Patrick Pearse

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Patrick Pearse
Pádraig Mac Piarais
Born(1879-11-10)10 November 1879
Dublin, Ireland
Died3 May 1916(1916-05-03) (aged 36)
Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, Ireland
Cause of deathExecution by firing squad
Resting placeArbour Hill Prison
Other namesPádraig Pearse
EducationCBS Westland Row
Alma materUniversity College Dublin
King's Inns
Occupations
  • Educator
  • principal
  • barrister
  • republican activist
  • poet
MotherMargaret Brady
Military career
AllegianceIrish Republican Brotherhood
Irish Volunteers
Years of service1913–1916
RankCommander-in-chief
Battles / warsEaster Rising
Signature

Patrick Henry Pearse (also known as Pádraig or Pádraic Pearse; Irish: Pádraig Anraí Mac Piarais; 10 November 1879 – 3 May 1916) was an Irish teacher, barrister, poet, writer, nationalist, republican political activist and revolutionary who was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. Following his execution along with fifteen others, Pearse came to be seen by many as the embodiment of the rebellion.

Early life and influences

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27 Pearse Street, birthplace of Patrick and Willie Pearse

Pearse, his brother

Fenians are all dead". His maternal grand-uncle, James Savage, fought in the American Civil War.[6] The Irish-speaking influence of Pearse's grand-aunt Margaret, together with his schooling at the CBS Westland Row, instilled in him an early love for the Irish language and culture.[7]

Pearse grew up surrounded by books.

Theobald Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet.[11]

Pearse soon became involved in 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").[12][13]

In 1900, Pearse was awarded a B.A. in Modern Languages (Irish, English and French) by the

Barrister-at-Law at the King's Inns.[14] Pearse was called to the bar in 1901. In 1905, Pearse represented Neil McBride, a poet and songwriter from Feymore, Creeslough, County Donegal, who had been fined for having his name displayed in "illegible" writing (i.e. Irish) on his donkey cart. The appeal was heard before the Court of King's Bench in Dublin. It was Pearse's first and only court appearance as a barrister. The case was lost but it became a symbol of the struggle for Irish independence. In his 27 June 1905 An Claidheamh Soluis column, Pearse wrote of the decision, "it was in effect decided that Irish is a foreign language on the same level with Yiddish."[15][16]

St Enda's

St. Enda's, now the Pearse Museum

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 for boys, St. Enda's School (Scoil Éanna) in Cullenswood House in Ranelagh, a suburb of County Dublin, in 1908.[17]

Pearse's restless idealism led him in search of an even more idyllic home for his school. He found it in The Hermitage in Rathfarnham, County Dublin, now home to the Pearse Museum. In 1910 Pearse wrote that the Hermitage was an "ideal" location due to the aesthetics of the grounds and that if he could secure it, "the school would be on a level with" the more established schools of the day such as "Clongowes Wood College and Castleknock College".[18] Pearse was also involved in the foundation of Scoil Íde (St Ita's School) for girls, an institution with aims similar to those of St Enda's.[17]

The Volunteers and Home Rule

In April 1912

Irish Home Rule Bill. Pearse gave the bill a qualified welcome. He 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 at the end of March 1912. Speaking in Irish, Pearse said he thought that "a good measure can be gained if we have enough courage", but he warned, "Let the English understand that if we are again betrayed, there shall be red war throughout Ireland".[19]

In November 1913 Pearse was invited to the inaugural meeting of the Irish Volunteers—formed in reaction to the creation of the Ulster Volunteers—whose aim was "to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland".[20] In an article entitled "The Coming Revolution" (November 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.[21]

The Home Rule Bill just failed to pass the

First World War
.

John Redmond feared that his "national authority" might be circumvented by the Volunteers and decided to try to take control of the new movement. Despite opposition from the Irish Republican Brotherhood, 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:[21]

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;

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.[21]

The Volunteers split, one of the issues being support for the Allied and the British war effort. A majority followed Redmond into 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 in December 1915:

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.
War is a terrible thing, and this is the most terrible of wars. But this war is not more terrible than the evils which it will end or help to end.[22]

Irish Republican Brotherhood

O'Donovan Rossa at which he gave a graveside oration
.
GPO at the start of the Easter Rising

In December 1913 Bulmer Hobson swore Pearse into the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB),[23] 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.[24] 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[25] 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 graveside oration at the funeral of the Fenian Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa. He was the first republican to be filmed giving an oration.[26] 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. (Full text of Speech)

Easter Rising and death

Main article: Easter 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 on 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

General Post Office, the headquarters of the Rising. Pearse was the person most responsible for drafting the Proclamation, and he was chosen as President of the Republic.[27]
After six days of fighting, heavy civilian casualties and great destruction of property, Pearse issued the order to surrender.

