You ask me to speak of the Ireland of to-day. What can I tell you of it
that is worthy of commemoration where we commemorate heroic faith and
the splendour of death? In that Ireland whose spokesmen have, in return
for the promise of a poor simulacrum of liberty, pledged to our ancient
enemy our loyalty and the loyalty of our children, is there, even though
that pledge has been spoken, any group of true men, any right striving,
any hope still cherished in virtue of which, lifting up our hearts, we
can cry across the years to him whom we remember to-night, “Brother, we
have kept the faith; comrade, we, too, stand ready to serve”?
For patriotism is at once a faith and a service. A faith which in some
of us has been in our flesh and bone since we were moulded in our
mothers’ wombs, and which in others of us has at some definite moment of
our later lives been kindled flaming as if by the miraculous word of
God; a faith which is of the same nature as religious faith and is one
of the eternal witnesses in the heart of man to the truth that we are of
divine kindred; a faith which, like religious faith, when true and
vital, is wonder-working, but, like religious faith, is dead without
good works even as the body without the spirit. So that patriotism needs
service as the condition of its authenticity, and it is not sufficient
to say “I believe” unless one can say also “I serve.”
And our patriotism is measured, not by the formula in which we declare
it, but by the service which we render. We owe to our country all fealty
and she asks always for our service; and there are times when she asks
of us not ordinary but some supreme service. There are in every
generation those who shrink from the ultimate sacrifice, but there are
in every generation those who make it with joy and laughter, and these
are the salt of the generations, the heroes who stand midway between God
and men. Patriotism is in large part a memory of heroic dead men and a
striving to accomplish some task left unfinished by them. Had they not
gone before, made their attempts and suffered the sorrow of their
failures, we should long ago have lost the tradition of faith and
service, having no memory in the heart nor any unaccomplished dream.
The generation that is now growing old in Ireland had almost forgotten
our heroes. We had learned the great art of parleying with our enemy and
achieving nationhood by negotiation. The heroes had trodden hard and
bloody ways: we should tread soft and flowering ways. The heroes had
given up all things: we had learned a way of gaining all things, land
and good living and the friendship of our foe. But the soil of Ireland,
yea, the very stones of our cities have cried out against an infidelity
that would barter an old tradition of nationhood even for a thing so
precious as peace. This the heroes have done for us; for their spirits
indwell in the place where they lived, and the hills of Ireland must be
rent and her cities levelled with the ground and all her children driven
out upon the seas of the world before those voices are silenced that bid
us be faithful still and to make no peace with England until Ireland is
ours.
I live in a place that is very full of heroic memories. In the room in
which I work at St. Enda’s College Robert Emmet is said often to have
sat; in our garden is a vine which they call Emmet’s Vine and from which
he is said to have plucked grapes; through our wood runs a path which is
called Emmet’s Walk--they say that he and Sarah Curran walked there; at
an angle of our boundary wall there is a little fortified lodge called
Emmet’s Fort. Across the road from us is a thatched cottage whose tenant
in 1803 was in Green Street Courthouse all the long day that Emmet stood
on trial, with a horse saddled without that he might bring news of the
end to Sarah Curran. Half a mile from us across the fields is
Butterfield House, where Emmet lived during the days preceding the
rising. It is easy to imagine his figure coming out along the Harold’s
Cross Road to Rathfarnham, tapping the ground with his cane, as they say
was his habit; a young, slight figure, with how noble a head bent a
little upon the breast, with how high a heroism sleeping underneath that
quietness and gravity! One thinks of his anxious nights in Butterfield
House; of his busy days in Marshalsea Lane or Patrick Street; of his
careful plans--the best plans that have yet been made for the capture of
Dublin; his inventions and devices, the jointed pikes, the rockets and
explosives upon which he counted so much; his ceaseless conferences, his
troubles with his associates, his disappointments, his disillusionments,
borne with such sweetness and serenity of temper, such a trust in human
nature, such a trust in Ireland! Then the hurried rising, the sally into
the streets, the failure at the Castle gates, the catastrophe in Thomas
Street, the retreat along the familiar Harold’s Cross Road to
Rathfarnham. At Butterfield House Anne Devlin, the faithful, keeps
watch. You remember her greeting to Emmet in the first pain of her
disappointment: “Musha, bad welcome to you! Is Ireland lost by you,
cowards that you are, to lead the people to destruction and then to
leave them?” And poor Emmet’s reply--no word of blame for the traitors
that had sold him, for the cravens that had abandoned him, for the fools
that had bungled; just a halting, heartbroken exculpation, the only one
he was to make for himself--“Don’t blame me, Anne; the fault is not
mine.” And her woman’s heart went out to him and she took him in and
cherished him; but the soldiery were on his track, and that was his last
night in Butterfield House. The bracken was his bed thenceforth, or a
precarious pillow in his old quarters at Harold’s Cross, until he lay
down in Kilmainham to await the summons of the executioner.
