Patrick Henry Pearse (also known as Pádraig Pearse; Irish: Pádraig Anraí Mac Piarais; 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 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,[citation needed] 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.
St Enda's
As a cultural nationalist educated by the nationalist 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.
The Volunteers, the IRB and the Easter Rising
In November 1913 Pearse was invited to the inaugural meeting of the Irish
Volunteers, formed to enforce the implementation of Westminster's Home Rule Act in the face of opposition from the
Ulster Volunteers. The bill had just failed to pass the House of Lords at the third effort, but the diminished power of the Lords under the Parliament Act meant that the bill was only to be delayed.
Early in 1914, Pearse became a member of the secret Irish Republican
Brotherhood, an organisation dedicated to the overthrow of British rule in Ireland and its replacement with a
Republic. 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 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
World War I raged on the European mainland.
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."
Was Pearse "President of the Irish Republic"?
Pearse, given his speaking and writing skills, was chosen by the leading IRB man Thomas Clarke to be the spokesman for the Rising that he hoped would soon occur. It was
Pearse who, 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 Pearse 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. Without MacNeill on board as their figurehead, the Military
Council needed someone else to take the title of President of the Irish
Republic and Commander-in-Chief. Pearse was allegedly chosen over Clarke, as Clarke was a convicted felon and it was
claimed eschewed any such role, while Pearse was respected throughout the country, and a natural leader.
However, the claim that Pearse was designated President of the Republic was widely disputed in the aftermath of the
Rising. The government described itself as 'provisional'. Clarke's wife stated in her autobiography that the Rising leaders
understood that Clarke was to be president, hence his position as the first name on the list of signatories of the proclamation.
Emmet Clarke, son of Tom Clarke, then a child, recounted meeting surviving figures of the Rising in the presence of his mother
when they were released. One leading figure asked Mrs Clarke and her son "Who in the hell made Pearse president?"[2] Opponents of Pearse accused him of using his role as chief
propagandist for the rebellion to draft statements referring to himself as president. The claim that Pearse held such a
role featured only in a secondary document issued, one drafted by Pearse himself, not in the actual Proclamation.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5]
When the people of Ireland voted overwhelmingly in the 1918 general
election for Sinn Féin to form an independent Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann, the first paragraph of the Democratic
Programme, read out at the first meeting of the First Dáil, mentions "ár gceud
Uachtarán Pádraig Mac Phiarais" ["our first President, Pádraig Mac Phiarais"], thus giving Pearse recognition as
President.
The Easter Rising and his execution
When eventually the Easter Rising did erupt on Easter Monday, 24 April, 1916, having been delayed by a day due to the interception by the
British Navy of weapons arriving from Germany aboard the vessel Aud and the publication of MacNeill's countermanding
order, it was Pearse who proclaimed a Republic from the steps of the
General Post Office, headquarters of the insurgents, to a bemused crowd.
When, after several days fighting, it became apparent that victory was impossible, he surrendered, along with most of the other
leaders. Pearse and fourteen other leaders, including his brother Willie, were court-martialled and executed by firing squad. Sir
Roger Casement, an IRB leader who had tried unsuccessfully to recruit an insurgent force
among Irish-born prisoners of war 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.
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.[6] |
” |
Ruth Dudley Edwards a noted historian and Unionist[7] 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.[8]
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.[9] |
” |
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:[10]
| “ |
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.[10]
|
” |
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.[10]
|
” |
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"). 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".
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, a 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.
His former school, St. Enda's, Rathfarnham, on the south side of Dublin, is now the Pearse
Museum dedicated to his memory.
Personal life
Pearse never wrote his first name as 'Pádraig', using 'Patrick' or P.H.' instead. After his death 'Pádraig' was adopted by
supporters in recognition of his love of the Irish language.
His apparent lack of any romantic involvement with women, has led to the suggestion by revisionist historian[11] Ruth Dudley Edwards that Pearse was an “unconscious
homosexual". [10] Edwards rejects the suggestion that Pearse was romantically involved with a young lady by the
name of Eveleen Nicholls. Despite Eveleen’s brother saying that Pearse had proposed to her, and that Eveleen had declined as “she
did not want to abandon her mother to the problems…in her home.” [10]
Eveleen was a young girl, recently elected to the Coiste Gnotha, who had a reputation in Gaelic League for her academic achievements and devotion to the Irish language. She 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.” [10]
Pearse in an editorial, “…showed his distress,” on her death :
| “ |
There are times when journalists and public men experience a trial more cruel than
others can easily imagine. It is when they are called upon in the course of their duty to write or to speak in public of things
that touch the inmost fibres of their hearts, things that to them are intimate and sacred, entwined, it may be, with their
dearest friendships and affections, awakening to vibration old chords of joy or of sorrow. The present is such an occasion for
the writer of these paragraphs... It is not in human nature to write a glib newspaper article on a dead friend. One dare not
utter all that is in one’s heart, and in the effort at self- restraint one is apt to pen only cold and formal things.” [10] |
” |
Desmond Ryan, Pearse’s young protégé, was convinced of Pearse’s emotional involvement by his tears at Eveleen’s funeral but
Edwards comments that "there were many others crying," and in addition Edwards contends "Pearse’s grief for Eveleen was not great
enough to affect his work in any way." [10]
Pearse was later to write a lament, entitled "A Chinn Aluinn," (O Lovely Head):
| “ |
O lovely head of the woman that I loved,
In the middle of the night I remember thee:
But reality returns with the sun’s whitening,
Alas, that the slender worm gnaws thee to-night.