Pearse and fourteen other leaders, including his brother Willie, were court-martialled and executed by firing squad. 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. 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.

Sir John Maxwell, the Commander-in-Chief, Ireland, sent a telegram to H. H. Asquith, then Prime Minister, advising him not to return the bodies of the Pearse brothers 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."[28] Maxwell also suppressed a letter from Pearse to his mother,[29] and two poems dated 1 May 1916. He submitted copies of them also to Prime Minister Asquith, saying that some of the content was "objectionable".[28]

Writings

Bust of Pearse in Tralee, County Kerry

Pearse wrote stories and poems in both Irish and English. His best-known English poems include "The Mother", "The Fool", "

The Murder Machine
". He also wrote many essays on politics and language, notably "The Coming Revolution" and "Ghosts".

Pearse is closely associated with his rendering of the

Oró Sé do Bheatha 'Bhaile
", for which he composed republican lyrics.

According to

literary critic Louis de Paor, despite Pearse's enthusiasm for the Conamara Theas dialect of Connacht Irish spoken around his summer cottage at Rosmuc in Connemara, he chose to follow the usual practice of the Gaelic revival by writing in Munster Irish, which was considered less Anglicized
than other Irish dialects.

Also according to Louis de Paor, Pearse's reading of the radically experimental poetry of

literary critic, Pearse also left behind a very detailed blueprint for the decolonization of Irish literature, particularly in the Irish language
.

Louis De Paor writes that Patrick Pearse was "the most perceptive

critic and most accomplished poet", of the early Gaelic revival providing "a sophisticated model for a new literature in Irish that would reestablish a living connection with the pre-colonial Gaelic past while resuming its relationship with contemporary Europe, bypassing the monolithic influence of English."[32] For these reasons, de Paor called Pearse's death a catastrophic loss for modern literature in Irish. According to de Paor, this loss only began to be healed during the 1940s by the modernist poetry of Seán Ó Ríordáin, Máirtín Ó Direáin, and Máire Mhac an tSaoi; and by the modernist novels An Béal Bocht by Flann O'Brien and Cré na Cille by Máirtín Ó Cadhain
.

Reputation

With the outbreak of conflict in

Provisional IRA
.

Pearse's ideas have been seen by Seán Farrell Moran as belonging to the context of European cultural history as a part of a rejection of reason by European social thinkers.[33] Additionally, his place within Catholicism, where his orthodoxy was challenged in the early 1970s,[34] has been addressed to suggest that Pearse's theological foundations for his political ideas share in a long-existing tradition in western Christianity.[35]

Former Fianna Fáil 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.[36]

Pearse's mother Margaret Pearse served as a TD in Dáil Éireann in the 1920s. His sister Margaret Mary Pearse also served as a TD and Senator.

In a 2006 book, psychiatrists

paedophilia; they allege that Pearse's apparent lack of sexual interest in women, and his "ascetic" and celibate lifestyle are consistent with a diagnosis of high-functioning autism.[37] Cultural historian Elaine Sisson has further said that Pearse's interest in and idealization of young boys needs to be seen in the context of the Victorian era "cult of the boy".[41]

In almost all of Pearse's portraits, he struck a sideways pose, concealing his left side. This was to hide a strabismus or squint in his left eye, which he felt was an embarrassing condition.[42]

Commemoration

Educational institutions

Cullenswood House, the Pearse family home in Ranelagh where Pádraic first founded St Enda's, today houses a primary

Gaoth Dobhair called Colaiste an Phiarsaigh. In Rosmuc
there is an Irish-medium vocational school, Gairmscoil na bPiarsach. The main lecture hall at the Cadet School in Ireland is named after P.H. Pearse. In September 2014, Gaelcholáiste an Phiarsaigh, a new Irish language medium secondary school, opened its doors for the first time in the former Loreto Abbey buildings, just 1 km from the Pearse Museum in St Endas Park, Rathfarnham. Today Glanmire County Cork boasts the best secondary-level Irish-speaking college in Ireland called Coláiste an Phiarsaigh, which was named in honour and structured around Patrick Pearse's beliefs.

Sports venues and clubs

A number of Gaelic Athletic Association clubs and playing fields in Ireland are named after Pádraic or both Pearses:

So also are several outside Ireland:

There are also soccer clubs named Pearse Celtic FC in Cork and in Ringsend, Dublin; and Liffeys Pearse FC, a south Dublin soccer club formed by the amalgamation of Liffey Wanderers and Pearse Rangers. A Pearse Rangers schoolboy football club remains in existence in Dublin.

