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Patrick Pearse
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Patrick Henry Pearse (also known as Pádraig Pearse; ; An Piarsach; 10 November 1879 – 3 May 1916) was a teacher, barrister, poet, writer, nationalist and political activist who was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. He was declared "President of the Provisional Government" of the Irish Republic in one of the bulletins issued by the Rising's leaders, a status that was however disputed by others associated with the rebellion both then and subsequently.
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Patrick Henry Pearse (also known as Pádraig Pearse; ; An Piarsach; 10 November 1879 – 3 May 1916) was a teacher, barrister, poet, writer, nationalist and political activist who was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. He was declared "President of the Provisional Government" of the Irish Republic in one of the bulletins issued by the Rising's leaders, a status that was however disputed by others associated with the rebellion both then and subsequently. Following the collapse of the Rising and the execution of Pearse, along with his brother (Willie Pearse) and fourteen other leaders, Pearse came to be seen by many as the embodiment of the rebellion.
Early life and influences
Patrick Henry Pearse was born at 27 Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street), Dublin.His father, James Pearse, was an English artisan/stonemason who moved to Ireland from Birmingham to take advantage of the boom in church building during the second half of the 19th century. He converted to Catholicism in 1870, probably for business reasons, and held moderate home rule views. In 1877 he married his second wife, Margaret Brady. He had two children from his previous marriage, Emily and James (two other children from that marriage, Amy Kathleen and Agnes Maud, died in childbirth). Margaret was a native of Dublin, but her father's family were from County Meath and were native Irish speakers. The Irish-speaking influence of Pearse's great-aunt Margaret, together with his schooling at the CBS Westland Row, instilled in him an early love for the Irish language.
In 1896, at the age of only sixteen, he joined the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge), and in 1903 at the age of 23, he became editor of its newspaper An Claidheamh Soluis ("The Sword of Light").
Pearse's earlier heroes were the ancient Gaelic folk heroes such as Cúchulainn, though in his 30s he began to take a strong interest in the leaders of past republican movements, such as the United Irishmen Theobald Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet. Both were Protestant, but much of nationalist Ireland was Protestant in the eighteenth century. It was from these men that those such as the fervently Catholic Pearse drew inspiration for the rebellion of 1916.
In 1900 Pearse was awarded a BA in Modern Languages (Irish, English and French) by the Royal University of Ireland, he had studied for two years privately and for one at UCD. In 1900 he was also awarded the degree of Barrister-at-Law from the King's Inns.
St Enda's
As a cultural nationalist educated by the Irish Christian Brothers, like his younger brother Willie, Pearse believed that language was intrinsic to the identity of a nation. The Irish school system, he believed, raised Ireland's youth to be good Englishmen or obedient Irishmen, and an alternative was needed. Thus for him and other language revivalists, saving the Irish language from extinction was a cultural priority of the utmost importance. The key to saving the language, he felt, would be a sympathetic education system. To show the way, he started his own bilingual school, St. Enda's School (Scoil Éanna) in Ranelagh, County Dublin, in 1908. Here, the pupils were taught in both the Irish and English languages.
With the aid of Thomas MacDonagh, Pearse's younger brother Willie Pearse and other (often transient) academics, it soon proved a successful experiment. He did all he planned, and even brought students on fieldtrips to the Gaeltacht in the west of Ireland. Pearse's restless idealism led him in search of an even more idyllic home for his school. He found it in the Hermitage, Rathfarnham, where he moved St. Enda's in 1910. Pearse was also involved in the foundation of St. Ita's school for girls, a school with similar aims to St. Enda's.
However, the new home, while splendidly located in an 18th-century house surrounded by a park and woodlands, caused financial difficulties that almost brought him to disaster. He strove continually to keep ahead of his debts while doing his best to maintain the school. In February 1914 he travelled to the USA to raise money for his ailing school where he met John Devoy and Joseph McGarrity both of whom were impressed by his fervour and supported him in raising sufficient money to secure the continued existence of the school.
The Volunteers and Home Rule
In April 1912 as the prospect of self-government for Ireland under a new Home Rule for Ireland Bill became reality, John Redmond leader of the Irish Party who held the balance of power in the House of Commons having committed the government of the United Kingdom to introduce the Bill, Pearse’s attitude towards the Bill was remarkably ambivalent.
