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Easter Rising, Dublin, 1916
Mar 28, 2005 6:54 AM
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Today, Easter Monday, is the 89th anniversary of the start of the Easter Rising in Dublin.
The Irish held out for a week against the largest empire in the world and then, "in defence of the rights of small nations" the British came in with their gunboat and thousands of crown forces, blew Dublin to smithereens, arrested thousands of native Irish freedom fighters and interned them in Ireland and Frongoch in Wales and put an end, or so they thought, to the Irish right to self-determination.
Throughout the following month, May 1916, the British marched all the leaders out to the courtyard of Kilmainham jail in Dublin and executed them. The barbarity of the British was most poignantly shown when they executed the great James Connolly, that 'hero of the working man', in a wheelchair. Savages.
The mood of the Irish changed rapidly as a direct result of the executions and in the following election in 1918 Sinn Féin won a landslide victory, winning 73 out of the 105 seats on the island despite the fact that the constituencies were gerrymandered to strengthen the British loyalist vote.
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Edited by RobertEmmet at 04/09/2007 8:41 AM
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Re: Easter Rising, Dublin, 1916
Mar 29, 2005 8:44 AM
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And on this day, Easter Tuesday 1916, James Joyce's friend and rival, the feminist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, was arrested by the British crown forces of occupation, before being executed by a mentally deranged British soldier.
"Arrested on Easter Tuesday, 1916, and Shot without trial at Portobello Barracks, April 26th.
One of the most senseless tragedies of the Easter Rebellion involved this well-known pacifist writer who took no part in the rising. An ardent supporter of women's rights and a bit of an 'eccentric', Skeffington was arrested along with two other civilians, taken to Portobello Barracks and shortly thereafter shot by firing squad. The orders were given by a mentally unstable British officer, Captain Bowen-Colthurst, who was carrying on his own private campaign against the 'Sinn Feiners'. At first the British tried to cover up Colthurst's actions but continued protests led to his formal court-martial on June 6th. He was found guilty but insane and incarcerated in Broadmoor Criminal Asylum. Colthurst spent 20 months there, then emigrated to Canada to retire on a military pension."
http://www.islandireland.com/Pages/history/archives/postcards/easter5.html
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Re: Easter Rising, Dublin, 1916
Mar 30, 2005 3:19 PM
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Easter 1916 (W.B. Yeats)
I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
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Re: Easter Rising, Dublin, 1916
Apr 1, 2005 11:56 AM
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The following article was in last Monday's Irish Times, the anniversary of the start of the Easter Rising.
The Cockneys and Scousers who fought for Ireland in 1916
Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)
March 28, 2005
Up to half those involved in the initial attack on the GPO in Easter 1916 were from England and Scotland, writes Brian Dooley.
The usual commemorations marking the 1916 Rising are happening throughout the country this weekend. In dozens of towns and villages local heroes who fought in Easter Week will be eulogised, a piece of the legacy claimed for the parish. Small communities and neighbourhoods everywhere in Ireland will celebrate the memories of those who risked their lives for the nation.
But a close look at the historical record suggests that many of those in the GPO that Easter Monday were not born anywhere in Ireland at all. By piecing together first-hand accounts of the initial attack on the GPO, it appears that up to half of those involved were from England and Scotland.
Apart from the famous second generation Irish figures such as James Connolly (from Edinburgh) and Tom Clarke (Isle of Wight), there were scores of ordinary Volunteers from units in London, Glasgow, Manchester and elsewhere who had slipped across to Ireland from Christmas 1915 to take part in the coming insurrection.
Some of these, like Michael Collins, were Irish-born exiles who happened to have been living in England or Scotland and returned for the fight, but there were many Cockneys and Scousers who had never before set foot in Ireland and only arrived in the spring of 1916 to take part in the Rising.
The number of those who were actually in the GPO during the first hour of the Rising was around 160, although many more would later claim to have been there at the very start.
Many more joined as the day wore on and word spread of the action, but the nucleus that made the initial assault included 60 or so men who had been preparing at a secret camp in Kimmage.
These were volunteers from units in England and Scotland, and included characters such as Londoner Johnny O'Connor, known as "Blimey" because of his thick Cockney accent. "Blimey" had drilled with other second and third generation Irish volunteers like Joe Good, Liam Daley and the teenage brothers from Brixton, Sean and Ernie Nunan. At Kimmage he met the King brothers and Art Agnew from Liverpool, Paddy Moran and Seamus Reader from Glasgow, and many others.
These men ran an additional risk to their Irish-based comrades. If arrested, they could be prosecuted under the 1915 Military Service Act.
