The Easter Rising began at 12 noon on Monday 24 April 1916 when Padraig Pearse read the Proclamation in front of the G.P.O. in Dublin. That morning the Irish Volunteers, led by Padraig Pearse, members of the Citizen Army led by James Connolly and Cumann na mBan, took over a number of strategic locations in Dublin and the battle began soon after.
The 1916 Rising can be attributed to the true and inexorable Irish patriot Thomas Clarke who with Seán MacDiarmada spent a number of years planning with the aim of striking at the heart of British rule in Ireland and ending several hundred years of tyranny.
BY LIAM ODUIBHUR
The initial plans for a national insurrection were frustrated on the eve of the Rising by the countermand of Eoin MacNeill, which served to confuse Volunteer units in various parts of the country. The countermand was published in the Sunday Independent with the result that the planned uprising was postponed until the following day. However, as result of the countermand only a small number of minor incidents took place outside Dublin. These were Galway, Enniscorthy with the only large scale engagement taking place at Ashbourne under the command of Thomas Ashe and Richard Mulcahy. Many other areas were mobilised including Belfast, Tyrone and Cork.
In County Donegal seven Volunteers mobilised at Cashelnagore and cycled to Creeslough where they met another twenty-six men. They were all armed with an assortment of rifles and revolvers. The RIC came out of their barracks to investigate the commotion and were quickly ordered to go back inside. The men had no direct orders and as a result of the MacEoin’s countermand were unsure of what to do. The following morning there were still no orders. On hearing of the action in Dublin that evening, Daniel Kelly from Cashelnagore in west Donegal and his brother decided that they would travel to Dublin, but were told that there were no trains going beyond Dundalk.
There were a number of men from Donegal who were in Dublin and fought during the Rising including Joseph Sweeney from Burtonport who was a former student at Padraig Pearse’s school, St. Enda’s. Sweeney fought in Dublin during Easter Week and later spent several months as an internee at Stafford jail and later at Frongoch prison camp in North Wales.
There were also a number of Donegal men in the British forces who took part in the fighting in Dublin. A policeman killed outside Dublin Castle on Easter Monday was a native of Inishbofin Island, off the Donegal coast. Another Donegal man in the ranks of the RIC was shot and killed on Easter Monday. Charles McGee was stopped by a party of Volunteers in Castlebellingham and relieved of despatches before being shot. His remains were returned to Donegal and he was buried on Friday 28 April in his native Gortahork.
Another Donegal man who played a part in the 1916 Rising was Donncha MacNelis from Malinbeg in the Glencolmcille Parish. McNeilis left Donegal as a young man and had joined the Volunteers in Cork in 1913. The Cork Companies of the Irish Volunteers mobilised at Macroom on Easter Sunday morning on the assumption that they were to receive a consignment of weapons, which were to be landed at Banna Strand on the Kerry coast. However, with the failure of that plan the party were instructed to return home.
Meanwhile in Dublin a bloody battle ensued and lasted until the afternoon of 29 April when Padraig Pearse, shocked at the sight of a young family being killed by British soldiers as they fled their burning building under a white flag and the overall number of civilian casualties, surrendered to the British Commander General Maxwell.
In the aftermath of the fighting some 64 Volunteers were dead and 120 wounded. Civilian casualties amounted to approximately 300 dead and over 1,000 injured most were killed and injured during the intense shelling from the gunship ‘Helga’. The British casualties amounted to the deaths of 131 and wounded 387 including RIC personnel.
There were over 2,000 men and women imprisoned and some ninety-death sentences were passed by a secret military tribunal of which 75 were commuted to terms of imprisonment with 15 of the leaders being executed. Thomas Kent was executed in Cork on 9 May for his part in a shoot out with the RIC resulting in the death of an RIC officer.
In the following weeks the RIC and military were very active raiding and arresting people who, it was reported, were associated with the policy of Sinn Féin. There were more then 3,500 arrests made throughout the country resulting in the internment of more than 1,800 men.
In the years prior to the 1916 Rising a number of the prominent figures visited County Donegal for a variety of reasons including personal, educational, political and for employment.
Roger Casement, who was captured following the failed attempt to smuggle weapons into Tralee Bay on 21 April 1916, was a visitor to the county. The purpose of Casement’s visit was his love of the Irish Language and his desire to learn it. His chosen location to learn the Irish language was Urris in Inishowen. He walked from Ballymoney in County Antrim to Lishally, crossed in the ferry to Culmore, proceeded over the Scalp Mountain, along the old road to Buncrana and then through the Gap of Mamore to Urris. He spent six months living among the people of Donegal and visited many areas of the county including; Fanad, Portsalon, Tory Island, Cloughaneely and Glenties.
Joseph Mary Plunkett also spent some time in west Donegal prior to the 1916 Rising for much the same reason as Casement. He spent some time in the Cloughaneely area and on Tory Island learning the Irish language.
