Mary O'Flynn (87) is the sole survivor of the fire still living. "We went out the back window, " she remembers.

"My mother went out before me. I stood straight up on the windowsill. My mother told me afterwards she'd been praying to the Holy Souls. It was a nice bit down from the top window, but I didn't have a scratch on me. My father got lost and my uncle's wife and their two children."

Mary and her mother were saved because they had been up in front, near the screen.

"My father stayed at the back, but I had to be out in front because I was so small." Once she was outside, Mary's mother, Katie O'Donnell, was frantic. She later identified her husband by his boots.

Dermot O'Callaghan (97) lost his mother, Mary Anne, and his new brother-in-law, Robert Aherne, who had rescued his wife Nora and then gone back in for his mother-inlaw. A family friend, Mary O'Brien, and her only daughter, Nellie, who had all left the O'Callaghan house that night, also died. Dermot was 17, the youngest of nine children. He had seen moving pictures several times before, and there had been previous showings in Drumcollogher (pop: 500), but his mother had not seen many films.

As the fire leapt into the sky, Dermot fled to fetch his brother, a priest. Fr Dan O'Callaghan gave the last rites to some of the victims. No one came to the O'Callaghan house to tell them that their mother was dead. "It was a question of hope fading during the night, " says Dermot. His brother-in-law was later identified; his sister, Nora . . . "she was a great character" . . . then in her 20s, never married again. Mary O'Brien's husband was an invalid and, says Dermot, "the most pathetic thing I saw was her husband, in his wheelchair, going among the coffins, trying to identify the one with his wife and daughter."

So many coffins were needed that the army had to bring them to Drumcollogher the next day. One whole household, that of Jeremiah Buckley, a schoolteacher, perished:

Buckley, his wife, his brother, his sister-in-law, his niece and the family maid. "One newspaper took a picture of their dog, as the only thing left alive in their house, " says Dermot O'Callaghan, who went on to become a school principal himself, in Kilmacud, Dublin.

The loft where the fire broke out stood over a hardware shop, where petrol was stored. "And people say there was a ladder, but it was really wooden steps that went up the outside, " says Dermot.

"The hall was about 60 feet long. [There] was a little room, with a window in it, and people could get out there. But Mrs Madden put paid to that."

Mrs Madden was a large woman who got stuck in the window.

The Drumcollogher fire was the first mass tragedy of the new state. The President of the Executive Council, WT Cosgrave, attended the funeral. All but one of the victims were buried in a mass grave in Drumcollogher. The government of Northern Ireland sent a message of condolence.

"After the fire, the place went silent, " says Dermot O'Callaghan. "People didn't want to discuss it. It reverted to its sleepy nature."

But memories were revived by the Stardust disaster in 1981. And, thanks to the work of amateur local historians, the Drumcollogher fire . . .

which the Limerick Leader called "a holocaust of grim and dreadful character" . . . can be reconstructed.

Several things help in this reconstruction. One is the speed with which the inquest was held . . . the week after the fire, in Drumcollogher . . . and the rapidity of the trial of the three men involved in organising the film show. William 'Babe' Forde, the entrepreneur, Patrick Downing, the projectionist, and Patrick Brennan, the man who owned the loft where the films were shown, were in court . . . and out of it . . . by early December 1926.

Pat Savage is a young dairy farmer in nearby Charleville, Co Cork. His grand-uncle William died in the fire. Like many, William Savage died going into the fire to search for his two sons, both of whom survived. "It had been a long summer and both the wells in the town were dry, " says Pat.

"The river was dry as well."

Babe Forde was a hackney driver, a hunchbacked man who lived with his mother, who owned a sweetshop. "We used to spend our couple of pennies there, " remembers Dermot O'Callaghan. It was Babe who brought Patrick Downing, and his films, to Drumcollogher. The Assembly Rooms in Cork did not show films on a Sunday and Downing went to Drumcollogher on a nixer. Probably for this reason, he took the highly flammable rolls of film out of their fire-proof cans and carried them in an ordinary bag.

Patrick Brennan's loft was often used for town gatherings. The IRA used to meet there, and John Gleason, the local sacristan, had been in the IRA. That was how he knew that the bars on one of the windows were sawn through, to facilitate a quick getaway.

The film show was timed to coincide with the end of benediction, at 9pm. There was no All Ireland final that day, as there were three replays at semi-final level that year and the final was not played until late October. The films shown, according to Dermot O'Callaghan, were Baby, Be Good and The White Scout, "about Scout the wonder horse". Local legend has it that the film was The Ten Commandments, but that doesn't appear to have been so.

A table was set up near the only door, with candles on it so the admission money could be observed. Two garda officers were present, to guard against what Dermot O'Callaghan calls "the local smart alecs". Garda Sgt Long had been trained as a fireman by the British army, at Aldershot. He had visited Babe Forde during the week to discuss a licence for the film show. Garda Davies lost his fiancee during the fire. She was torn out of his arms in the crush.

There is talk that the young men of the town were trying to knock down the candles by throwing their caps at them for a lark. Dermot O'Callaghan does not even want me to include this in this article. At any event, the films were lying on the table, made of nitrous oxide and highly flammable. The gardai tried to show people they could jump through the flames, but panic ensued. Garda Davies said he never wished to see such scenes in his life again.

Dermot O'Callaghan's brother, Fr Dan, castigated the media for concentrating on the pandemonium and failing to note the considerable heroism displayed. Only 20 of the 48 victims were finally identified. The death toll, which included a seven-yearold child, was arrived at by counting the skulls.

The cowboy entertainer, Will Rogers, was playing in Liverpool at the time and came over to play a benefit at Dublin's La Scala theatre. The great tenor, John McCormack, gave IR£100. The fund lasted for years. "My mother got something every quarter, " says Mary O'Flynn, although her mother still had to go out to work in a local hotel.

Babe Forde had to leave town. A couple of years later he died in New South Wales, where he had been working as a cook to a party of rabbit exterminators. He died horribly, after ingesting strychnine.

Twenty years after the fire, the victims' relatives bought the site from Patrick Brennan and built a library on it.

Mary O'Gorman, the librarian, says: "I love it here." So far, there are no plans for a special commemoration on 5 September this year, the 80th anniversary of what has always been known locally as 'The Burning'. Nothing more than the usual mass.