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| Children playing in a derelict site. Maguinness's court, off Townsend Street, Dublin, c. 1913 |
This is what Patrick Pearse testified in front of the British Martial Court during the trial, in the aftermath of the Dublin's Uprising, which had been taken place in the Irish capital few days ago. Pearse, the man who, on Easter Monday 24th of April 1916, read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic from outside the General Post Office in Dublin, was proved right. His sacrifice and that of the others who were executed lit the flame of Irish resistance to British rule, which ended with the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922.
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| Weekly Irish Times. May 1916 |
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| "We serve neither King nor Kaiser. BUT IRELAND". Irish Citizen Army Group. Liberty Hall, Dublin 1914 |
POBLACHT NA hEIREANN
THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC
TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND
IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and
of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of
nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes
for her freedom. Having organized and trained her manhood through her secret
revolutionary organization, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her
open military organizations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army,
having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the
right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and supported by her
exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the
first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory. We
declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to
the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible.
The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not
extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the
destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have
asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the
past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that
fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we
hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we
pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in arms to the cause of its
freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations. The Irish
Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman
and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights
and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue
the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing
all of the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences
carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from
the majority in the past. Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for
the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole
people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the
Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and
military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people. We place the cause of
the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we
invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonor
it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation
must, by its valor and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to
sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august
destiny to which it is called.
Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government:
THOMAS J. CLARKE, THOMAS MacDONAGH, SEAN Mac DIARMADA, EAMONN CEANNT
P. H. PEARSE, JOSEPH PLUNKETT, JAMES CONNOLLY
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| The sixteen leaders of the uprising who were executed in Kilmainham Gaol Dublin's Prison in May 1916 |
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| Kilmainham Gaol. Dublin, February 2013 |
But the bravest fell, and the requiem bell
rang mournfully and clear
For those who died that Eastertide in
the springing of the year
And the world did gaze, in deep amaze,
at those fearless men, but few
Who bore the fight that freedom’s light
might shine through the foggy dew...
"The Foggy Dew", Canon Charles O'Neill
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| Kilmainham Gaol. Dublin, February 2013 |
In memory of the Irishmen and women who took up the arms in Dublin on the Easter Monday of 1916 (24th April 1916). Defying the might of an Empire, they stood up with true rebellious spirit, for an Independent Ireland...
Tiocfaidh ár lá!
