Angela’s namesake, these bells used to ring on the midnight hour of New Year’s Eve. The bells toll throughout the text, usually around 6:00 p.m. The bells are both a timekeeping mechanism and a Catholic tradition meant to remind Limerick residents to pause, reflect, and say a prayer.

In the UK and Ireland, “the dole” is a common name for state-sponsored welfare. Because of the Great Depression and widespread unemployment, collecting the dole was a necessary means of survival for many Irish families in pre-WWII Ireland. However, receiving the dole was a source of shame for the people who needed it.

Because of the 1960s and 1970s attacks on British and loyalist targets in Belfast, the Irish Republican Army’s modern reputation is as a terrorist organization. In the early 20th-century, however, the IRA was the name of the army that fought for Ireland’s independence from England: This is the IRA that Malachy served in.