Sacred Ireland by Jon Michael Riley Ireland1 | Page 32

The Sacred Patriots S Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. The 1916 monument and sculpture by Dora Sigerson Shorter entitled “The Sacred Fire.” This is an Irish Republican Pieta, with a dying freedom fighter in the arms of a woman symbolising Irish Freedom and Independence from English colonial rule. Opposite: Patrick Pearse’s cottage in Rosmuc, County Galway. Pearse was the principal author of the 1916 Irish Proclamation. 32 overeignty. The Irish waited almost 800 years for this one thing. And in the waiting, the idea of it attained sacred proportions to the extent that both men and women would gladly die for its cause. Sovereignty and freedom to be who they really were: Irish. Few true Irish can become good, proper Englishmen, which is what the colonizers wanted above everything else. But that was not to be, no matter how the Irish were bullied, cajoled, tortured, paid off, bought for land, peerage or membership in a club. Several times each century, a hopeful group, sometimes just an individual or two, would rise up and say no, we want our country back. They were crushed by some informer’s slip of the tongue or else by the might of the Empire. But in 1916 so many long sought after ideas and good people coalesced enough to rise up and get the world’s attention for about six days. Patrick Pearse read the Irish Proclamation from the steps of the General Post Office, the GPO, to a sparse audience of startled passersby. Copies of the Proclamation were put up all over the city to be read by citizens who suspected it was folly or else were simply disinterested or afraid. Pearse and many others were also crushed. They, the signers of the Proclamation, as well as eight other leaders, were taken into an enclosed yard at Kilmainham jail at dawn and shot. The rank and file of the rest of the Patriots were shipped off to grim prisons in Wales. When the public became aware of the summary executions of the leaders and saw for themselves the destruction of Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street) caused by British canons, they had a significant change of heart. Citizens soon became aware that the leaders knew they were a blood sacrifice, that in their martyrdom, a powerful movement would arise and with it, another set of patriot heroes. Michael Collins, Constance Markievicz and Eamon deValera, among others, would step into the shoes left by the 1916 Easter Rising leaders. It is no surprise that these early 20th century leaders would become part of a sacred story, that of the final surge towards Irish Freedom. Consequently, places like Pearse’s cottage in the remote Conn