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Patrick Henry Pearse (known in the Irish language
as Pádraig Mac Piarais) (November 10, 1879 - May 3, 1916) was a teacher
and writer who led the Irish Easter Rising in 1916. Following the
collapse of the Rising, Pearse along with his brother and fourteen other leaders of it were executed.
Radical nationalism
Patrick Henry Pearse was born in Dublin. His father was an English
artisan/stonemason, who held moderate home rule views and his mother, Margaret,
was from an Irish-speaking family in County Meath. The Irish-speaking
influence of his aunt Margaret instilled in him an early love for the Irish language. At the age of only sixteen, he joined the
Gaelic League (Conradh na nGaeilge) in 1896, and soon became editor of its newspaper An Claidheamh Soluis
("The Sword of Light").
Pearse's earlier heroes were the ancient Gaelic folk heroes such as Cuchulainn, though over time he grew obsessed with the leaders of the previous centuries' republican movement,
such as Theobald Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet; it was these men he sought to emulate, leading to his own martyrdom.
St. Enda's
As a cultural nationalist, Pearse believed that language was intrinsic to the identity of a nation. Thus for him and other
language revivalists, saving the Irish language from extinction was a cultural priority of the utmost importance. The key to
saving the langauge, he felt, would be a sympathetic education system. To show the way, he started his own bilingual school,
St. Enda's School
(Scoil Eanna) in Ranelagh, Dublin in
1908. Here, the pupils were taught in both the Irish and English languages.
With the aid of Thomas MacDonagh and Pearse's younger brother
Willie, the school soon proved a successful experiment. Pearse's restless
idealism led him in search of an even more idyllic home for his school. He found it in the Hermitage, Rathfarnham, where he moved St. Enda's in 1910. However, the new
home, while splendidly located in an eighteenth century house surrounded by park and woodlands, soon proved a financial disaster.
It was partly the stresses and anxieties of constantly striving to save the school from bankruptcy that led Pearse to take a more
radical view of Irish politics following the failure of the Third Home Rule Bill in 1912.
The Volunteers, the IRB, and the Easter Rising
In 1913 Pearse was invited to the inaugural meeting of the Irish
Volunteers, formed to enforce the implementation of the Home Rule Act, which had just failed to pass the House of Lords at the third effort. Early in 1914, Pearse became a member of the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood(IRB), an offshoot of the Fenians dedicated to the overthrow of British rule in Ireland and its replacement with a republic. When he became
the Volunteers' Director of Military Organisation in 1914 he was the highest ranking Volunteer in the IRB membership, and
instrumental in the latter's commandeering of the Volunteers for the purpose of rebellion. By 1915 he was on the IRB's Supreme
Council, and its secret Military Committee, the core group that began planning for a rising while the Great War raged on the
European mainland.
Following a stirring speech he gave at the Funeral of the Fenian Jeremiah O'Donovan
Rossa on 1 August 1915, Pearse was chosen
by the leading IRB man Thomas Clarke
to be the spokesman for the Rising that he hoped would soon occur. When eventually the Rising did erupt on Easter Monday, 24 April, 1916, it was Pearse, as President, who
proclaimed a Republic from the steps of the General Post Office, headquarters of the
insurgents.
When, after four days fighting, it became apparent that victory was impossible, he surrendered, along with most of the other
leaders. Pearse and fourteen other leaders, including his brother Willie, were court-martialled and executed by
firing squad. Pearse himself was one of the first to be shot on 3 May, 1916.
Pearse's Writings
Pearse wrote stories and poems in both Irish and English, his best-known English poem being "The Wayfarer". He also penned
several allegorical plays in the Irish language, including The King, The Master, and The Singer. Most
of his ideas on education are contained in his famous essay "The Murder Machine: An Essay on Education". He also authored many
essays on politics and language, notably "The Coming Revolution".
Largely because of a series of political pamphlets Pearse wrote in the months leading up to the 1916 Rising, he soon became
recognised as the voice of the 1916 Rising. In the middle decades of the twentieth century, Pearse was idolised by Irish
nationalists as the supreme idealist of their cause. However, with the outbreak of conflict in Northern Ireland in 1969, Pearse soon became associated with
the campaign of terror being run by the Provisional IRA. Pearse's
reputation and writings wers subject to vigorous criticism by historians who saw him as a dangerous and fanatical influence.
Others defended Pearse, arguing that to blame him for all that was happening in Northern Ireland was unhistorical and a
distortion of the real spirit of his writings. Though the passion of those arguments has waned with the continuing peace in
Northern Ireland following the Good Friday Agreement in
1998, his complex personality still remains a subject of controversy for those who wish to
debate the evolving meaning of Irish nationalism.
His former school, St. Enda's, Rathfarnham, on the south side of Dublin, is now the Pearse Museum dedicated to his memory.
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