No failure, judged as the world judges these things, was ever more
complete, more pathetic than Emmet’s. And yet he has left us a prouder
memory than the memory of Brian victorious at Clontarf or of Owen Roe
victorious at Benburb. It is the memory of a sacrifice Christ-like in
its perfection. Dowered with all things splendid and sweet, he left all
things and elected to die. Face to face with England in the dock at
Green Street he uttered the most memorable words ever uttered by an
Irish man: words which, ringing clear above a century’s tumults, forbid
us ever to waver or grow weary until our country takes her place among
the nations of the earth. And his death was august. In the great space
of Thomas Street an immense silent crowd; in front of Saint Catherine’s
Church a gallows upon a platform; a young man climbs to it, quiet,
serene, almost smiling, they say--ah, he was very brave; there is no
cheer from the crowd, no groan; this man is to die for them, but no man
dares to say aloud “God bless you, Robert Emmet.” Dublin must one day
wash out in blood the shameful memory of that quiescence. Would Michael
Dwyer come from the Wicklow Hills? Up to the last moment Emmet seems to
have expected him. He was saying “Not yet” when the hangman kicked aside
the plank and his body was launched into the air. They say it swung for
half-an-hour, with terrible contortions, before he died. When he was
dead the comely head was severed from the body. A friend of mine knew an
old woman who told him how the blood flowed down upon the pavement, and
how she sickened with horror as she saw the dogs of the street lap up
that noble blood. Then the hangman showed the pale head to the people
and announced: “This is the head of a traitor, Robert Emmet.” A traitor?
No, but a true man. O my brothers, this was one of the truest men that
ever lived. This was one of the bravest spirits that Ireland has ever
nurtured. This man was faithful even unto the ignominy of the gallows,
dying that his people might live, even as Christ died.
Be assured that such a death always means a redemption. Emmet redeemed
Ireland from acquiescence in the Union. His attempt was not a failure,
but a triumph for that deathless thing we call Irish Nationality. It was
by Emmet that men remembered Ireland until Davis and Mitchel took up his
work again, and ’48 handed on the tradition to ’67, and from ’67 we
receive the tradition unbroken.
You ask me to speak of the Ireland of to-day. What need I say but that
to-day Ireland is turning her face once more to the old path? Nothing
seems more definitely to emerge when one looks at the movements that are
stirring both above the surface and beneath the surface in men’s minds
at home than the fact that the new generation is reaffirming the Fenian
faith, the faith of Emmet. It is because we know that this is so that we
can suffer in patience the things that are said and done in the name of
Irish Nationality by some of our leaders. What one may call the
Westminster phase is passing: the National movement is swinging back
again into its proper channel. A new junction has been made with the
past: into the movement that has never wholly died since ’67 have come
the young men of the Gaelic League. Having renewed communion with its
origins, Irish Nationalism is to-day a more virile thing than ever
before in our time. Of that be sure.
I have said again and again that when the Gaelic League was founded in
1893 the Irish Revolution began. The Gaelic League brought it a certain
distance upon its way; but the Gaelic League could not accomplish the
Revolution. For five or six years a new phase has been due, and lo! it
is with us now. To-day Ireland is once more organising, once more
learning the noble trade of arms. In our towns and country places
Volunteer companies are springing up. Dublin pointed the way, Galway has
followed Dublin, Cork has followed Galway, Wexford has followed Cork,
Limerick has followed Wexford, Monaghan has followed Limerick, Sligo has
followed Monaghan, Donegal has followed Sligo. There is again in Ireland
the murmur of a marching, and talk of guns and tactics. What this
movement may mean for our country no man can say. But it is plain to all
that the existence on Irish soil of an Irish army is the most portentous
fact that has appeared in Ireland for over a hundred years: a fact which
marks definitely the beginning of the second stage of the Revolution
which was commenced when the Gaelic League was founded. The inner
significance of the movement lies in this, that men of every rank and
class, of every section of Nationalist opinion, of every shade of
religious belief, have discovered that they share a common patriotism,
that their faith is one and that there is one service in which they can
come together at last: the service of their country in arms. We are
realising now how proud a thing it is to serve, and in the comradeship
and joy of the new service we are forgetting many ancient
misunderstandings. In the light of a re-discovered citizenship things
are plain to us that were before obscure:
“Lo, a clearness of vision has followed, lo, a purification of
sight;
Lo, the friend is discerned from the foeman, the wrong recognised
from the right.”
After all, there are in Ireland but two parties: those who stand for the
English connection and those who stand against it. On what side, think
you, stand the Irish Volunteers? I cannot speak for the Volunteers; I am
not authorised to say when they will use their arms or where or how. I
can speak only for myself; and it is strictly a personal perception that
I am recording, but a perception that to me is very clear, when I say
that before this generation has passed the Volunteers will draw the
sword of Ireland. There is no truth but the old truth and no way but the
old way. Home Rule may come or may not come, but under Home Rule or in
its absence there remains for the Volunteers and for Ireland the
substantial business of achieving Irish nationhood. And I do not know
how nationhood is achieved except by armed men; I do not know how
nationhood is guarded except by armed men.
I ask you, then, to salute with me the Irish Volunteers. I ask you to
mark their advent as an augury that, no matter what pledges may be given
by men who do not know Ireland--the stubborn soul of Ireland--that
nation of ancient faith will never sell her birthright of freedom for a
mess of pottage; a mess of dubious pottage, at that. Ireland has been
guilty of many meannesses, of many shrinkings back when she should have
marched forward; but she will never be guilty of that immense
infidelity.
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Footnote 3:
An Address delivered at the Emmet Commemoration in the Academy of
Music, Brooklyn, New York, 2nd March, 1914.
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