Beloved voice, that wast low and beautiful,
Is it true that I heard thee in my slumbers?
Or is the knowledge true that tortures me?
My grief, the tomb hath no sound or voice! [10]
|
” |
Edwards again rejects this as proof of Pearse’s love for Eveleen, saying "It was apparently not written until nearly five
years after her death, and Pearse, where his poetry dealt with specific episodes…wrote during or immediately after the occasion
concerned… the poem was an exercise in a common romantic convention, by which the death of the beloved provided a vehicle for
morbid reflections." [10]
"As Mary Hayden’s evidence suggested," writes Edwards, "he tended to put women on a pedestal. He knew nothing of
homosexuality." Edwards writes "it is inconceivable that a man of Pearse’s conventional mores and high code of chivalry could
have lived with conscious homosexual inclinations. Certainly, with such knowledge, he could not have gone on writing as he
did…"[10] "Pearse was an innocent," she
suggests "but there can be little doubt about his unconscious inclinations."
Mary Hayden, who described Pearse’s writing, said "when he wrote of beauty, he was inspired by the descriptions, so frequent
and so elaborate, of characters in the old Irish sagas… of course, any respectable man would have been careful not to write too
eloquently of the female form…," and Edwards says Pearse did not speak from "personal experience of the kisses of a little boy
being sweeter than the kisses of women," or the "honey of their bodies," and no more can it be supposed that "when he wrote of
his love in the tomb he was thinking of a particular woman," again alluding to Eveleen. [10]
In 1909 Pearse published a poem entitled "A Mhic Bhig na gCleas" (Little Lad of the Tricks), in the second edition of
Macaomh. It was well received at the time and was later republished in Claidheamh Soluis (The Sword of Light). When
it was published in the English language, it caused some alarm among more worldly people. Pearse’s friends Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Mary Plunkett, when they
explained to him the construction which might be placed on it, Pearse was both "bewildered and hurt." Though Edwards again
suggested that his "lifetime quest for purity, chastity, and perfection had blinded him to the instincts reflected in his
poetry…" and concludes "he never again offered such ammunition as in "Little Lad of the Tricks."[10]
His 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.
Current Taoiseach Bertie Ahern describes Pearse as
one of his heroes and displays a picture of Pearse over his desk in Irish Government
Buildings.[12]
Footnotes
- ^ “The acronym the Irish Republican Army was first used in 1867 to describe
the ill-fated group of Fenian’s who invaded Canada in 1867. It was used again in 1916 to describe the Irish Citizen Army and
Irish Volunteers who seized and held the centre of Dublin in the Easter Rising. In 1919 the Irish Volunteers adopted the name,
the Irish Republican Army....Commandant James Connelly was cheered when he told them from now on there was no Irish Citizen Army
and no Irish Volunteers. They were the Irish Republican Army. He gave the order to charge the GPO.” (The Volunteer: Uniforms,
Weapons and History of the Irish Republican Army 1913-1997, by James Durney, Gaul House, Kildare, 2004)
- ^ Emmet Clarke, in an interview broadcast on RTÉ 9 April, 2006.
- ^ Arthur Mitchell & Pádraig Ó Snodaigh, Irish Political Documents
1916-1949, Irish Academic Press 1985.
- ^ Among states which use or used that form of address to refer to a prime
minister are Spain and the Irish Free State, where the latter's prime minister was
called President of the Executive
Council.
- ^ FitzGerald G. Reflections on the Irish State Irish Academic Press,
Dublin 2003 p.153.
- ^ Collins to Kevin O'Brien, Frongoch, 6
October, 1916, quoted in Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins, Hutchinson, 1990.
- ^ Envoi, Taking Leave Of Roy Foster, by Brendan Clifford and Julianne
Herlihy, Aubane Historical Society, Cork Pg 88, 96, 100, 146,152
- ^ Ruth Dudley-Edwards, "The Terrible Legacy of Patrick Pearse", Sunday
Independent, 14 April, 2001.
- ^ Max Caulfield, The Easter Rebellion, Gill & MacMillian 1963,
1995, Dublin
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m R.D. Edwards,
The Triumph of Failure, Victor Gollancz Ltd, London, 1990.
- ^ Brendan Clifford and Julianne, Envoi: Taking leave of Roy Foster,
Aubane Historical Society, June 2006, ISBN 1 903497 28 0
- ^ Bertie Ahern, interviewed about Pearse on RTÉ, 9 April, 2006.
Sources
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
- 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, Collins/Fontana, 1973.
- Dorothy Macardle, The Irish Republic, Corgi, 1968.
- Arthur Mitchell & Pádraig Ó Snodaigh, Irish Political Documents 1916-1949, Irish Academic Press 1985.
- Mary Pearse, The Home Life of Pádraig Pearse. Cork, Mercies 1971.
External links
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