O'Donoghue's Opera

"O'Donoghue's Opera" is a unique and hilarious film starring Ronnie Drew and his band of bohemian merrymakers who include 'The Dubliners' and other favourite Irish musicians of the time like the McKenna’s and Johnny Moynihan. Made in 1965, Ireland's first musical was never completed due to financial difficulties and remained unseen until veteran filmmaker Tom Hayes brought the out-takes to Sé Merry Doyle who painstakingly restored the gem and launched it at the 1998 Dublin Film Festival. Based on the ballad 'The Night That Larry Was Stretched', sung by a young Johnny Moynihan, Ronnie Drew finds himself caught in a hangman's noose as a reward for his dubious career as "the best burglar in all Ireland". The film which is tongue-in-cheek (all the way) has the flavour of an Irish Spaghetti Western and captures the spirit of Dublin camaraderie like no other work before or since. The Guinness, the music, the wit and the grit, its all there in abundance. It says it all, when we see Ronnie fully decked-out in his stripy burglar outfit, trying to evade the law by disguising himself with a pioneer pin.


Ronnie Drew

O'Donoghue's Opera is an Irish film starring Ronnie Drew and his bandmates in The Dubliners. The film is a mock opera, based on the ballad "The Night Before Larry Was Stretched". It was shot in 1965, but was left uncompleted after the film's production ran into financial difficulties. In 1996 filmmaker Sé Merry Doyle oversaw its restoration, and it was first shown at the Dublin Film Festival in the late 1990s. - Wikipedia



The movie “O'Donoghue's Opera” on Google video; approx 37 minutes

“The Night Before Larry Was Stretched” is an Irish execution ballad written in the Newgate cant. The ballad is estimated to have been written around 1816. Will (Hurlfoot) Maher, a shoemaker from Waterford, wrote the song, though Dr. Robert Burrowes, the Dean of St. Finbar’s Cork, to whom it has been so often attributed, certainly did not. The Newgate cant in which the song was penned was a short-lived colloquial slang of 19th century Dublin. "This is only one of a group of execution songs written in Newgate Cant or slang style somewhere around 1780s, others being 'The Kilmainham Minuet', 'Luke Caffrey's Ghost' and 'Larry's Ghost' which, as promised in the seventh verse, comes in a sheet to sweet Molly."


Kimainham Gaol, Dublin

A French translation of the song called ' La mort de Socrate' was written by Francis Sylvester Mahony, better known as “Father Prout” for Froser’s Magazine and is also collected in 'Musa Pedestris, Three Centuries of Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes [1536―1896]', collected and annotated by John S. Farmer. In 'Ballads from the Pubs of Ireland', p. 29, James N. Healy attributes the song to a William Maher, (Hurlfoot Bill), but doesn't note when Maher lived. However, the song is attributed to a 'Curren' in 'The Universal Songster', 1828, possibly being J. Philpot Curran or J. W. Curren.

The song provides the narrative basis for the film 'O’Donoghue’s Opera' which was filmed in 1965 with members of The Dubliners with 'The Night Before Larry was Stretched' performed by Johnny Moynihan. Elvis Costello recorded the song on 1996's 'Common Ground — Voices Of Modern Irish Music'. The film and ballad is based on the strange but true premise that in Dublin jails the tradition grew up of the family and friends being allowed to wake the deceased when he was still alive (!) the night before the hanging as they would not receive the body afterwards as condemned prisoners were buried in quicklime pits in the prison grounds. This may seem strange today and it was a courtesy only extended to “Common Criminals” (Not murderers or political prisoners) at a time in the Georgian era when over 200 crimes, mainly against property, attracted the death penalty. Similarly families were allowed to bring food into prisons otherwise the prisoner would starve. Finally the hangman would be paid to get the prisoner drunk so he wouldn’t show fear on the scaffold.


Execution of Robert Emmet

See; The Years of the French

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/03/years-of-french.html


Lyrics; “The night before Larry was stretched"

I
The night before Larry was stretched,
The boys they all paid him a visit
A bit in their sacks too they fetched
They sweated their duds till they riz it
For Larry was always the lad,
When a friend was condemn’d to the squeezer,
He’d sweat all the togs that he had
Just to help the poor boy to a sneezer
- And moisten his gob ’fore he died.

II
The boys they came crowding in fast;
They drew their stools close round about him,
Six glims round his trap-case were placed
For he couldn’t be well waked without ’em,
When ax’d if he was fit to die,
Without having duly repented?
Says Larry, ‘That’s all in my eye,
And all by the clargy invented,
- To make a fat bit for themselves.

III
‘’I'm sorry dear Larry’, says I,
‘For to see you here in such trouble,
And your life’s cheerful noggin run dry,
And yourself going off like its bubble!’
‘Hauld your tongue in that matter,’ says he;
‘For the neckcloth I don’t care a button,
And by this time tomorrow you’ll see
Your Larry will be dead as mutton:
- And all 'cos his courage was good’


The Dubliners


IV
"And then I'll be cut up like a pie,
And me nob from me body be parted."
"You're in the wrong box, then", says I,
"For blast me if they're so hard-hearted.
A chalk on the back of your neck
Is all that Jack Ketch dares to give you;
So mind not such trifles a feck,
Sure why should the likes of them grieve you?
- And now boys, come tip us the deck."

V
Then the cards being called for, they play’d,
Till Larry found one of them cheated;
A dart at his napper he made
The lad being easily heated,
‘So ye chates me bekase I’m in grief!
O! is that, by the Hokey, the rason?
Soon I’ll give you to know you d—d thief!
That you’re cracking your jokes out of sason,
- And scuttle your nob with my fist’.

