Michael Collins
Clonakilty, West Cork, Irish revolutionary. Born: October 16, 1890 Michael Collins (Irish: Mícheál Ó Coileáin; 16 October 1890 – 22 August 1922) was an Irish revolutionary leader, Minister for Finance and Teachta Dála (TD) for Cork South in the First Dáil of 1919, Director of Intelligence for the IRA, and member of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. Subsequently, he was both Chairman of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-chief of the National Army . Throughout this time, at least as of 1919, he was also President of the Irish Republican
Brotherhood, and, therefore, under the bylaws of the Brotherhood, President of the Irish Republic. Collins was shot and killed in August 1922, during the Irish Civil War.
Brian Boru,
Bóruma, (Brian mac Cennétig (Kennedy)
High King of Ireland
Born 941, Killaloe, Co Clare, in the Kingdom of Dál Cais, died good Friday, 1014 Clontarf, Co Dublin. He earned his name as ‘Brian of the Tributes’ (Brian Boru) by collecting tributes from the minor rulers of Ireland and used the monies raised to restore monasteries and libraries that had been destroyed during the Viking invasions. Brian was killed by an axe-wielding Viking who sneaked into his tent during the battle. In legend, the Battle of Clontarf has become one of the most famous in Irish history marking the expulsion of the Viking invader.
John Hume,
Northern Ireland Politician, Nobel Peace Prize Recipient
Born January 18, 1937, is an Irish former politician from Derry, Northern Ireland. He was a founding member of the Social Democratic and Labor Party, and was co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize, with David Trimble. He is regarded as one of the most important figures in the recent political history of Ireland and one of the architects of the Northern Ireland peace process there. He is also a recipient of the Gandhi Peace Prize and the Martin Luther King Award, the only recipient of the three major peace awards. In 2010 he was named “Ireland’s Greatest” in a public poll by Irish national broadcaster RTÉ to find the greatest person in Ireland’s history.
Charles Stewart Parnell,
Irish Protestant, Politician and Nationalist
Ireland’s Uncrowned King, 1846, Co Wicklow, died 1891 Sussex, Eng.), member of the British Parliament (1875–91), and the leader of the struggle for Irish Home Rule in the late 19th century. With the exception of Daniel O’Connell he is the most significant Irish political leader of the 19th century. In 1889–90 he was ruined by proof of his adultery with Katherine O’Shea, whom he subsequently married. In the British House of Commons, Parnell perfected the tactic of obstructionism to agitate for reforms in Ireland. Feeling that the British public and the government were indifferent to Irish complaints, Parnell and his allies sought to shut down the legislative process. This tactic was effective but controversial. Some who were sympathetic to Ireland felt that it alienated the British public and therefore only damaged the cause of Home Rule. Parnell was aware of that, but felt he had to persist. In 1877 he was quoted as saying, “We will never gain anything from England unless we tread on her toes.”
Patrick – Pádraig – Pearse,
Educator, Writer, Poet, Revolutionary
Pearse was thirty-six years old when he was executed by firing squad in Kilmainham Jail on May 3, 1916. Born 1879.
Following a court martial at Richmond Barracks for his part in the Easter Rising, Pearse exclaimed: ‘You cannot conquer Ireland. You cannot extinguish the Irish passion of freedom. If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom, then our children will win it by a better deed’ for “Ireland unfree shall never be at peace”.
The following words taken from Pearse’s poem, “The Rebel”:
And now I speak, being full of vision;
I speak to my people, and I speak in my people’s name to the masters of my people.
I say to my people that they are holy, that they are august, despite their chains,
That they are greater than those that hold them, and stronger and purer,
That they have but need of courage, and to call on the name of their God, God the unforgetting, the dear God that loves the peoples For whom He died naked, suffering shame.