Other commemorations

  • In 1916 the English composer Arnold Bax, who had met the man, composed a tone poem entitled In Memoriam Patrick Pearse. It received its first public performance in 2008.[43]
  • In Belfast the Pearse Club on King Street was wrecked by an explosion in May 1938.[44]
  • Westland Row Station in Dublin was renamed Pearse Station in 1966 after the Pearse brothers.
  • The silver
    ten shilling
    coin minted in 1966 featured the bust of Patrick Pearse. It is the sole Irish coin ever to have featured anyone associated with Irish history or politics.
  • In Ballymun the Patrick Pearse Tower was named after him. It was the first of Ballymun's tower blocks to be demolished in 2004.[45]
  • In 1999 the centenary of Pearse's induction as a member of the
    Gorsedd at the 1899 Pan Celtic Eisteddfod in Cardiff (when he took the Bardic name Areithiwr) was marked by the unveiling of a plaque at the Consulate General of Ireland in Wales.[46]
  • Postage stamps commemorating Pearse were issued by the Irish postal service in 1966, 1979 and 2008.
  • Writer Prvoslav Vujcic is nicknamed Pearse after Patrick Pearse.[47]
  • In 2016 Leinster GAA inaugurated a Pearse medal in recognition of Pearse's role as vice president of the province's Colleges' Committee. The medals are awarded to the best footballer and hurler in the Leinster senior championship each year.[48]