Pearse moved from welcoming the Bill, asking all sides to support Redmond’s praiseworthy achievement to demanding a better Bill with the public warning Let the Gall understand that if we are cheated this time there will be red war in Ireland . Pearse was one of four speakers, including Redmond, Joseph Devlin MP. leader of the Northern Nationalists and Eoin MacNeill a prominent Gaelic Leaguer, who addressed a large Home Rule Rally in Dublin on a public platform at the end of March 1913. Speaking in Irish Pearse threatened revolution if the Bill were not enacted.
In November 1913 Pearse was invited to the inaugural meeting of the Irish Volunteers, formed to enforce the implementation of the Third Home Rule Act passed by the House of Commons in the face of opposition from the Ulster Volunteers. In an article entitled “The Coming Revolution” (Nov. 1913) Pearse wrote As to what your work as an Irish Nationalist is to be, I cannot conjecture; I know what mine is to be, and would have you know yours and buckle yourselves to it. And it may be (nay, it is) that your and mine will lead us to a common meeting-place, and that on a certain day we shall stand together, with many more beside us, ready for a greater adventure than any of us has yet had, a trial and a triumph to be endured and achieved in common.
The bill just failed to pass the House of Lords, but the Lord’s diminished power under the Parliament Act 1911 meant that the bill could only be delayed and was finally placed on the statute books with Royal Assent in September 1914, but suspended for the duration of World War I, which context set the backdrop for events to follow.
John Redmond leader of the IPP feared his “national authority” might be circumvented by the Volunteers and decided to control the new movement. Despite opposition from the I.R.B. members, the Volunteer Executive agreed to share leadership with Redmond and a joint committee was set up. Pearse was opposed to this and was to write:
The leaders in Ireland have nearly always left the people at the critical moment; they have sometimes sold them. The former Volunteer movement was abandoned by its leaders; O’Connell recoiled before the cannon at Clontarf; twice the hour of the Irish revolution struck during Young Ireland days and twice it struck in vain, for Meagher hesitated in Waterford, Duffy and McGee hesitated in Dublin. Stephens refused to give the word in ‘65; he never came in ‘66 or ‘67. I do not blame these men; you or I might have done the same. It is a terrible responsibility to be cast on a man, that of bidding the cannon speak and the grapeshot pour.
The Volunteers split one of the issues being support for the Allied and British war effort, a majority following Redmond in the National Volunteers in the belief that this would ensure Home Rule on their return. Pearse, exhilarated by the dramatic events of the European war wrote in an article written in December 1915 on patriotism:
It is patriotism that stirs the people. Belgium defending her soil is heroic, and so is Turkey . . . . . .
It is good for the world that such things should be done. The old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields.
Such august homage was never before offered to God as this, the homage of millions of lives given gladly for love of country.
The IRB and the Irish Republic
In December 1913, Bulmer Hobson swore Pearse into the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), an organisation dedicated to the overthrow of British rule in Ireland and its replacement with an Irish Republic. He was soon co-opted onto the IRB's Supreme Council by Tom Clarke. Pearse was then one of many people who were members of both the IRB and the Volunteers. When he became the Volunteers' Director of Military Organisation in 1914 he was the highest ranking Volunteer in the IRB membership, and instrumental in the latter's commandeering of the remaining minority of the Volunteers for the purpose of rebellion. By 1915 he was on the IRB's Supreme Council, and its secret Military Council, the core group that began planning for a rising while war raged on the European Western Front.
On 1 August 1915, Pearse gave a now-famous graveside oration at the funeral of the Fenian Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa. It closed with the words:
"Our foes are strong and wise and wary; but, strong and wise and wary as they are, they cannot undo the miracles of God Who ripens in the hearts of young men the seeds sown by the young men of a former generation. And the seeds sown by the young men of '65 and '67 are coming to their miraculous ripening today. Rulers and Defenders of the Realm had need to be wary if they would guard against such processes. Life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but, the fools, the fools, the fools! — They have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace."
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Easter Rising and death
Pearse, given his speaking and writing skills, was chosen by the leading IRB man Thomas Clarke to be the spokesman for the Rising. It was Pearse who on behalf of the IRB, shortly before Easter in 1916, issued the orders to all Volunteer units throughout the country for three days of manoeuvres beginning Easter Sunday, which was the signal for a general uprising. When Eoin MacNeill, the Chief of Staff of the Volunteers, learned what was being planned without the promised arms from Germany, he countermanded the orders via newspaper, causing the IRB to issue a last minute order to go through with the plan the following day, greatly limiting the numbers who turned out for the rising.