And I say to my people’s masters: Beware,
Beware of the thing that is coming, beware of the risen people,
Who shall take what ye would not give. Did ye think to conquer the people, Or that Law is stronger than life and than men’s desire to be free? We will try it out with you, ye that have harried and held, Ye that have bullied and bribed, tyrants, hypocrites, liars!
Theobald Wolfe Tone
Irish Protestant Revolutionary, Military Officer, Statesman
June 1763 – 19 November 1798), was a leading Irish revolutionary figure and one of the founding members of the United Irishmen and is regarded as the father of Irish Republicanism. He was captured by British forces at Lough Swilly in Co, Donegal and taken prisoner. Before he was to be executed, Wolfe Tone attempted suicide and subsequently died from his wounds eight days after the attempt, thus avoiding being hanged as a convicted traitor to the British Crown for his involvement in the 1798 Irish Rebellion. Tone was adamant that the Irish people should be governed by an Irish parliament and, although he was an Anglican he proposed co-operation among the various religions as a means to make progress on the issue of separation from England. In 1791 Wolfe Tone founded the Society of the United Irishmen, together with Napper Tandy and Thomas Russell.
He made what became known as the ‘Cavehill compact’ with Russell and McCracken, swearing: Never to desist in our efforts until we subvert the authority of England over our country and asserted our independence’.
He is buried in Bodenstown, Co. Kildare, near his birthplace at Sallins, and his grave is in the care of the National Graves Association.
Bobby Sands,
Provisional Irish Republican Army Volunteer
Member of the United Kingdom Parliament who died on hunger strike while in HM Prison Maze (also known as Long Kesh). Sands died on 5 May 1981 in Maze prison hospital after 66 days of hunger-striking, aged 27. Born, 1954. The 1981 Irish hunger strike started with Sands refusing food on 1 March 1981. Sands decided that other prisoners should join the strike at staggered intervals in order to maximize publicity with prisoners steadily deteriorating successively over several months.
The hunger strike centered on five demands:
1. the right not to wear a prison uniform;
2. the right not to do prison work;
3. the right of free association with other prisoners, and to organize educational and recreational pursuits;
4. the right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week;
5. full restoration of remission lost through the protest .
Dear Mum
Dear Mum, I know you’re always there
To help and guide me with all your care, You nursed and fed me and made me strong To face the world and all its wrong.
The Rhythm of Time
It lights the dark of this prison cell,
It thunders forth its might,
It is ‘the undauntable thought’, my friend,
That thought that says ‘I’m right!’
Countess Markievicz
Irish Revolutionary and Politician. Born 1868, died 1927.
(Polish: Markiewicz; née Gore-Booth); was an Irish Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil politician, revolutionary nationalist, suffragette and socialist. In December 1918, she was the first woman elected to the British House of Commons, though she did not take her seat and, along with the other Sinn Féin TDs, formed the first Dáil Éireann. She was also one of the first women in the world to hold a cabinet position (Minister for Labour of the Irish Republic, 1919–1922).
The Countess called Michael Collins, and other advocates of the Treaty “traitors.” Collins called her something that would cut even deeper: English.
Playwright Sean O’Casey, who quit Connolly’s Citizen Army in a dispute with Markievicz, once said of her: “One thing she had in abundance — physical courage, with that she was clothed as with a garment.” When young girls are searching for history’s female heroes, they should be told the story of Constance Gore-Booth, the Countess of Irish freedom.
When Countess Markievicz was taken to the Republican plot at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin for burial, it was said that as many as 300,000 people turned out on the streets to bid her goodbye. At the graveside, de Valera gave the eulogy.
