Easter Rising Culleton Magazine

8/13/2019 Easter Rising Culleton Magazine

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EASTER RISING


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A H O L E I N H I S T O R Y

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THE IRISH OPPOSE

IN A LAND CALLED

AND WHAT ROUGHBEAST . . . SLOUCH

ART OF THE MYTH

A MAGAZINE BY ZACH

How do you imagine a rebellion? Is itas we read in books, such as Katniss overtakeof a totalitarian power in The Hunger Games ?Maybe the American Revolution offers a more

grounded depiction of rebellion. Is there such animage as the ideal rebellion? If so, it does not line up to the eventsof Irelands 1916 Easter Rising. On Easter Monday I got up andwent to the races at Fairyhouse, said JamesOConner, witness to the Rising. While atthe Races I heard that the Rising had startedin Dublin. It was the general talk at the Racesthat evening. I came home on Tuesday, bringingmy shotgun and cartridges, I joined the Battn(Luddy 10). It was a Monday like any other, untilgrenades and mortar broke the morning silence. Central Dublin was shook to its knees,

the General Post Of ce bombarded by Britishshells, Irish volunteers shoddily armed inside,ring at the massive, encroaching gigas called

the British Army. Of the 20,000, its estimated106 British troops fell compared to only 62 de-fending rebels. Through violence, the Irish sought tooppose Home Rule and their perceived histori-cal oppressors, and through violence the Britishresponded. Sixteen leaders of the Rising wereswiftly executed. Mothers and wives, distraught

by the rubble and blood owing at their feet,shouted to Bayonet them! as the Risings lead-ers were rst hauled off. Now the same people

were in shock of swift British justice. This ambivalence has de ned EasterRisings legacy throughout the decades. On thewhole, many Irish do not openly celebrate EasterRising on its anniversary. In private, they tell themedia it was a precursor to Irish liberation and asource of national pride. If the Germans had successfully armedthe Irish volunteers, would the Rising have suc-ceeded? If the British had imprisoned instead ofmartyred James Connolly and Patrick Pearse,would Britain have proven itself too benevolentfor the title of imperial oppressor? Why didIreland not rise as a nation during the rebellion,isolating the con ict to Dublin? The ifs are

just as important as the facts in determing justwent went wrong with Easter Rising. The roots of the Rising hint at an or-ganization and purpose. In the midst of the rst

World War, Ireland was still seeking its inde- pendance. Quasi-freedom was being pushedthrough legal channels in the form of HomeRule. If Home Rule passed, it meant the submis-sion of Northern Ireland to complete angliciza -tion, as Irish Republicans feared. Even if the British were not oppres-sive under these terms, many Irish felt that fullautonomy was the only reasonable solution tocenturies of British subjugation. The British were deaf to these sen-timents. To them, the rebels voice was out oftouch and void of in uence. They never antici -

pated the Rising. They were half r ight. Without

in uence, the rebels felt their only option was physical force. Poets such as W.B. Yeats were criticalof Irish apathy and indifference toward culturaldevelopment. Prior to the rising, in his poemSeptember 1913 , he wrote in pained language:They were of a different kind,The names that stilled your childish play,They have gone about the world like wind,

But little time had they to pray For who the hangmans rope was spun, And what, God help us, could they save? Romantic Irelands dead and gone, Its with OLeary in the grave.

A call for change was evident amongthe Irish educated. The question is, how justi edwas change through violence? And how did it

portray Irish ambitions to the rest of the world? In dealing with the aftermath of EasterRising, British authorities struggled to identifywith the Irish need for an uprising. Brig Maconchy, a British of cer:

When called on for their defence they [the rebels] generally only convicted themselves out oftheir own mouths, and in many cases I refusedto put down what they said as it only made theircase worse. During the trial of one of the ring-leaders, his whole attitude seemed so strange to

me that I asked him if he would mind telling mequite apart from his trial what he was ghtingfor. He drew himself up and said: I was ghtingto defend the rights of the people of Ireland.

I then asked him if anyone was attacking theserights and he said: No, but they might have

been (Maconchy 456). The inconclusive reality of Easter Ris-ing is a story of cultures and ideas overlappingendlessly, hundreds of years deep. It challengesthe ideal of a universal truth, one that can be putinto textbooks and taught to British and Irishchildren identical. It exists in the fold of twoages, in wrinkled and waterstained ink. The inkdrips. It smears and slouches and holds no order.

Works Cited: Luddy, Maria. Ireland Rising. History Today 1Sept. 2012: 10-11. Print.

Maconchy, Brig. Unpublished Memoirs of Brig E.W.S.K. Maconchy .London: British Army Museum, 1920. Print.