When the Easter Rising eventually erupted on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, there never was any plan for a military victory in the minds of the Leaders. It was Pearse who proclaimed a Republic from the steps of the General Post Office and headquarters of the insurgents. After six days fighting, heavy civilian casualties and great destruction of property, Pearse issued the order to surrender along with the remaining leaders.
Pearse and fourteen other leaders, including his brother Willie, were court-martialled and executed by firing squad. Sir Roger Casement, who had tried unsuccessfully to recruit an insurgent force among Irish-born prisoners of war from the Irish Brigade in Germany was hanged in London the following August. Thomas Clarke, Thomas MacDonagh and Pearse himself were the first of the rebels to be executed, on the morning of 3 May 1916. Pearse was 36 years old at the time of his death.
Sir John Maxwell, the General Officer commanding the British forces in Ireland, sent a telegram to Asquith, then Prime Minister, advising him not to return the bodies of Pádraig and Willie Pearse to their family saying:
"Irish sentimentality will turn these graves into martyrs’ shrines to which annual processions will be made which
would cause constant irritation in this country.
Maxwell also suppressed the letter from Pearse to his mother, and two poems dated 1 May 1916, he submitted copies of them also to the British Prime Minister saying that some of the content was "objectionable."
In addition that document used the term "President of the Provisional Government", not "President of the Republic". A "President of a government" is akin to a prime minister, not a president of a state. Pearse and his colleagues also discussed proclaiming Prince Joachim (the Kaiser's youngest son) as an Irish constitutional monarch, if the Central Powers won the First World War, which suggests that their ideas for the political future of the country had to await the war's outcome.
Others considerations
Writing subsequently, Michael Collins was critical of Pearse. Comparing him to James Connolly, Collins wrote:
Of Pearse and Connolly I admire the latter most. Connolly was a realist, Pearse the direct opposite . . . I would have followed [Connolly] through hell had such action been necessary. But I honestly doubt very much if I would have followed Pearse — not without some thought anyway.
Ruth Dudley Edwards a noted revisionist historian and Unionist made the following conclusions about Pearse and the Rising: Pearse and his colleagues had no mandate, merely a belief that because their judgement was superior to those of the population at large, they were entitled to use violence. Eoin Neeson, has described such opinions as having “no mandate” as inapt, pointing to the fact that the leaders repeatedly stated aim was to revive a sense of separate national identity in the people as a whole.
Pearse in his address to his court martial and his prediction of future events in history would no doubt contrast Edwards assertion:
When I was a child of ten I went down on my knees by my bedside one night and promised God that I should devote my life to an effort to free my country. I have kept that promise. First among all earthly things, as a boy and as a man, I have worked for Irish freedom. I have helped to organize, to arm, to train, and to discipline my fellow countrymen to the sole end that, when the time came, they might fight for Irish freedom. The time, as it seemed to me, did come and we went into the fight. I am glad that we did, we seem to have lost, we have not lost. To refuse to fight would have been to lose, to fight is to win, we have kept faith with the past, and handed a tradition to the future… I assume I am speaking to Englishmen who value their own freedom, and who profess to be fighting for the freedom of Belgium and Serbia. Believe that we too love freedom and desire it. To us it is more desirable than anything else in the world. If you strike us down now we shall rise again and renew the fight. You cannot conquer Ireland; you cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom; if our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom then our children will win it by a better deed.
This point she herself conceded when in her biography of Pearse quoted the words of the poet AE (George Russell) who himself would have been a critic of Pearse:
Their dream had left me numb and cold.
But yet my spirit rose in pride.
Refashioning in burnished gold
The images of those who died
Or were shut in the penal cell.
Here’s to you. Pearse, your dream not mine,
But yet the thought for this you fell
Has turned life’s waters into wine.
In addition, Edwards in her introduction to her biography of Pearse, and as to how his actions would be viewed by later generations quoted a verse from W. B. Yeats' Three songs to the one burden,:
Some had no thought of victory
But had gone out to die
That Ireland s mind be greater,
Her heart mount up on high;
And yet who knows what’s yet to come?
For Patrick Pearse had said
That in every generation
Must Ireland’s blood be shed.
Seán MacBride, in his Foreword to Quotations from P. H. Pearse said: As Pearse had foreseen, some who considered themselves ‘wise’ have proclaimed that Pearse’s cause was a failure. Others, whose own standards of nationality and freedom do not measure up to those of Pearse, have sought to denigrate him. Still others have tried to depict him as a narrow-minded insular nationalist. Others again have portrayed him as an impractical idealist. Pearse’s writings, poems, short stories, plays and political
essays provide the answer to all those who speak in ‘dispraise’ of him.