Lady Gregory, Irish Writer and Revolutionary
Augusta, Lady Gregory, Born;1852 – Died1932. Lady Augusta Gregory, known for her role in the Celtic Revival, was also a major force in the nationalist movement. She traveled the Irish countryside, collecting ballads, stories and myths to build a large body of the Celtic past. She also used her love of folklore to write plays of her own. Her work incorporated Irish mythology into the country’s struggle under British control. Lady Gregory founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theater with William Butler Yeats.
| Some of Her Plays | Some of Her Prose and Translations |
| Twenty Five (1903) Spreading the News (1904) Kincora: A Play in Three Acts (1905) The White Cockade: A Comedy in Three Acts (1905) Hyacinth Halvey (1906) The Doctor in Spite of Himself (1906) The Canavans (1906) The Rising of the Moon (1907) Dervorgilla (1907) The Workhouse Ward (1908) | Arabi and His Household (1882) Over the River (1887) A Phantom’s Pilgrimage, or Home Ruin (1893) Cuchulain of Muirthemne: The Story of the Men of the Red Branch of Ulster (1902) Ulster (1902) Poets and Dreamers: Studies and Translations from the Irish (1903) Gods and Fighting Men (1904) |
Queen Maeve,
Irish Warrior Queen, 3,000 BC
The cattle raid of Cooley. Maeve insists that she have equal wealth of her husband, Ailill, (Al-yil boy’s old celtic name). Irish =Maeve – she who intoxicates.
Queen Maeve’s Tomb, (cairn) 3000 BC, Knocknarea, Co Sligo Town below. Irish Queen, Kingdom of Connaught. Maeve and Ailill had an argument about who was the richer. To settle it, they had their accountants compare all their possessions–coin to coin, jewel to jewel, slave to slave, etc. It came down to the cattle. When their vast herds were counted and compared, it was found that that they were of equal quality and quantity, except that Ailill had a great bull which Maeve could not match.
William Butler Yeats,
Poet, Dramatist, Prose writer
Born 1865, Sandymount, Dublin, died 1939, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, Fr.), Buried, Drumcliffe Co Sligo. One of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
The Second Coming (first stanza)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Pat Speight
Irish Storyteller, Seanchai
Folk Tales from the fireplaces of Ireland. Pat has stories to make you laugh to make you cry and to scare and cheer, stories about Animals and Birds, Kings and Warriors, Saints and Sinners, Witches and Magicians, Pickpockets and Ghosts, Fairies and Mermaids and Mythical, Mystical characters that inspire and captivate the imagination.
In olden days, there were professional storytellers, divided into ranks – professors, poets, bards, seanchai (historians, storytellers), whose duty it was to know by heart the tales, poems and history proper to their rank, which were recited for the entertainment and praise of the chiefs and princes. These learned classes were rewarded by their patrons, but the collapse of the Gaelic order after the battle of Kinsale in 1601-2, and Culloden in Scotland (1746), wiped out the aristocratic classes who maintained the poets, and reduced the role of the historian and seanchaí. Storytelling was, of course, one of the main forms of entertainment among the ordinary folk also, and the popular Irish tradition became enriched by the remnants of the learned classes returning to the people. Denied the possibility of enhancing their place in society, and deprived of the means to promote and progress their art, the storyteller was held in high esteem by the ordinary Irish who revered and cultivated story and song as their principal means of artistic expression.
www.storytellersofireland.org
Pat Speight, Storyteller, 15 Merrion Court, Montenotte, Cork.
Phone Local: (021) 4551023 INT: +353 21 4551023 Mobile: 087 8679943 Email: pat@patspeight.com
Hanna Sheehy Skeffington
Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington: Jailed in June 1912, for smashing the glass windows at Dublin Castle in protest at women being excluded from the franchise of the third Home Rule Bill
On the 100th anniversary of the vote for Irish women, there has been a resurgent interest in the life of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington (1877-1946) – unrelenting campaigner for the equal rights of men and women, active nationalist, founding member of the Irish Women Workers’ Union, and co-founder of the Irish Women’s Franchise League (IWFL). In June 1912, Sheehy Skeffington was one of eight women jailed for smashing the glass windows at Dublin Castle after women were excluded from the franchise of the third Home Rule Bill. She was back in Mountjoy the following year, after assaulting a police officer. She was also active in the Rising, delivering food and messages to the GPO – unaware until two days afterwards that her husband, Francis Skeffington, had been shot and killed.
