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.
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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