Pádraig Pearse was one of the main protagonists of the Rising had some association with county in the years prior to 1916. His first association was when he represented Niall Mhic Giolla Bhríde on appeal to the Courts of King’s Bench in Dublin. Niall Mhic Giolla Bhride had been summoned in early 1905 for using on the public highway a cart which did not bear his name and address in legible characters. The cart bore his name and address in Irish. He represented himself, lost and was fined, but ignored the fine and carried on with his work before being summoned for a second time. He was found guilty and fined for a second time. The case was then appealed to the Court of King’s Bench where he was defended by Pádraig Pearse. The decision was decided against him and this was the last case Pádraig Pearse ever defended as a barrister.
After this Pádraig Pearse visited the county on a number of occasions with the first being in 1906 when he visited the Irish College in Cloughaneely to deliver classes on the preservation and promotion of the Irish language.
Pádraig Pearse had written a series of articles in An Claidheamh Soluis entitled; “Belgium and its Schools” on the success of bilingual education in Belgium and recommending a similar policy for Gaeltacht districts in Ireland. Pearse recognised that few teachers in the Gaeltacht areas had the literary knowledge of the language.
To convince the teachers of the advantages of bilingualism Pádraig Pearse visited a number of schools explaining the new policy and gave demonstrations. On 2 July 1906 Pearse returned to Cloughaneely for the reopening of the Irish College and did a tour of the Gaeltacht areas in the county. He returned to the county in July 1907 visiting many areas including; Gweedore and the Rosses, Dungloe, Glenties, Ardara, Carrick, Kilcar, Killybegs, Croagh, Inver and Donegal Town. Pearse’s third visit was a very different reason and was as part of the campaign to organise the Irish Volunteers. He was invited to the county by John E. Boyle and John Sweeney to address a meeting as part of his organising tour. At Dungloe on 1 February 1914 while referring to the British declaration issued against the importation of arms, said; ‘as far as I am concerned this was only waste paper. It was illegal, but whether legal or not it could not prevent the Volunteers getting arms when Volunteers were sufficiently drilled and ready to use them. The British government dare not stop them and if the Tories who had been backing up Carson were in power, did anyone mean to say that in face of Unionist actions now they would dare to prevent Irishmen securing arms? If they did, what would the answer be? It would be such an answer as would become Irishmen’s to give…..
Thomas MacDonagh, another of the Irish Volunteer leaders, visited Donegal in April 1914 and addressed a meeting on Cruckaughrim Hill, Ballyliffin in Inishowen. A large crowed travelled from Derry for the meeting and the people of Inishowen were there in their thousands.
Willie Pearse was also associated with the county through his trade as a sculptor and with his father was involved with the construction of St. Eunan’s Cathedral in Letterkenny. They were both stone carvers and worked on various parts of the Cathedral’s interior including the pulpit of Donegal Masters and the marble railing, which extends the whole width of the cathedral. The caps, annulets, bases and capitals were all carved by Willie Pearse and his father James. Prior to this Willie Pearse was also a student in Donegal when he was eight years old attending the Ballydesken National School in Fanad for one year.
As we approach the 96th anniversary of the 1916 Rising and enter the count down to the centenary of this historic episode in the story of Ireland there will be much debate about how we commemorate such an extraordinary event led by such ordinary people.
It would be a fitting tribute to that seminal event and the people who played their part to launch a national educational curriculum to inform everyone from the very young to not so very young about the events and the reasons for such world-shattering measures.
The leaders of the 1916 Rising had a vision for a new Ireland free from the shackles of the injustice, the oppression, the capitalism as James Connolly said; “If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs. England would still rule you to your ruin, even while your lips offered hypocritical homage at the shrine of that Freedom whose cause you had betrayed…..”
If James Connolly was living today he would be inevitably living in his worst nightmare as the Ireland for which he and the other fifteen men who gave their lives has been raped, pillaged, bribed, sold and squandered but not by British men but by those who claim to be the successors of the men of 1916, the Irish political establishment. As Pádraig Pearse most aptly described them; “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 tarried and held, ye that have bullied and bribed, tyrants, hypocrites, liars!”
In a fitting end to this article it seems appropriate to quote the words of Luke Kelly and leave it to the reader to contemplate – For What Died the Sons of Róisín?
“For What Died the Sons of Róisín, was it greed?
For What Died the Sons of Róisín, was it greed?
Was it greed that drove Wolfe Tone to a pauper’s death in a cell of cold wet stone? Will German, French or Dutch inscribe the epitaph of Emmet?
When we have sold enough of Ireland to be but strangers in it.
For What Died the Sons of Róisín, was it greed?
To whom do we owe our allegiance today?
To whom do we owe our allegiance today?
To those brave men who fought and died that Róisín live again with pride?
Her sons at home to work and sing, Her youth to dance and make her valleys ring,
Or the faceless men who for Mark and Dollar, Betray her to the highest bidder,
To whom do we owe our allegiance today?