Tuma, Keith. William Butler Yeats. Anthology of Twentieth-CenturyBritish & Irish Poetry . New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. 34.

Print.


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Patrick Pearse (middle) was in many ways thecharisma and spirit behind the Easter Rising op-eration. His father was a self-educated sculptor.Pearse, appearing unhinged in his early years,could be seen as an extension of his fathers self-determination.

On his day of execution, he wrote to his motherThis is the death I should have asked for if Godhad given me the choice of all deaths (PatrickPearse 1879-1916).

Pearse tried and failed toward many endeavorsthroughout his lifetime, insisting his efforts would

pay off in the end. Biographers such asRuth Edwards looked on from the outside atthis ambitious, troubled gure, noting an inabil -ity to combine pragmatism with idealism, all inthe name of securing and cultivating an identityas an Irishman (Murphy 2103). His reading ofthe Easter Day Proclamation was one of the only

public acts with which he could claim a higher purpose was realized, manifest to reality on theworld stage.

Works Cited: Murphy, Cullen. Patrick Pearse (Book Review). Library Journal 103.18 (1978): 2103. Academic Search Complete. Web. 28 Nov. 2013.Patrick Pearse 1879-1916. BBC News. BBC, n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2013.The Executed Leaders of the 1916 Rising. Roinn an Taoisigh.

Department of Taoiseach, 2013. Web. 28 Nov. 2013.

James Connolly (left) was born in Edinburgh,to poverty, rough labor, and the hardships of co-lonialism in the industrial age. He opposed theforces of poverty fate had dealt him, committinghis life to change, seeing that change possibleonly through reorganized social structure (JamesConnolly 1868-1916). He associated himselfstrongly with labor unionists such as James Lar-kin.

Decolonization de ned Connolly. For every bene ciary of Irish anglicization, Connolly hadwords and examples illustrating the dire state of human dignity under deference to British policy.

Autonomy of spirit was the simple-on-paper andcompicated-to-achieve goal of the Irish impov-erished. Connollys choice of freedom throughforce seems to run against the even-minded, ac-tion-oriented man, who had a talent for strategy.

His execution was the only carried out tied to achair, due to an injury suffered at the Rising.

Works Cited: James Connolly 1868-1916. BBC News. BBC, n.d. Web. 28Nov. 2013.

Joseph Plunkett (right) lived out life through hiswriting and games of the mind. He found relief ineducation between lifelong treatments for tuber-culosis, which often left him bedridden.

Plunkett aided in setting up an Irish Nationaltheater, a forerunner of the Irish Literary Revival,and he attempted to bring teeth the Rising in theform of German arms (Joseph Mary Plunkett1887-1916).

He carried out many operations in the back-ground, until Easter when he fought in the Ris-ing itself, though his participation was limited

because of his deteriorating health.

While awaiting execution, the British of cerLenin running the prison allowed Plunkett to bemarried to Grace Gifford, his longtime ance.Lenin may have been sympathetic to Plunkettscircumstance, or he may have allowed the mar-riage to spare Gifford from religious-based il-legitimacy laws, if Gifford was indeed pregnant(1916 Easter Uprising: The True Story).

Works Cited: 1916 Easter Uprising: The True Story.1916 Easter Uprising: The True Story . TG4. Ireland, n.d. Television.Easter 1916 | Joseph Mary Plunkett. Easter 1916. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2013.

SEVEN.

Seven signatures greeted Dubliners on Easter Monday, declaring Ireland a free state under the Provisional Government of the Irish Re-public. 150 men assembled outside Liberty Hall. At 11:58 AM, Patrick Pearse, James Connelly, and Joseph Plunkett led the defenders of a new Irishstate across Abbey Street. They claimed the General Post Office as a military hub, in anticipation of British retaliation (1916 Easter Uprising: The TruStory). In many ways it was the moment Thomas Clarke had envisioned for decades, who had served 15 years for London bombings carried out inhis youth. He was the rst signatory, the most senior member, and a relic of Irish opposition to British rule. His rationale for independence throughviolence had not wavered. To him and other members, there was no justifying a British presence in Ireland (The Executed Leaders of the 1916 Ris-ing). The British were taken by surprise at rst but quickly recovered. It was immediately apparent that the rest of Ireland would not join therebel cause. The volunteers were not deterred, but their rst major blow was the injury and quarantine of James Connelly, a key military strategist.Another surprise, the British began ring artillery shells and tossing grenades indiscriminately, tearing away Central Dublin from the top down. On Saturday, the leaders evacuated the GPO and agreed to surrender, save for Thomas Clarke. His dissent was overruled, and nally theformer prisoner and Irish devout had his legacy put to an end - until he and his revolutionary friends were executed.

