Collapse of the Terror

British Rule's Last Stages

What the Elections Meant

We have seen how in ancient Ireland the people were themselves the guardians of their land, doing all for themselves according to their own laws and customs, as interpreted by the Brehons, which gave them security, prosperity, and national greatness, and how this was upset by the English determination to blot out Irish ways, when came poverty, demoralisation and a false respect for English standards and habits.

The English power to do this rested on military occupation and on economic control. It had the added advantage of social influence operating upon a people weakened and demoralised by the state of dependence into which the English occupation had brought them.

Military resistance was attempted. Parliamentary strategy was tried. The attempts did not succeed. They failed because they did not go to the root of the question.

The real cure had to be started—that the people should recover belief in their own ways and ideas and put them into practice. Secret societies were formed and organised. The Land League came into existence. The Gaelic Lea
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The Parting of Goll From His Wife

When they are shut up by Fionn on a sea-girt rock, without chance of escape.

A Dialogue

(Goll speaks)
The end is come; upon this narrow rock
To-morrow I must die;
Wife of the ruddy cheeks and hair of flame,
Leave me to-night and fly.
Seek out the camp of Fionn and of his men
Upon the westward side;
Take there, in time to come, another mate.
Here I abide.

(Goll's wife replies)
Which way, O Goll, is my way, and thou perished?
Alas! few friends have I!
Small praise that woman hath whose lord is gone
And no protector nigh!
What man should I wed? I whom great Goll cherished
And made his wife?
Where in the East or West should one be sought
To mend my broken life?
Shall I take Oísin, son of Fionn the Wise?
Or Carroll of the blood-stained hand?
Shall I make Angus, son of Hugh, my prize?
Or swift-foot Corr, chief of the fighting-band?
I am as good as they; aye, good and better,
Daughter of Conall, Monarch of the West,
Fostered was I with Conn the Hundred-Fighter,
Best among
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The Great Lamentation of Deirdre for the Sons of Usna

"As to Deirdre, she was a year in the household of Conchobar, after the death of the Sons of Usna. And though it might be a little thing to raise her head or to bring a smile over her lip, never once did she do it through all that space of time.... She took not sufficiency of food or sleep, nor lifted her head from her knee. When people of amusement were sent to her, she would break out into lamentation:—

Splendid in your eyes may be the impetuous champions
Who resort to Emain after a foray;
More brilliant yet was the return
Of Usna's heroes to their home!

Noisi bearing pleasant mead of hazel-nuts;
I myself bathed him at the fire;
Ardan bore an ox or boar of goodly size,
Ainle, a load of faggots on his stately back.

Sweet though the excellent mead be found
Drunk by the son of Ness of mighty conflicts;
I have shared ere now, from a chase on the borders,
Abundant provender more delicious!

When for the cooking-hearth noble Noisi
Unbound the faggots on the forest hero-board,
More pleasant than honey was each food,
Better than all other t
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Coolock and the Union Jack

In recent days there's been an uproar over the appearance of the Irish tricolour, symbol and standard of the Republic, waving alongside the Union Jack during protest marches in Belfast. Outrage has been expressed in the halls of power from Dáíl Éireann to Stormount to Westminster. And in fairness it is quite a picture – not something you'd see every day.

But what do we really see when we look at this picture? Should we take it at face value or should we have a conversation about the cause and context of this undoubtedly historical event? Not a historical first mind you, Catholic and Protestant groups in the North have found common cause in opposition to mass immigration before, but it is certainly the most publicised of these cross-community engagements.

Neither was it unpredictable – as far back as the 1900s, James Connolly observed that Unionist and Republican working classes had more in common with one another than with the ruling class, and would someday unite in opposition to capitalist exploitation. He was, as usual, right, albeit at a slight remove – the benefits mass immigration brings to those who wish t
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The Irish Flag

The Council of the Irish Citizen Army has resolved, after grave and earnest deliberation, to hoist the green flag of Ireland over Liberty Hall, as over a fortress held for Ireland by the arms of Irishmen. This is a momentous decision in the most serious crisis Ireland has witnessed in our day and generation. It will, we are sure, send a thrill through the hearts of every true Irish man and woman, and send the red blood coursing fiercely along the veins of every lover of the race.

It means that in the midst of and despite the treasons and backslidings of leaders and guides, in the midst of and despite all the weaknesses, corruption and moral cowardice of a section of the people, in the midst of and despite all this there still remains in Ireland a spot where a body of true men and women are ready to hoist, gather round, and to defend the flag made sacred by all the sufferings of all the martyrs of the past.

Since this unholy war first started we have seen every symbol of Irish freedom desecrated to the purposes of the enemy, we have witnessed the prostitution of every holy Irish tradition. That the young men of Ireland might be seduced into the service of the
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Irish War News

THE IRISH REPUBLIC

Vol. 1. No. 1
DUBLIN, TUESDAY, APRIL 25, 19I6.
One Penny

“IF THE GERMANS CONQUERED ENGLAND.”

In the London “New Statesman” for April 1st, an article is published—“If the Germans Conquered England,” which has the appearance of a very clever piece of satire written by an Irishman. The writer draws a picture of England under German rule, almost every detail of which exactly fits the case of Ireland at the present day. Some of the sentences are so exquisitely appropriate that it is impossible to believe that the writer had not Ireland in his mind when he wrote them. For instance:—

“England would be constantly irritated by the lofty moral utterances of German statesmen who would assert—quite sincerely, no doubt—that England was free, freer indeed than she had ever been before. Prussian freedom, they would explain, was the only real freedom, and therefore England was free. They would point to the flourishing railways and farms and colleges. They would possibly point to the contingent of M.P’s, which was permitted, in spite of its deplorable d
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September 1913

What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save:
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave;
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were,
In all their loneliness and pain

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The Work Before Us

In a short article like this I cannot deal in detail with the above heading, but, with the Editor’s permission, I hope to do so in future issues. Sufficient for the present, it must be to outline what we must do in the coming weeks if we would place the Crown of Freedom on the Dear Dark Head.

The first and most essential is to prepare ourselves for the coming Day of Days. For us, who see the light through the darkness, we must be ever ready – ever watchful – taking advantage of everything that will advance the sacred cause of Nationality. We must not be found wanting. He that is not ready, let him go and get ready. No time is this for procrastination. The sound of battle must not find us preparing to sharpen our swords, nor looking for guns.

Like hounds panting for the fray, we must await only the word. To-day is the time for preparation – to-morrow may be too late. He that hath no gun, let him sell his garment and get one, and that without delay.

Secondly: Being ready ourselves, we must educate and enlist in our army those who have been misled. We must be patient with them – because, emerging from darkness unto light,
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Ulster and Ireland

Irish Protestantism remains, at least in its pulpits and politics, as distinctively a belligerent creed as when it first came to Ireland at the point of a Tudor sword.

For long it stood entrenched the Church of an alien aristocracy, holding as the first article of establishment the right to regard Ireland as an appanage of conquest, with title-deeds depending, like those of Islam, on the sword of the Lord; and in both cases, strange as it may sound, the victims of the invasion were Christian populations. Even to-day, when so much else has slipped from its control, the Church cannot in its prayers for the welfare of the State divest itself of the phraseology of conquest.

Irish Churchmen appeal every Sunday for the Lord Lieutenant ‘that he may wield the sword committed into his hand’—in the sure and certain hope that it is a Protestant and Unionist sword.

The Mussulman invaders of Eastern Europe were, however, much less capable men and less efficient dominators than their Protestant prototypes of the West. The Turk remained to the end a foreigner, and left the conquered races the enjoyment of their religion and their languages, along
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