Irish Historical Archive

No craven dirge of sorrow Our hearts will sing to-day, No whinings for the morrow Or for ages passed away; But a song of bold rejoicing That the seed by our martyrs sown Has sprung to bloom by the lonely tomb Of our own unconquered Tone ! O, brave young men of Eirinn ! Be steadfast, leal and true, Be generous in your daring For the cause of Roisin Dubh; Be hers in joy and sorrow, Even though you stand alone For the stainless Right, 'gainst England's might, Like our own unconquered Tone ! His fame is in your keeping, To hold without a stain, Till freedom's fires are leaping - From every hill and plain; Till Ireland's battle slogan Shall reach to the despot's throne, And swords aflame shall trace the name Of our own unconquered Tone ! A Song of Tone - Brian Ó hUigínn (Brian O'Higgins)

His songs were a little phrase Of eternal song, Drowned in the harping of lays More loud and long. His deed was a single word, Called out alone In a night when no echo stirred To laughter or moan. But his songs new souls shall thrill, The loud harps dumb, And his deed the echoes fill When the dawn is come. Of a Poet Patriot - Tomás Anéislis Mac Donnchadha (Thomas Stanislaus MacDonagh)

Dear K, I am in better health and more satisfied than for many a day—all will be well eventually—but this is my good-bye and now you are ever before me to cheer me—God bless you and the boys. Let them be proud to follow same path— Sean is with me and McG,’ all well—they all heroes. I’m full of pride my love. Yours Tom Message to his Wife from Richmond Barracks, 30 April, 1916, Tomás Séamus Ó Cléirigh (Thomas James Clarke)

Rougher than death the road I choose Yet shall my feet not walk astray, Though dark, my way I shall not lose For this way is the darkest way. Set but a limit to the loss And something shall at last abide, The blood-stained beams that formed the cross, The thorns that crowned the crucified; But who shall lose all things in One, Shut out from Heaven and the Pit Shall lose the darkness and the sun, The finite and the infinite; And who shall see in one small flower The chariots and the thrones of might Shall be in peril from that hour Of blindness and the endless night; And who shall hear in one short name Apocalyptic thunders seven His heart shall flicker like a flame 'Twixt Hell's gates and the gates of Heaven The Dark Way - Seosamh Pluincéid (Joseph Plunkett)

What this pyramid of kingship, conjured up in the law tracts, did not allow for was a king operating at a higher level than a province-king, i.e. a high-king of Ireland. But this does not mean that no such notion existed: it occurs occasionally in legal texts and is a commonplace in historical texts and in literature. A kingship of all Ireland presumed a sense of Ireland as representing a whole, and such a sense certainly existed. Another name for the highest rank of king, the rí ruirech (‘king of overkings’), was rí cóigid (‘king of a fifth’), from the assumption that the island had been, or should be, divided into five provinces—though in the historic era there were always more — and of course the concept of a fifth presupposes a whole of which it was a part. Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf - Seán Duffy (2013)

Heed not the cringing traitors' jeer, Heed not the despot's darkling frown; But press ye on - the goal is near, Tho' Saxon bandogs hound ye down. Heed not the worthless guilty crew Who fain would block your onward way; To Ireland's glorious Cause be true - For Ireland's sake be Men to-day. By Heaven's decree - by Right Divine - This Irish land is yours alone; Will ye give up to foreign swine Without a fight what is your own? Will ye allow an alien race To flinch your sacred rights away, And wipe out every noble trace Of manhood from your land to-day? The United Irishman (1900)

And after the faith had been preached and received, 61 kings of the same blood, without intervention of alien blood, kings admirably in the faith of Christ and filled with works of charity, kings that in temporal things acknowledged no superior, ruled here uninterruptedly in humble obedience to the Church of Rome until the year 1170. And it was they, not the English nor others of any nation who eminently endowed the Irish Church with lands, ample liberties and many possessions, although at the present time she is, for the most part, sadly despoiled of those lands and liberties by the English. Remonstrance of the Irish Chiefs to Pope John XXII (1317) - Domhnall Ó Néill

O Son of God, it would be sweet, a lovely journey, to cross the wave, the fount in flood, and visit Ireland: to Eolarg Plain, by Foibne Hill, across Loch Febail, and listen here to the matching music of the swans. Flocks of gulls would fill with pleasure as we sailed swiftly into the welcome of Port na Ferg in our 'Red-with-Dew'. I am full of sorrow that I left Ireland when I had my strength and then grew tearful and full of sadness in a foreign land. Poem Attributed to St.Colmcille - The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse (1986)

War is a terrible thing, but war is not an evil thing. It is the things that make war necessary that are evil. The tyrannies that wars break, the lying formulae that wars overthrow, the hypocrisies that wars strip naked, are evil. Many people in Ireland dread war because they do not know it. Ireland has not known the exhilaration of war for over a hundred years. Yet who will say that she has known the blessings of peace? When war comes to Ireland, she must welcome it as she would welcome the Angel of God. And she will. Peace and the Gael (1915) - Pádraig Mac Piarais (Patrick Pearse)