THE IRISH OPPOSERS


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IN A LAND

CALLED ULSTERUlster constitutes the northernmost region of Ireland, where Christianity rst entered and tranformed much of the people. Churches andshrines across the land were morphed and adapted from pagan to Christian places of worship. Churches nearly always recycled old, pre-Christian ideas to serve their new faith (Markus 19).

Much of the Irish revivals roots stemmed from a renewed interest in Irish history and mythology. Why? Populations often look to the pasfor answers in times of moral and economic uncertainty. The interest in Irish past suggested an incipient rejection of the modern world,or of capitalism or of some other perceived conventionalism, and it indicates a desire to nd a more agreeable way of life (Sayers 273).Works Cited: Markus, Gilbert. Rooted In The Tradition.Chris an History 17.4 (1998): 19. Academic Search

Complete . Web. 28 Nov. 2013.

Also known as The Madness of Suibhne, this Irish folktale followsthe mad King Sweeney across Ireland, a king suffering from aterrible curse.

Sweeneys kingdom is nestled between the border of what isnow counties Down and Antrim. The action begins during thehistorical Battle of Moira in 637 AD. St Rnan is a major Christianinuence in Ireland and Sweeney, a king of pagan faith, is sen-tenced to live life as a half-man, half-bird after angering Rnanon the battleeld.

In his lost journies, Sweeney shifts between praising the beautyof nature around him and agonizing over his loneliness. His bestfriend cannot approach him in his maddened state. PursuingSweeney across Ireland throughout the story, he wishes to curehis friends curse (The Book of Irish Writers).

You are not cruel, O alder. Cold wind, icy wind,Delightfully you gleam, Faint shadow of a feeble sun...

Blackthorn, little thorny one, Enduring the rain-storm,Dark provider of sloes. Stepping along deer-paths,Watercress, little green-topped one, Slouching through greenswardFrom the stream where blackbirds drink. On a day of grey frost.

Works Cited: The Book of Irish Writers: Chapter 5: Sweeneys Frenzy.BBC News . BBC, n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2013.

THE FRENZY OF SWEENEY

Sayers, Stephen. Irish Myth And Irish National Consciousness. Irish Studies Review 12.3 (2004): 271- 281. Academic Search Complete . Web. 28 Nov. 2013.


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AND WHAT ROUGHBEAST. . . SLOUCHES

W.B. YEATSIRISH POET

What does it mean to be Irish and edu-cated? W.B. Yeats portrays Irish disappointmentfrom the view of a wandering falcon, embodyinganother piece of the Irish which cannot manageto form a whole. North and South Ireland cannot forma whole. Irish Catholics and Protestants cannotform a whole. The British and Irish certainly can-not form a whole. Not even literary circles seemto converge, Yeats being left out entirely fromparticipation in the Rising. Yeats spent a lifetime writing aboutthe missing piece in an Irish national identity.Like many Irish authors, he was not sure how toinspire his people to action. It could only trans-late into poetic frustration, betrayed by his ownexpectations and born from a love of the distantpast. Yeats contemplated the Rising atlength. He did not jump straight to the sup-port of nationalist sentiment, as a famined artistmight be expected to do. Instead his words ech-oed wasteful sacrice that was tragic, poten-tially foolish, but perhaps necessary (Riede 403).He compares Irish revival to a rose tree, planteddirectly in front of its people:

O Words are lightly spoken,Said Pearse to Connolly,Maybe a breath of politic wordsHas withered our Rose Tree;Or maybe but a wind that blowsAcross the bitter sea.It needs to be but watered,James Connolly replied,To make the green come out againAnd spread on every side,And shake the blossom from the bud To be the gardens pride.

But where can we draw water,Said Pearse to Connolly,When all the wells are parched away?O plain as plain can be Theres nothing but our own red bloodCan make a right rose tree.

The Rose Tree - 1921

An ideal past, the rose tree, is withered.No wells hold water to bring it back, perhaps nomiddle class or independent structure in Irish so-ciety. The only thing left to make the roses red isthe blood of Pearse and Connolly, and the rest ofthe Risings dead. It could have easily turned into anempty sacrice, if the leaders had perhaps beendrafted into the World War I effort. The British hadoptions before them and chose to shed blood forblood. It is certainly not surpising, even logical insome lights, that loyalist blood was exchangedfor the dozens of British slain during the Rising. Yeats never worked through the ifs, in-stead he offered limited honor and another sighin the silence following the ring squads cough.

A terrible beauty is born.