Pearse's writings
Pearse wrote stories and poems in both Irish and English, his best-known English poem being "The Wayfarer". He also penned several allegorical plays in the Irish language, including The King, The Master, and The Singer. His short stories in Irish include Eoghainín na nÉan ("Eoineen of the Birds"), Íosagán, Na Bóithre ("The Roads"), and An Bhean Chaointe ("The Keening Woman"). These are translated into English by Joseph Campbell (in the Collected Works of 1917). Most of his ideas on education are contained in his famous essay "The Murder Machine". He also authored many essays on politics and language, notably "The Coming Revolution" and "Ghosts".
Pearse is closely associated with the song, "Oró Sé do Bheatha 'Bhaile", for which he composed additional lyrics.
Personal life
Pearse remained a bachelor all his life, and displayed little interest in relationships with females. This, in conjunction with elements of his writings, led revisionist Unionist historian Ruth Dudley Edwards to speculate that Pearse was an “unconscious homosexual". . A poem Pearse published in 1909 entitled "A Mhic Bhig na gCleas" (Little Lad of the Tricks), in which he describes the kisses of a little boy being sweeter than the kisses of women, fueled this speculation.
It has been suggested that Pearse was romantically involved with a young lady by the name of Eveleen Nicholls, though Edwards dismisses it as purely platonic. Nicholls died in tragic circumstances, while swimming in the seas off the Blasket Islands. Edwards, in her biography of Pearse, says that Pearse “was marred by a personal blow,” referring to the death of Eveleen, whom she described as his "admired friend," and that “the only basis for marriage with Eveleen would have been mutual respect, not sexual attraction.” The true nature of their relationship remains unknown, as does his sexual orientation.
Pearse's mother Margaret Pearse served as a TD in Dáil Éireann in the 1920s. His sister Margaret M. Pearse also served as a TD and Senator.
Reputation
Largely because of a series of political pamphlets Pearse wrote in the months leading up to the 1916 Rising, he soon became recognised as the voice of the 1916 Rising. In the middle decades of the twentieth century, Pearse was idolised by Irish nationalists as the supreme idealist of their cause.
However, with the outbreak of conflict in Northern Ireland in 1969, Pearse's legacy soon became associated with the Provisional IRA. Pearse's reputation and writings were subject to criticism by some historians who saw him as a dangerous, fanatical, psychologically unsound individual under ultra-religious influences. As Conor Cruise O'Brien, onetime Labour TD and former unionist politician, put it in writing: "Pearse saw the Rising as a Passion Play with real blood." In his 1972 book States of Ireland Cruise O Brien was to reveal a deeper, more personal reason for his opposition to Pearse and indeed the Easter Rising. The Rising, he said, resulted in his family's "rightful" position, as leading members of the Irish Parliamentary Party in Irish society being denied them.
Others defended Pearse, suggesting that to blame him for what was happening in Northern Ireland was unhistorical and a distortion of the real spirit of his writings. Though the passion of those arguments has waned with the continuing peace in Northern Ireland following the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, his complex personality still remains a subject of controversy for those who wish to debate the evolving meaning of Irish nationalism.
Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern described Pearse as one of his heroes and displayed a picture of Pearse over his desk in the Department of the Taoiseach.
His former school, St. Enda's, Rathfarnham, on the south side of Dublin, is now the Pearse Museum dedicated to his memory. In Ballymun the Patrick Pearse Tower was named after him. it was the first of Ballymun's tower blocks to be demolished in 2004.
Footnotes
Sources
- Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins. Hutchinson, 1990.
- Ruth Dudley Edwards, Patrick Pearse: the Triumph of Failure. London: Gollancz, 1977.
- F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine. London: Collins/Fontana, 1973.
- Dorothy Macardle, The Irish Republic. Corgi, 1968.
- Arthur Mitchell & Pádraig Ó Snodaigh, Irish Political Documents 1916-1949. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1985.
- Mary Pearse, The Home Life of Pádraig Pearse. Cork: Mercier, 1971.
- Patrick Pearse, Short Stories. Trans. Joseph Campbell. Ed. Anne Markey. Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2009
External links
- - Pearse's groundbreaking article on Montessori education
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