The role of Michael Joseph O’Rahilly (also known as “The O’Rahilly”) in the Easter Rising of 1916, is not much talked about, and this, in my opinion, makes it all the more fascinating. Many would feel, that he has, in a sense, been ‘written out of history’.
O’Rahilly was a man who believed that the Irish people could not achieve independence of the British without confrontation in an armed struggle. It was for this reason that he joined played a large part in the foundation of the Irish Volunteers in 1913.
Interestingly, O’Rahilly refused to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) on the grounds that he could not join a secret society. He was a man of very strong principles, and felt that he could not keep an oath whereby he would have to withhold information from his wife, Nancy, which would be of ‘vital concern’ to both of them: ‘There is only one “secret society” I would advocate, and it would have only one rule; everyone in it must get a gun and learn to shoot.’.
Perhaps one of the reasons O’Rahilly’s story has, for the most part, gone untold, is because he ‘wouldn’t have suited either side’. By this it is meant, that clearly as a Republican, he wouldn’t suit the British’s telling of events, whilst, as he was against this particular strike at freedom, he didn’t particularly suit the Irish. This feeling of a ‘reluctant rebel’, is perhaps a good meter of how most people reacted to the Rising; whilst they were initially against the idea, once it had begun, they felt obliged to join in.
Our journey begins, with the, so-called “Castle Document”. This was a forged document, supposedly having been leaked from British Intelligence in Dublin Castle in an attempt to force Eoin Mac Neill and the Irish Volunteers to join the p...
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... his execution said: ‘I envy O’Rahilly: that is how I wanted to die.’. Ironically, even though O’Rahilly didn’t think they would last more than 36 hours, after 5 days, he never saw them surrender. As his death was diluted by the public outcry at the executions which followed, many began to question his right to have the title “The”. Those however, who knew him well, and who were involved at the time, knew better than to criticize him at all. In fact, Desmond FitzGerald later commissioned W.B. Yeats to write a poem about O’Rahilly, which he did. The following extract shows the much deserved respect which he had attained from the people of the time: ‘Sing of the O’Rahilly, do not deny his right; Sing a “the” before his name; allow that he despite all those learned historians, established it for good; He wrote out that word himself, he christened himself with blood.’
Included within the anthology The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction,1[1] are the works of great Irish authors written from around three hundred years ago, until as recently as the last decade. Since one might expect to find in an anthology such as this only expressions and interpretations of Irish or European places, events or peoples, some included material could be quite surprising in its contrasting content. One such inclusion comes from the novel Black Robe,2[2] by Irish-born author Brian Moore. Leaving Ireland as a young man afforded Moore a chance to see a great deal of the world and in reflection afforded him a great diversity of setting and theme in his writings. And while his Black Robe may express little of Ireland itself, it expresses much of Moore in his exploration into evolving concepts of morality, faith, righteousness and the ever-changing human heart.
Overall, the author showed us the courageous and coward s acts of O’Brien the character. The fact that he was a coward made him do a heroic act. O’Brien made the valiant decision to go to war. It would have been easier and cowardly to jump and swim away from all his fears. However he decided to turn back, and fight for something he did not believe in. Thinking about the consequences of running away makes him a hero. He went to war not because he wanted to fight for his country, but for his own freedom. Either choice he could have made would take some kind of courage to carry out. Going to war required some sort of fearlessness. In other words, running away from the law would have been brave; but going to war was even tougher.
The Irish usually tended to support the Democratic Party rather than support the Republican Party. Most Irish had little sympathy for slaves because they feared that if th...
Irish American Magazine, Aug.-Sept. 2009. Web. The Web. The Web. 06 May 2014.
Born in Brooklyn in 1930 to recent Irish immigrants Malachy and Angela McCourt, Frank grew up in Limerick after his parents returned to Ireland because of poor prospects in America. Due to the Great Depression, Malachy could not find work in America. However, things did not get any better back in Ireland for Malachy. A chronically unemployed and nearly unemployable alcoholic, he appears to be the model on which many of our more insulting cliches about drunken Irish manhood are based. Week after week, Angela would be home expecting her husband to come home with money to eat, but Malachy always spent his wages on pints at local pubs. Frank’s father would come home late at night and make his sons get out of bed and sing patriotic songs about Ireland by Roddy McCorley and Kevin Barry, who were hung for their country. Frank loved his father and got an empty feeling in his heart when he knew his father was out of work again. Frank described his father as the Holy Trinity because there is three people in him, “The one in the morning with the paper, the one at night with the stories and prayers, and then the one who does the bad thing and comes home with the smell of whiskey and wants us to die for Ireland” (McCourt 210). Even when there was a war going on and English agents were recruiting Irishmen to work in their munitions factories, Malachy could not keep a job when he traveled to England.