To sum up his feelings in the concisemanner of a poet, Yeats wrote these words tonalize the 20th century Irish legacy. The result,a tragic and thrashing narrative of cultural frus-tration, punctuated by momentous pitfalls: theDublin Lockout, the Rising, a culture of confu-sion. In the twilight of steel and smoke, and inthe shadow of red Britain, Yeats characterizes theIrish reality:

Hearts with one purpose alone

Through summer and winter seemEnchanted to a stone To trouble the living stream. The horse that comes from the road, The rider, the birds that rangeFrom cloud to tumbling cloud,Minute by minute they change;A shadow of cloud on the streamChanges 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 stones in the midst of all.

Easter, 1916 - 1916

Ireland - a stone in a world owing as a rivstays an accessory to industry. Writers around world characterized industrial violence as a pallel to Irelands chaos and lack of identity. Hingway and Wilfred Owen were hard at work sassembling the rough beast of globalized w Yeats believed World War I was a sigthe Second Birth, the beginning a violent, besanti-civilization (Unterecker 165). He turnedmysticism in his old age, dying in a time unfaiar with his origin and purpose.

A few thousand will think of this dayAs one thinks of a day when one did somethslightly unusual.

In Memory of W.B. Yeats W.H. Auden, 1939Works Cited: Riede, Austin. W.B. Yeatss Economies Of Sacrice: W Rebellion, And Wasteful Virtue.Irish Studies Review 19.4 (2011): 411. Academic Search Complete. Web. 28 Nov. 2013Unterecker, John. A Readers Guide to William Butler Yeats . London Thames, 1959.

TURNING AND TURNING IN THE WIDENI THE FALCON CANNOT HEAR THE FAL

THINGS FALL APART; THE CENTRE CANNTHE SECOND COMING


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The Garden of Remembrance is amemorial garden in Dublin. It hon-ors Irish men and women who gavetheir lives for universal freedom. This statue depicts the Irish folktale,Children of Lir .

OISN KELLY


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O swans, my brothers, I am thinking ofbeauty, and we are ying away from it forever.

The Children of Lir are children turnedswans, cursed to oat atop the Western Seafor 300 years by their vengeful stepmother.

The carefree rhythm and language of thetale hints at an Ireland pre-occupied withRomanticism and natural beauty.

They say to their distraught father, learningof his childrens curse and exile:

May good fortune be on the threshold ofyour door from this time and for ever, butwe cannot cross it, for we have the heartsof wild swans and we must y in the duskand feel the water moving under our bod-ies; we must hear the lonesome cries ofthe night. We have the voices only of thechildren you knew; we have the songs youtaught us--that is all.

Myths and folktales such as these gave sub-stance to the Irish literary revival, thoughthey were possibly altered through outtime, adjusted to suit Irelands conversionto Christianity, just like their pagan statues

chiseled into Saintly facades.

Swans are a uniquely British-Irish fascintion. Protected under law for ages, no onemay hunt or harm the creatures. They areconsidered the Queens property in Eng-land (We Eat Chickens, Ducks and Geesbut How Come Swans Evade Our DinnePlates?).

The Children of Lir are eventually releaseof their curse, but not before returning to ahopeless and ugly Ireland. Their exile waover, but they were greeted to nothing. There was no hope for them, not this time.

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The swans looked at the hills theyhad known, and every hill and moun-tain they could see was dark and sor-rowful: not one had a star-heart oflight, not one had a ame-crown, notone had music pulsing through it likea great breath.

What had happened to Ireland inthose 300 years? Christianity. Indus-try. The turbulence of rapid change.

Yeats looked to swans as living sym-bols of an eternal Irish spirit:

Their hearts have not grown old;Passion or conquest, wander wherethey will,Attend upon them still.

The Wild Swans at Coole - 1916

His use of the present tense insiststhe past is still in Ireland, just not inhuman form.

Both Easter 1916 and The WildSwans at Coole reference intervalsof time, by season. This echo is clear-est in the concluding lines of the rststanza, All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born (Fox 57).

Whatever legitimacy people mayor may not nd in Irelands nationalidentity, and whatever extent Britishinuence contributed, Easter 1916is a portrait of discontent nearly toobleak.

The Irish had access to schooling,protection from enemies, and eco-nomic benets from England. Theymay have had everything short of ab-solute self-governance.

A common Irish sentiment: The Brit-ish answer to no one, so why shouldwe answer to the British?

The question is hard to dismiss.

Works Cited: Fox, Linda L. Nine-And-Fifty As Symbol In Yeatss The Wild Swans At Coole.English La guage Notes 26.1 (1988): 54. Academic Search

Complete. Web. 29 Nov. 2013

Tuma, Keith. William Butler Yeats. Anthology ofTwentieth-Century British & Irish Poetry . New York:

Oxford University Press, 2001. 34. Print.

We Eat Chickens, Ducks and Geese, but How Come Swans Evade Our Dinner Plates? | Notes and

Queries | Guardian.co.uk. Guardian.co.uk. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Nov. 2013.

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