Hush-a-Bye Baby

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Hush-a-Bye Baby is a 1989 Northern Irish television film directed by Margo Harkin. Set in Derry in 1984 during the Troubles, it follows Goretti Friel, a 15-year-old Catholic girl who becomes pregnant. Goretti and her friends—Dinky, Sinéad, and Majella—navigate the pressures of adolescence, faith, and politics in a tense time.

Ciaran, a boy from the Irish-speaking community who supports the IRA, falls for Goretti in their Irish class. They share a secret kiss while babysitting Goretti’s sister. After Ciaran is arrested on suspicion of IRA links, Goretti discovers she is pregnant. To keep it hidden, she tries to conceal it, and when she writes a letter to Ciaran revealing her pregnancy, the word for pregnancy in Irish, “torrach,” leads to the letter being censored and discarded because it’s written in Irish.

Goretti and Dinky travel to the Gaeltacht in County Donegal to visit ancestors and improve their Irish, but the pregnancy weighs on her. On returning to Derry, she finally confronts Ciaran in prison, but he is distant and uninterested, which upsets her. She contemplates an unsafe abortion using alcohol and a hot bath. At school, she struggles to tell Sinéad and Majella about her pregnancy; Majella later calls a classmate who has had early sex a “slut.” In class, the English teacher reads Seamus Heaney’s poem “Limbo,” about a mother drowning her baby in Ballyshannon.

The film ends during the Christmas holidays with Goretti in pain, while the statue of Holy Mary in front of her appears to begin to move.

Production notes: The film was funded by Channel 4 and RTÉ and shot in 1989. It was inspired by real cases like Ann Lovett, the Kerry Babies incident, and the abandoned baby found in the Long Tower Church grotto in Derry. Sinéad O’Connor, who wrote the music, also appears in a small role. Her instrumental remix of the piece “Three Babies” serves as the theme, with a vocal version playing during the credits. O’Connor said the project spoke to her experiences of being young and pregnant in Ireland. Director Margo Harkin noted that some cinemas refused to show the film due to censorship from certain groups, but the funding allowed it to be broadcast on television. Emer McCourt won Best Actress at the 1990 Locarno Film Festival.