What meaneth this sad, this fearful change, That withers my heart with woe? The house of my father all joyless and lone, Its halls and its gardens with weeds overgrown,— A dreadful and strange overthrow! No conquering heroes, no hounds for the chase, No shields in array on its walls, No bright silver goblets, no gay cavalcades, No youthful assemblies or high-born maids, To brighten its desolate halls! An omen of sadness—the home of our youth All ruined, deserted, and bare. Alas for the chieftain, the gentle and brave; His glories and sorrows are stilled in the grave, And we left to live in despair! From ocean to ocean, from age unto age, We have lived to the fulness of time; Through a life such as men never heard of we've passed, In suffering and sorrow our doom has been cast, By our stepmother's pitiless crime! The Children of Lir, Old Celtic Romances - P.W. Joyce (1920)

Our literature is heroic. The ancient sagas – the strong warlike tales of the Red Branch, and the more romantic and charming and naturally beautiful tales of the Fianna – remained the chief substance of our Gaelic literature as long as that literature was being made folklore was in harmony with the manuscripts that the scribes copied. Down to our days, the typical Shanachie was he who could recite a Fenian lay. Every poet sprinkled his verses with allusion to the heroic tales, and the Gaelic folk whom the planters replaced were likened to the companions of Fionn. The heroes, in brief, were to the folk of all our cottages the household mythology, and our people dwelt imaginatively in the heroic world. Heroic Ireland - Aodh de Blácam (1935)

A dreadful doom my father found On that ill-omened even-tide; And here I mourn beside the mound, Where, whelmed by numbers, Kian died,— This lonely mound of evil fame, That long shall bear the hero's name! Alas! an evil deed is done, And long shall Erin rue the day: There shall be strife 'twixt sire and son, And brothers shall their brothers slay; Vengeance shall smite the murderers too, And vengeance all their race pursue! The light has faded from mine eyes; My youthful strength and power have fled Weary my heart with ceaseless sighs; Ambition, hope, and joy are dead; And all the world is draped in gloom— The shadow of my father's tomb! The Fate of the Children of Tuireann - Old Celtic Romances, P.W. Joyce (1920)

It has been well said, ‘when the generous affections have become well nigh paralytic, we have the reign of sentimentality. The greatness, the profitableness, at any rate the extremely ornamental nature of high feeling, and the luxury of doing good; charity, love, self-forgetfulness, devotedness, and all manner of god-like magnanimity, are everywhere insisted on and pressingly inculcated in prose and verse.’ But for all real nobility of soul this cant of sentimentality is a mere succedaneum and substitute. Progress in the Nineteenth Century (1854) - John Mitchel

I see his blood upon the rose And in the stars the glory of his eyes, His body gleams amid eternal snows, His tears fall from the skies. I see his face in every flower; The thunder and singing of the birds Are but his voice – and carven by his power Rocks are his written words. All pathways by his feet are worn, His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea, His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn, His cross is every tree. I See His Blood Upon The Rose - Seosamh Pluincéid (Joseph Plunkett)

If we know Ireland of the grand joys and great sorrows and holy memories we will love her with a love that cannot be killed in our hearts ; if we do not know her as children know their mother we cannot be certain that when trials come to her, and trouble and danger, we will stand loyally by her stainless cause, willing to suffer pain and privation, willing to make big and little sacrifices for the sake of the Motherland God has given into our keeping to love and serve and prize beyond all the rest of the great world He has made. Wolfe Tone Annual (1955) - Brian Ó hUigínn (Brian O'Higgins)

All things must come to pass as one So hope should never die There is no height or bloody might That a freeman can’t defy. There is no source or foreign force Can break one man who knows, That his free will no thing can kill And from that freedom grows. Roibeárd Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh (Bobby Sands)

Men grow mighty in the May, Proud and gay the maidens grow; Fair is every wooded height; Fair and bright the plain below. A bright shaft has smit the streams, With gold gleams the water-flag; Leaps the fish, and on the hills Ardour thrills the leaping stag. Loudly carols the lark on high, Small and shy, his tireless lay, Singing in wildest, merriest mood, Delicate-hued, delightful May. In Praise of May, Fionn mac Cumhaill - The Poem-Book of the Gael (1913)

Her nobles and freemen dead, she cannot cure her shame. It is a shameful step for the Gael, if we dare presume to say it. By a blow of Balor's eye her lovely land is sickened, her corn blossomless in the clay -and I pray God rest her soul. After the Flight of the Earls (Early 17th Century) - Fear Flatha Ó Gnímh

What if human progress, after all, be like the progress of the material globe in a cycloid?—if the motion of every individual human society be a real wheel of fortune, whereupon it climbs, culminates and falls?—if there be indeed an intellectual and moral summer for each region of the globe, warming men just then and there, with the vital fire of national spirit and individual intelligence, and giving social life its highest and grandest development,–but followed, as surely and inevitably by the withering winter? All the analogies of nature preach this to us aloud. History, so far as the glimmering lamp of history throws back a ray, tells the same tale. What a glowing tide of life once poured itself through the valleys of Syria! of Numidia! Progress in the Nineteenth Century (1854) - John Mitchel

God rest the soul of Ireland, island of faltering steps. The soft-voiced people of Brian are heavy with grief, I think. Denial of faith and justice are to Fódla the same as death and disgrace to her sons and sages, if the stories and songs are true. How can Banba not perish now her gallant herd of heroes have taken their way to Spain? After the Flight of the Earls (Early 17th Century) - Fear Flatha Ó Gnímh