Agnes Mary Clerke
Agnes Mary Clerke has a crater on the moon named after her.
Clerke, who was born in Skibbereen in Co. Cork in 1842, is the only female member of The Royal Institution (RI) to boast such a prestigious commemoration, an honour which NASA bestowed upon her posthumously in 1981. As a child, her father had a telescope and showed her the planets – and so began her lifelong fascination with astronomy. In 1867, she moved to Italy due to ill health, and then to London in 1877. She wrote numerous articles on astronomy for journals, and also contributed to Encyclopedia Britannica and the Dictionary of National Biography. She gained renown worldwide with her book ‘A Popular History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century’. In 1892, she won the Actonian Prize, and later became a member of The Royal Institution in London and the Royal Astronomical Society – one of a very small number of women.
Eamon De Valera,
President of Ireland , Irish statesman.
A fervent nationalist, de Valera was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916 and was sentenced to death by the British, but was released a year later. He served as leader of Sinn Fein (1917–26) and President of the selfdeclared Irish government (1919–22), but as an opponent of the Anglo-Irish Treaty headed the militant republicans in the ensuing civil war. In 1926 he founded the Fianna Fáil Party, which he led in the Dáil. In 1932 de Valera became President of the Irish Free State, and was largely responsible for the new constitution of 1937, which created the sovereign state of Eire. He served as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) (1937–48; 1951–54; 1957–59) and President (1959–73).
Veronica Guerin,
Journalist, Sunday Independent
On the afternoon of June 26, 1996, Guerin was alone in her car when she stopped at a traffic light in suburban Dublin and made a quick call to a friend on her cellular phone. Two men on a motorcycle pulled up alongside her car. One of them opened fire, shooting Guerin five times in the neck and chest, killing her almost instantly. The men then sped off into traffic and escaped before anyone nearby had even had a chance to react.
The Irish responded to Guerin’s assassination with shock, sorrow, and outrage. On the day of her funeral, the small chapel near the Dublin airport where she and her family regularly worshipped was packed with mourners, including Ireland’s president, prime minister, and head of the armed forces; others watched the service on television. On July 4, the day labor unions across Ireland had called for a moment of silence in her memory, people on trains and buses, in stores and on the street, sat or stood quietly and bowed their heads in tribute. Admirers lined up in front of the offices of the Sunday Independent to leave flowers and sign a condolence book.
Brian Meehan (47), from Crumlin in Dublin, is serving a life sentence in Portlaoise prison having being convicted in July 1999 of the murder of Ms. Guerin in June 1996 following a 31-day-trial before the non-jury Special Criminal Court. He was also jailed on drugs and firearms charges. `Veronica Geurin’ is a powerful, rousing fast-based story… Cate Blanchett is simply outstanding in her role.
Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese,
Ireland’s Past Presidents
On 3 December 1990, Mary Robinson was inaugurated as the seventh President of Ireland and the first woman to be elected. She held the office until 12 September 1997 when she left to accept the appointment as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Born on 21 May, 1944, in Ballina, County Mayo, Mary is a barrister by profession and was a Reid Professor of Criminal Law at Trinity College Dublin when she was 25 years of age. With her husband Nicholas (married 1970) she founded the Irish Centre for European Law in 1988.
Mary Patricia McAleese was born on 27 June 1951 and served as the eighth President of Ireland from 1997 to 2011, succeeding Mary Robinson thus making McAleese the world’s first woman to succeed another woman as president. She was born in Ardoyne, North Belfast County Antrim and was re-elected unopposed for a second term in 2004. McAleese is the first President of Ireland to have come from Northern Ireland. She graduated with a Law Degree from Queen’s University Belfast. In 1975 she described the theme of her Presidency as “Building Bridges.” This bridgebuilding materialized in her attempts to reach out to the unionist community in Northern Irel