Padraic Colum Colum started to write and met a number of the leading Irish writers of the time, including W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and Æ. He also joined the Gaelic League and was a member of the first board of the Abbey Theatre. He became a regular user of the National Library of Ireland, where he met James Joyce and the two became lifelong friends. During the riots caused by the Abbey Theatre's production of "The Playboy of the Western World", Padraic Colum's father, Patrick Columb, was one of the protestors. Padraic himself was not engaged in the protests, although he
Dublin lock-out in the way that Murphy attempted to with the ITGWU. The lock-out had damaged commercial businesses in Dublin, with many forced to declare bankruptcy. "September 1913", one of the most famous of W. B. Yeats' poems, was published in the Irish Times during the lock-out. Although the occasion of the poem was the decision of Dublin Corporation not to build a gallery to house the Hugh Lane collection of paintings (William Martin Murphy being one of the most vocal opponents of the plan), it has sometimes been viewed by scholars as a commentary on the lock-out. In the poem, Yeats