a Protestant-born artist and cartoonist, had converted to Catholicism in April 1916. Plunkett, a poet and one of the Rising's planners, was already seriously ill with tuberculosis and had just undergone surgery on his neck. The Rising, the surrender and the court-martial replaced the wedding day.
What they got instead was the gaol chapel, just before midnight on 3 May, married by Fr Eugene McCarthy of St James's parish. On the marriage certificate, Joseph is listed as a "gentleman" and Grace as an "artist." The only witnesses were two British soldiers. She was taken out of the gaol a widow in everything but the final fact, and at dawn on 4 May Plunkett was shot in the gaol yard. The Rising they married in the middle of is the world of The Rising of the Moon, the older ballad of the same hope.
Historian Davy Holden tells this story plainly and well in The Story of Joe Plunkett and Grace Gifford, and we tell our own short version in our 60-second story of Grace and Joseph.
What Happened to Grace Gifford After 1916?
Grace's life did not end at the chapel door, and it is the half of the story the song cannot hold. She threw herself into republican work through her art — designing posters and cartoons for the movement — and was elected to the Sinn Féin executive in 1917. Her sister Muriel, widow of the executed Thomas MacDonagh, drowned that same year, in 1917. When the Treaty split the movement, Grace opposed it.
In February 1923, during the Civil War, Grace Gifford was arrested and imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol — the same building where she had married Joseph seven years earlier, this time in a cell of her own. There she painted a Madonna and Child on her cell wall, the painting now known as the Kilmainham Madonna; a reproduction of it can still be seen by visitors to the gaol today. Davy Holden has filmed in that cell — his Short on Grace Gifford's prison cell in Kilmainham Gaol is the companion piece to this part of her story.
She was released in May 1923. She never remarried, lived on her art, and died in 1955. The ballad her life inspired now travels where she never did — History Ireland notes that it "is heard from the terraces of Celtic Park" in Glasgow, sung by supporters whose grandparents' generation carried these songs across the water. It belongs with the blog's other prison-and-loss ballads written long after their events: Back Home in Derry and Sean South of Garryowen.
One current note: the chalice and altar vessels used at the 1916 wedding have been lent to the OPW and are going on public display in Kilmainham Gaol Museum's "Last Words" section, as announced in September 2026 — the newest chapter in a story that is still being added to.
To read more: Kilmainham Tales' Grace Gifford page has the wedding certificate details and her own 1949 witness statement. Wikipedia's Grace (Jim McCann song) covers the song itself — 1985, the McCann single, the Stewart recording. History Ireland's Hearts Ne'er Waver tells Grace's story among the women prisoners of the Civil War.
— hear us play it live (video above).