Having lived in England and Scotland in 1915, they were liable for conscription and could be press-ganged into the British army.
In the GPO they were joined by Cockney volunteers Desmond Ryan and Desmond Fitzgerald, and John Neale of the Irish Citizen Army, while Glaswegian Margaret Skinnider shuttled to St Stephen's Green on her bike, carrying message to the London-born Constance Markievicz.
When "Blimey" O'Connor and Liam Daley, both London electricians, rushed across O'Connell Street to try and set up a radio antenna in the wireless school opposite the GPO, their Irish-born comrades would not let them in.
"When the volunteer on duty heard our Cockney accents he refused to admit us," recounted O'Connor, and for a while the two men from London were left banging on the door, dangerously exposed outside on the pavement.
The discovery that these second and third generation figures - the original "Plastic Paddies" - were key to Easter Week comes as a surprise to many Irish people, and the English-accented volunteers rarely feature in accounts of the Rising or the following war for independence.
Remember the famous scene in the film Michael Collins, when Collins daringly breaks into police headquarters, locks himself in and spends the whole night on his own reading the intelligence files? Truth is, young Sean Nunan was with him all the time, but there is no room for the Londoner in the film version.
Nunan and the others have been largely airbrushed out of the Rising. There will be no commemoration at the Nunan homestead in Brixton this weekend, no colour party parade outside O'Connor's birthplace to keep his memory alive in south London. Their story is a secret history, hidden by simplistic accounts of Easter Week, where the good guys spoke with Irish accents and the baddies didn't.
Brian Dooley is author of Choosing the Green? Second Generation Irish and the Cause of Ireland (Beyond the Pale, www.btpale.com)
Source:
http://tinyurl.com/6rred
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Apr 1, 2005 6:32 PM
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When our great-grandfathers were being slaughtered in their droves on the western front, maybe Sinn Fein could have picked a more appropriate moment to rebel?
I thought that the Germans were more powerful at that time, and somebody once told me that most Irish people were upset about such opportunism?
You know better though, I'm sure!
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Apr 1, 2005 7:42 PM
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Explain Yeats's words for us English simpletons.
I'm open-minded. It's either a bunch of twaddle or very meaningful! 
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Apr 1, 2005 7:59 PM
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you're starting to see that ideas, racism and bigotry can cross borders!
Kindness and friendship work better though 
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Ya know mike, with all these second generation fighters
Apr 1, 2005 10:32 PM
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did it ever enter their head that the parents might have moved to the UK in search of a better life.
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Apr 12, 2005 9:11 PM
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Dunlavin Green*
In the year of our Lord, seventeen hundred and ninety-eight
A sorrowful tale occurred that I'll now relate
Of thirty-six heroes, whose valor the world has seen
And by false information, were shot on Dunlavin Green
Bad luck to you, Saunders**, for you did our lives betray
You said a parade would be held on that very day
Our drums they did rattle, our pipes played so merrily
Till you gave the order, and surrounded by soldiers were we.
Your hirelings then marched us as prisoners to the town
To the field of the slaughter, and 'twas there we were forced to kneel down
Such grief and lamenting as on that day have never been seen
As the blood ran in rivers down the sides of Dunlavin Green.
There was bold Matty Farrell, who never was heard to complain
And the two Duffy brothers, who shared all their sorrow and pain
And young Andy Ryan, whose mother distracted will run
As she grieves till the last for the loss of her only son
Now some of the lads to the mountains were forced to flee
And you hunted them down from there to the shore of the sea
But beware of Mick Dwyer - his vengeance on you will be keen
For his two younger brothers you had shot on Dunlavin Green
[or: For those comrades of his you had shot on Dunlavin Green]
[or: For his brothers in arms you had...]
Bad luck to you, Saunders - bad luck may you never shun!
May the widow's curse melt you like snow melting in the sun
May the cries of the orphans, the old men, and all between
Pursue you till death in revenge for Dunlavin Green
alt last 2 lines:
There's no water on earth that can ever wash your hands clean
Of the blood of those heroes who died on Dunlavin Green
* This is one of the few songs which were actually written in 1798 itself.
** In Dunlavin, Co Wicklow on the 24th May, Captain Morley Saunders marched 36 prisoners, among them 28 yeoman suspected of having sympathies towards the United Irishmen, from the jail to the village green. They were executed on the spot.
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Apr 18, 2005 7:23 PM
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you tend to forget some other massacres that happened in 1798.
You call yourself a historian, but can you really be a historian when you start from a one sided view and then try to prove it?
That sounds like a politician to me!