Citations

  1. JSTOR 30088734
    .
  2. ISBN 978-0-391-00633-1. Archived
    from the original on 21 December 2019. Retrieved 16 October 2016.
  3. ISBN 978-0-300-10923-8. Archived
    from the original on 18 April 2021. Retrieved 3 October 2020.
  4. ISBN 978-0-7735-3029-4. Archived
    from the original on 18 April 2021. Retrieved 3 October 2020.
  5. ^ Patrick Pearse: Life. Archived 8 January 2018 at the Wayback Machine Ricorso, Bruce Stewart. Retrieved 7 January 2011.
  6. ^ 16 Lives: Patrick Pearse. p. 17.
  7. ^ "The Home Life of Padraic Pearse" Edited by Mary Brigid Pearse. Published by Mercier Press Dublin and Cork.
  8. ISBN 978-3-03910-941-8. Archived
    from the original on 18 April 2021. Retrieved 3 October 2020.
  9. ^ Crowley, Brian (2009). "'The strange thing I am': his father's son?". History Ireland. History Publications Ltd. Archived from the original on 20 March 2012. Retrieved 5 December 2010.
  10. ^ 16 Lives: Patrick Pearse. p. 18.
  11. ^ Mitchell, Angus. "Robert Emmet and 1916". Archived from the original on 18 April 2021. Retrieved 13 April 2021.
  12. ^ "Flanagan, Frank M., "Patrick H. Pearse", The Great Educators, March 20, 1995". Archived from the original on 25 September 2012. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
  13. ^ John T. Koch, Celtic culture: a historical encyclopedia
  14. ^ "CELT: Chronology of Patrick Pearse, also known as Pádraig Pearse (Pádraig Mac Piarais)". ucc.ie. Archived from the original on 11 May 2009. Retrieved 9 November 2008.
  15. ^ "Padraig Pearse, the cart and an old song book". Sparkle. 9 September 2011. Archived from the original on 6 September 2017. Retrieved 10 April 2016.
  16. ^ McGill, P.J. (1966). "Pearse Defends Niall Mac Giolla Bhride in Court of King's Bench, Dublin". Donegal Annual. 1966: 83–85 (from 27 June 1905 article written by Patrick Pearse) – via Google Books.
  17. ^ a b "Patrick Pearse" (PDF). The 1916 Rising: Personalities and Perspectives. National Library of Ireland. 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 May 2006.
  18. ISBN 978-3-03910-941-8. Archived
    from the original on 18 April 2021. Retrieved 3 October 2020.
  19. ^ Ruth Dudley Edwards, Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure, (1977) p. 159
  20. ISBN 0-7509-3433-6
    .
  21. ^ a b c Seán Cronin, Our Own Red Blood, Irish Freedom Press, New York, 2014, p. 15 [ISBN missing]
  22. ^ "Peace and the Gael", in Patrick H. Pearse, Political writings and speeches, Phoenix, Dublin, (1924) p. 216, National Library of Ireland
  23. ^ In a statement to the Bureau of Military History, dated 26 January 1948, Hobson claimed: "After the formation of the Irish Volunteers in October [recte November] 1913, Pádraig Pearse was sworn in by me as a member of the IRB in December of that year ... I swore him in before his departure for the States." (See: National Library of Ireland, 3.2.1 Bulmer Hobson and Denis McCullough Archived 28 February 2008 at the Wayback Machine, in The 1916 Rising: Personalities and Perspectives, p. 18. Retrieved 1 January 2008. Hobson, in his Foundation of Growth of the Irish Volunteers, 1913–1914, also states that Pearse was not a member of the IRB when the Irish Volunteers were founded in November.
  24. ^ Kathleen Clarke says in My Fight for Ireland's Freedom that it was "towards the end of 1913" when Tom Clarke had Pearse co-opted onto the Supreme Council of the IRB.
  25. ISBN 978-1-903497-34-0
    p. 87
  26. ^ 16 Lives: Patrick Pearse. p. 121.
  27. ^ "Patrick Pearse". Century Ireland. RTÉ/Boston College. Archived from the original on 2 March 2017. Retrieved 1 March 2017.
  28. ^
    ISBN 0-85342-605-8
  29. ^ Author:Patrick Pearse – Wikisource at en.wikisource.org
  30. ISBN 1-85635-216-1
    .
  31. ^ Patrick Pearse, Short Stories. Trans. Joseph Campbell. Ed. Anne Markey. Dublin, 2009
  32. Louis De Paor (2016), Leabhar na hAthghabhála: Poems of Repossession: Irish-English Bilingual Edition, Bloodaxe Books
    . Page 20.
  33. ^ Sean Farrell Moran, "Patrick Pearse and the European Revolt Against Reason," Journal of the History of Ideas, 1989, 4.
  34. ^ Francis J. Shaw, S.J., "The Canon of Irish History—A Challenge," in Studies, 61, 242, 115–53
  35. ^ Moran, "Patrick Pearse and Patriotic Soteriology" in The Irish Terrorism Experience, eds. Yonah Alexander and Alan O'Day, 1991, 9–29
  36. ^ Bertie Ahern, interviewed about Pearse on RTÉ, 9 April 2006.
  37. ^ a b Collins, Liam (9 April 2006). "Rebel Pearse was no gay blade but had autistic temperment [sic]". Archived from the original on 16 November 2018. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  38. ^ Ruth Dudley Edwards, Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure, Victor Gollancz, 1977, pp. 52–4
  39. ^ Sean Farrell Moran, Patrick Pearse and the Politics of Redemption: The Mind of the Easter Rising, 1916 Archived 15 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, 1994, p. 122.
  40. ^ Joost Augusteijn, Patrick Pearse: The Making of a Revolutionary, 2009, p. 62
  41. ^ True Lives: P.H. Pearse; Fanatic Heart (television documentary). Dublin: RTÉ. 2001. Event occurs at 42:23.
  42. ^ John Spain, "Pearse's heroic sideways pose? He did it to hide embarrassing squint" Archived 20 December 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Irish Independent, 24 August 2013
  43. ^ BBC Proms 24 July 2008
  44. ^ "Belfast club wrecked", Ottawa Citizen, p. 1, 26 May 1938
  45. ^ Dublin City Public Libraries Archived 18 January 2013 at the Wayback Machine history of Ballymun Towers
  46. ^ [1] Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine Account of Gorsedd commemoration, 1999
  47. ^ "Prvoslav Vujcic biography". Urban Book Circle. 16 May 2013. Archived from the original on 10 February 2019. Retrieved 3 March 2019.
  48. ^ "Dublin and Kilkenny dominate Leinster Pearse medal nominations". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 12 November 2016. Retrieved 12 November 2016.

Sources

  • Joost Augusteijn, Patrick Pearse: The Making of a Revolutionary, 2009.
  • 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
  • Seán Farrell Moran, Patrick Pearse and the Politics of Redemption: The Mind of the Easter Rising 1916, Washington, Catholic University Press, 1994
    • "Patrick Pearse and the European Revolt against Reason," in The Journal of the History of Ideas, 50:4 (1989), 625–43
    • "Patrick Pearse and Patriotic Soteriology: The Irish Republican Tradition and the Sanctification of Political Self-Immolation" in The Irish Terrorism Experience, ed. Yonah Alexander and Alan O'Day, 1991, 9–29
  • Brian Murphy, Patrick Pearse and the Lost Republican Ideal, Dublin, James Duffy, 1990.
  • Ruán O'Donnell, Patrick Pearse, Dublin: O'Brien Press, 2016
  • 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
  • Elaine Sisson, "Pearse's Patriots: The Cult of Boyhood at St. Enda's." Cork University Press, 2004, repr. 2005
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