Civil War in Ireland in 1914 Introduction The third home rule bill sparked unionism among members. opposed the bill, which in turn brought about Nationalism who sought to protect the property of the owner. These two paramilitary groups brought Ireland to the brink of civil war by 1914. When the Liberals won power in 1906 they tried to keep the Irish question. in the background, ensuring it stayed well down the political agenda.
Fay, M, Morrisey, M, Smyth, M, 1999, Northern Ireland’s troubles: the human costs, Pluto Press, Sterling, VA
The Irish rebellion against Britain remained significant to nationalism to Ireland and Irish people; moreover, to those who betray Ireland were severely chastised. According to Enda Duffy, Heaney observed a young women, naked and bald, ready to be hanged in front of the church where she was being tarred and penalized for being enamored with a British solider (Duffy 4/6/10). Heaney calls this woman a “little adultress” and “[his] scapegoat” to show the woman's betrayal to her country (Heaney ln 23, 28). This situation is biased because of the soldier's nationality: if the solider was Irish, the couple would be socially acceptable but because t...
The years 1870 to 1890 in Ireland saw the fervent battle of Charles Stewart Parnell and his Home Rule party for home rule in Ireland. This consisted of Ireland having its own parliament to deal with internal affairs while still remaining under the control of Westminster in international affairs. It was not the desire for a full separation from Britain that would come later. However, by 1890, problems in Parnell’s personal life lead to a breakdown in communication with the Prime Minister and to a split in the Home Rule party. According to M E Collins, this left a void in Irish politics and life that was filled with a new cultural awareness and a questioning of Irish identity: ‘the new movements were different. They stressed the importance of Irish identity, Irish race and Irish culture’ (170 M E Collins, Ireland 1868 - 1966). It is at this point that Fanon’s ‘Wretched of the Earth’ becomes relevant to Irish history. In his chapter entitled ‘On National Consciousness’, Fanon stresses the colonised native fears of being assimilated totally into the culture of the coloniser, of being ‘swamped’ (169 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth). These were the exact concerns that occupied the minds of the Irish people after the failure of home rule. They began to be anxious about what Collins terms ‘the distinguishing marks of Irishness’: ‘a culture and language that was different to Britain’s’.
The Irish Republican Army was an Irish republic revolutionary military organization. It came from the Irish volunteers, which were created on November 25, 1913. The Irish volunteers started the Easter Rising in order to end the British Rule in Ireland, leading them to be titled as the Irish Republican Army in January 1919. In 1919, the Irish volunteers became confirmed by Irish Nationalists, Dail Eireann and were recognised as a legitimate army. The IRA raged Guerilla warfare against the British from 1919-1921, creating the Irish War of Independence. The IRA was active from January 1919 to March, 1922, though they are inactive now. The IRA’s main leader was IRA army council. Their headquarters were in Dublin Ireland, but they also operate out the United Kingdom, throughout Ireland, and Northern Ireland. The IRA was funded by extortion, bank robberies, and donations from their descendants. The Irish Republican Army’s main goal was to become independent from Great Britain.
Ireland in The Coming Times- Essays to Celebrate T.K. Whitaker’s 80 Years edited by F. O’ Muircheartaigh, IPA, Dublin, 1997.
The Web. 14 Jan 2011. Allison, Fiona. " The Irish War of Independence 1919-1921." suite101.com.
On the 14th of September in the year 1607 the Earl of Tyrone Hugh O’Neill and the Earl of Tyrconnel Rory O’Donnell fled Ireland alongside officials, their families and numerous Gaelic chieftains. They left Ireland from Rathmullen in County Donegal. This flee was to become known as the flight of the Earls. They arrived in the Spanish Netherlands and then eventually made their way to Rome. The Flight of the Earls led to the most drastic form of the British government’s policy of plantation in Ireland. The Flight of the Earls has remained as one of the most memorable events in the history of Ireland. But what exactly were the reasons for the Flight of the Earls? The causes have been debated by historians with different interpretations as to why they fled but it is clear that the influence of the Earls in Ireland have been diminished greatly in the years prior to the Flight of the Earls. This essay seeks to clarify the reasons for the decline in power of the Earls in Ireland through exploration of the solidification of British rule in Ireland, along with key events in the years prior to the Flight of the Earls such as Hugh O’Neill’s campaign and onto the nine years war and the Battle of Kinsale and the Treaty of Mellifont after the Battle of Kinsale.
Of all of the things that could have happened in Ireland, the Easter Uprising was by far the most unpopular thing to do in the eye of the Dublin public. The majority of people in Dublin at the beginning of the 20th century did not want the Uprising to happen, because it would postpone the ability to gain their independ...
McCann et al. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1994, 95-109).