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The British Empire, and the rights of small nations
Apr 19, 2005 7:39 AM
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M
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Apr 19, 2005 7:41 AM
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PS: Other massacres have not inspired one of the most poignant ballads ever written, a song which I was listening to while writing. Even the song about the British massacre under General Lake in June 1798 of thousands of Irish women and children on Vinegar Hill (they attacked the camp but all the men had escaped to the mountains so they slaughtered all who remained) in Wexford has not got the same historic resonance
(Boolavogue, the most famous song of very many about Vinegar Hill, was written almost 100 years later)
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Apr 19, 2005 7:44 AM
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But here is a far less known contemporary song about Father Murphy, who was executed for his part in Vinegar Hill, which was written within two years of the massacre itself, and upon which the famous Boolavogue was based:
FATHER MURPHY
Come all you warriors and renowned nobles
Who once commanded brave warlike bands
Lay down your plumes and your golden trophies
Give up your arms with a trembling hand
Since Father Murphy, of the county Wexford,
Lately aroused from his sleepy dream,
To cut down cruel Saxon persecution
And wash it away in a crimson stream.
Sure Julius Caesar nor Alexander
Nor brave King Arthur ever equalled him
For armies formidable he did oppose them,
Though with two pikemen he did begin.
The Camolin cavalry he did unhorse them,
Their first lieutenant he cut him down,
With broken ranks, and with shattered columns,
They soon returned to Camolin town,
On the hill of Oulart he displayed his valour,
Where a hundred Corkmen lay on the plain
And at Enniscorthy his sword he wielded
And I hope to see him once more again,
The loyal townsmen gave their assistance
"We'll die or conquer", they all did say,
The yeomen cavalry made no resistance,
For on the pavement their bodies lay,
When Enniscorthy became subject unto us,
'Twas next to Wexford we marched our men,
And on the Three Rock we took up our quarters,
Waiting for daylight the town to win.
With drums a-beating the town did echo,
And acclamations came from door to door;
On the Windmill Hill we pitched our tents,
And we drank like heroes, but paid no score.
On Carraig Rua for some time we waited,
And next to Gorey we did repair,
At Tubberneering we thought no harm,
The bloody army, it was waiting there,
The issue of it was a close engagement,
While on the soldiers we played warlike pranks;
Through sheepwalks, hedgerows and shady thickets,
There were mangled bodies and broken ranks,
The shuddering cavalry I can't forget them;
We raised the brushes on their helmets straight -
They turned about, and they bade for Dublin,
As if they ran for a ten-pound plate.
Well, some crossed Donnybrook and more through Blackrock
And some up Shankill without wound or flaw
And if Barry Lawless be not a liar
There's more went grousing up Luggelaw.
With flying colours we marched on to Limerick,
And to Kilcavan we did repair;
'Twas on Mount-pleasant we called the county,
And pointed cannon at the army there.
When we thought fit we marched on to Gorey;
The next was Arklow we did surround.
The night being coming, we regretted sorely,
Tho' one hundred soldiers lay on the ground.
The towns of England were left quite naked
Of all its armies, both foot and horse
The Highlands of Scotland were left unguarded
Likewise the Hessians the seas they crossed.
To the Windmill Hill of Enniscorthy,
The British Fencibles they fled like deer;
But our ranks were tattered, and sorely scattered,
By the loss of Kyan and his Shelmaliers.
But if the Frenchmen had reinforced us,
And landed transports in Bagenbun,
Father John Murphy would be their seconder,
And sixteen thousand with him would come.
Success attend you, sweet County Wexford
Threw off the yoke and to battle run;
Let them not think we gave up our arms
For every man has a pike and gun.
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Apr 19, 2005 7:49 AM
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Assuming it did not happen on a place called Vinegar Hill, does anybody know why the convict rebellion outside Sydney, Australia in 1804 is also given the name Vinegar Hill?
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Re: Easter Rising, Dublin, 1916
Apr 19, 2005 10:03 AM
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The plotters accepted weapons from Germany therefore they were at war with the British State currently fighting for its own and Frances survival on the Western front.
You couldn't have expected any better, some 450 dead. Small beans compared to Germanys other atempts to meddle its way out of defeat by packing Lenin off in a train to kick start 70 years of oppression in the Russian Empire.
Robert Emmett is justly proud of his nation's perseverance against heavy odds. But we in this island are still prouder of our people's perseverance for freedom 24 years later. We have pledged our selves to the dead generations who have preserved intact for us this glorious heritage, that we, too, will strive to be faithful to the end, and pass on this tradition unblemished.
H-I-S-T-O-R-Y History Robert wake up the nightmares over.
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