Patrick Pearse

Patrick Henry Pearse (known to Irish nationalists as Pádraig Pearse or by his Irish name Pádraic Anraí Mac Piarais) (10 November 1879 – 3 May 1916) was a teacher, poet, writer, nationalist and political activist who led the Irish Easter Rising in 1916 and was declared president of the Irish Republic (in name alone). Following the collapse of the Rising, Pearse — along with his brother and fourteen other leaders — was executed.

Radical nationalism

Patrick Henry Pearse was born in Dublin. His father, a Catholic convert, was from a Cornish nonconformist family and an artisan/stonemason, who held moderate home rule views and his mother, Margaret, was from an Irish-speaking family in County Meath. The Irish-speaking influence of his aunt Margaret 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 nGaeilge), 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 Cuchulainn, though in his 30s he began to take a strong interest in the leaders of past republican movements, such as Theobald Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet, both, ironically, Protestant skeptics; it was from these men that those such as the fervently Catholic Pearse drew inspiration for the rebellion of 1916. As Conor Cruise O'Brien wrote regarding Patrick Pearse, he (Pearse) viewed the Rising as "a Passion Play with real blood."

St Enda's

As a cultural nationalist educated by the nationalist, decidedly anti-British 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.

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 Volunteer Force. 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 Committee, the core group that began planning for a rising while the Great War 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."

Soon after, Pearse 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 Volunteers 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 Committee needed someone else to take the title of President of the Irish Republic and Commander-in-Chief. Pearse was chosen over Clarke, as Clarke was a convicted felon and eschewed any such role, while Pearse was respected throughout the country, and a natural leader.

When eventually the Easter Rising did erupt on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, having been delayed by one day due to fears that the plot had been uncovered, it was Pearse, as President, 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. 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.

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. Most of his ideas on education are contained in his famous essay "The Murder Machine: An Essay on Education". He also authored many essays on politics and language, notably "The Coming Revolution".

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 (as per Conor Cruise O'Brien) individual under ultra-religious influences. As Conor Cruise O'Brien put it in writing: Pearse saw the Rising as a Passion Play with real blood.

Others defended Pearse, as blaming 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 Belfast 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

Little is known about his private life, but there has been much speculation. Some of his poetry, and his apparent lack of any romantic involvement with women throughout his life, has led to presumptions that he was homosexual. Indeed, Sue Denham writing in The Times of London said that the evidence for this was "overwhelming" (see[[1]]).Some of his wriitings also indicate he may have been a paedophile as he describes "The kiss of a boy is as sweet as honey" in one of his poems.

However, no concrete proof for such conjecture exists -- unsurprising since a homosexual relationship in the increasingly integralist Roman Catholic Ireland of that time would not have been trumpeted -- beyond speculation taken from his works of fiction. There is no evidence that he ever had a sexual relationship with a man, while he had at least one friendship with a woman in his life that may have been a romantic one.

This article is licenced under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Patrick Pearse".