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Patrick Henry Pearse

1879–1916

 

The leading inspiration of the Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland, Patrick Henry Pearse might seem to have been named for the American patriot Patrick Henry, whose battle cry was 'Give me liberty, or give me death'.  But Pearse was, in fact, named after an uncle.  Nothing was quite what it seemed in the life and career of Patrick Pearse.

      Surprisingly for an Irish patriot, his father was an Englishman, a monumental sculptor who worked widely on the many Catholic churches which were erected around Dublin in the second half of the nineteenth century.  His work, once neglected, is now much admired by art historians.  Pearse's mother was Irish, however, and her family connections were an important influence on the growing boy.

      He was born in Dublin at 27 Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street) - the name of the street was itself a constant reminder of the British royal family to Dubliners.  He was educated nearby at the Christian Brothers school in Westland Row and attended University College, then part of the Royal University of Ireland, and was called to the Irish bar as a barrister in 1901.  But the law was not his main interest in life.

      From 1895 he was an active member of the Gaelic League, an organization founded to revive the use of the old native language as the everyday tongue of the people of Ireland.  Though supposedly nonpolitical, it was distinctly nationalist in outlook and Pearse was the editor of its influential weekly paper.  He taught Irish in classes organized by the league, and one of his pupils, for a very short time, was the writer JAMES JOYCE [25].  Joyce thought Pearse's remarks on the infelicities of the English language were merely silly, so he gave up the course.  But many others were to find the mesmeric Pearse an inspiring figure.

      To further his educational ambitions for Ireland, in 1908 Pearse founded St Enda's, a Gaelic-speaking school which later moved to much larger premises in a mansion at Rathfarnham, in 1910.  The school was patronized by many advanced and liberal-minded parents, and included many distinguished people among its staff, such as the poet Thomas MacDonagh.

      In 1913 Pearse joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the underground movement that aimed to establish a republic in Ireland.  He was soon co-opted into the inner circle of the Supreme Council.  The IRB, which traced its origins back to the Fenians of the 1860s, was widely supported by Irish Americans and was a secret organization.  Pearse was also on the central committee of the Irish Volunteers, an open organization which had been set up by Professor Eoin MacNeill to counter the Ulster Volunteers, who had been set up to resist the Home Rule Bill then passing through the British Parliament in the years 1913 to 1914.  The Ulster Volunteers imported some thirty thousand rifles from Germany.  When the Irish Volunteers imported 1,500, the incident led to shootings on the streets in Dublin, at Bachelor's Walk, an incident which was later to be seen as the first bloodletting of the troubles.

      Pearse was largely responsible for organizing the funeral of the old Fenian revolutionary O'Donovan Rossa in 1915, who had died in exile in America.  Rossa had been responsible for an active bombing campaign against English cities in the 1880s, and was a great hero to many Irish republicans.  Rossa's belief that only physical force could drive the British out of Ireland was not, however, shared widely by all the population who supported the Irish party.  But this funeral was to be a symbolic occasion.  In his oration at the grave, Pearse claimed that 'Ireland unfree will never be at peace'.  It was a warning of what was to come.

      With the outbreak of the First World War, the Irish Volunteers split.  The vast majority went to fight with the Irish and British regiments on the western front, though a small number were determined to seize the opportunity for another insurrection.  Pearse and his IRB friends planned to have the rising on Easter week, making use of the general mobilization of the Irish Volunteers, which was supposed to be a mere exercise.  When he heard of these plans, Prof. MacNeill, the actual leader of the Irish Volunteers, tried to prevent the mobilization.  Only a tiny fraction of the original one hundred thousand volunteers turned out in support of the rising.

      During Easter week he was commander in chief of the Irish army, president of the republic, and one of those who signed the proclamation.  But the uprising failed from lack of widespread support among the people and its own military ineptitude.  The leaders were court-martialled and sentenced to death.

      Pearse bravely faced execution.  In death, his influence would be far more profound than it had been in life.  He remains for Irish nationalists of all kinds a central figure of history.  His ideas about the Irish language and the sources of Irish nationality are still those of many, but the growth of Ireland since 1922 has been away from his core beliefs.  His ideas of heroic blood sacrifice have been much criticized by revisionist historians and theologians, who see them as both mad and heretical.  But these comments have not shaken his many admirers.  Even today, Pearse remains for Irish people a controversial figure, capable of arousing fierce emotional debate.

      Pearse was also a poet and a teacher.  These sides of his personality are attractive in ways that the belligerent comic-opera figure of the uprising is not.  His ideas about education, through child-centred teaching, remain very potent.  Perhaps the real Pearse was not the militant, but the sensitive poet and dedicated teacher.  To later generations, these aspects of his life may well seem to represent the real importance of Patrick Pearse.