VI
Then the clergy came in with his book
He spoke him so smooth and so civil;
Larry tipp’d him a Kilmainham look,
And pitch’d his big wig to the divil.
Then raising a little his head,
To get a sweet drop of the bottle,
And pitiful sighing he said,
‘O! the hemp will be soon round my throttle,
- And choke my poor windpipe to death!’

VII
So mournful these last words he spoke,
We all vented our tears in a shower;
For my part, I thought my heart broke
To see him cut down like a flower!
On his travels we watch’d him next day,
O, the throttler I thought I could kill him!
But Larry not one word did say,
Nor chang’d till he came to King William;
- Then, musha, his colour turned white.

VIII
When he came to the nubbing-cheat,
He was tack’d up so neat and so pretty;
The rambler jugg’d off from his feet,
And he died with his face to the city.
He kick’d too, but that was all pride,
For soon you might see ’twas all over;
And as soon as the noose was untied,
Then at darkey we waked him in clover,
- And sent him to take a ground-sweat.

This is a moving and sentimental ballad in 9/8 time about a lad who is about to be hung. They really did put your coffin (trap case) in your cell and let your friends in to wake you on the night before the hanging in Dublin around 1816. Glims are candles.

"Jack Ketch" was the generic name for the hangman, as "Chips" was for a ship's carpenter and so on; the original Jack Ketch was "the common executioner 1663(?)-1686. He became notorious on account of his barbarity at the executions of William Lord Russell and others." A "Kilmainham look" may be something like a Ringsend tango or a Ringsend uppercut (a kick in the groin) - or perhaps not. Kilmainham was the county jail in former times, and later was the scene of the execution of the leaders of the 1916 Rising. Larry may have been confined in Kilmainham or in the Green Street prison, the "new" Newgate which replaced the old Newgate in the 1770s. Kilmainham is remembered in another prison ballad called "The Kilmainham Minit", i.e., "minuet", the dance of the hanged man.

“He came to King William;” - This was an equestrian statue of King William of Orange, erected in 1701 at College Green in Dublin. Always controversial, it was repeatedly daubed, defaced and blown up; in 1929 it was blown up for the last time, and later broken up for smelting. Presumably the bold Larry was important enough to be hanged in the large public space of College Green rather than at the prison itself (Maurice Craig's book on Dublin - whence the information in this paragraph - included an old photo of Newgate, showing the hanging-apparatus over the main door, "as in most Irish gaols")

Teddy Kennedy

The death of Teddy Kennedy is no doubt a momentous event and the Kennedy Family have always produced mixed feelings in Britain. Kennedy battled a malignant brain tumour first diagnosed in May 2008, which greatly limited his appearances in the Senate; though he survived longer than doctors first expected, he died just before midnight on August 25, 2009 at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Here in the UK there is the legacy of their Patriarch “Ambassador” Joe Kennedy who was seen as anti-British and having written off Britain before World War II. A more considered view may have been surprised that had he not reacted well to the British Imperial proposition that because they were “superior” they were entitled to lift up the “White Man’s Burden” and rule a quarter of the world. Their Catholicism was resented in a Britain which still had a certain sectarian undercurrent, all the more so because they were wealthy and successful, and their support for Irish Nationalism stuck in the Great British craw. Not that anybody, whatever their viewpoint, can argue that the partition of a Small Island which was always united has been anything other than a disaster for Irish People, whatever their persuasion. But just as Doctors tell us we can’t defy nature so we can’t undo history. The drivers behind Partition I’ve explored elsewhere;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/towards-somme-personal-journey.html



Ted Kennedy & Barack Obama

However even the Celtic Sage has been taken aback at the amount of invective directed towards Ted Kennedy in what appears to be orchestrated comments in British media which wrongly accuse him of being an IRA supporter and a cheerleader and fundraiser for “ terrorists”. It is perhaps too much with a public figure to expect people to be guided by the good Latin proverb “de mortuis nil nisi bonum” - Never speak ill of the dead, which is based on a declaration by a 6th. Century B.C. Spartan magistrate as the Dead had no ability to defend themselves. Indeed when looking at the bile directed at Ted Kennedy it is not over egging things to recall the words spoken by Anthony in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar; “The good that men do is oft' buried with them, whilst the evil they do outlives them.”

One of the more printable comments sums it up;

“Teddy Kennedy may be seen as a great politician and family father-figure in the US, but in the UK he will be remembered mostly for two things:
1. Mary Jo Kopechne and Chappaquiddick,
2. His support for the IRA.
That´s about it.”

Well I have no useful comment to make about Chappaquiddick but Ted Kennedy was NEVER a supporter of the IRA or terrorism. Rather he was a staunch supporter of Irish Nationalism - at one time calling for British troops to leave Northern Ireland - although he was later involved in the peace process leading to the Good Friday Agreement. The unification of the Island of Ireland and the reconciliation of the People of Ireland is a legitimate political cause dating back to Britain’s first attempts to colonise Ireland and is not a view that requires an apology. Nor indeed is it a cause which we should allow crypto fascists masquerading as “Irish Republicans” to hijack or allow patronising British commentators to devalue by sticking religious and tribal labels on this legitimate political aspiration. Indeed it would have been surprising if a staunch supporter of the Civil Rights movement in the United States did not apply the same views to Ireland and genuine Irish Republicanism, not the obscene campaign of the Provisional IRA, has the same history, ideals and aspirations as French and American Republicanism.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/03/years-of-french.html

Ted Kennedy’s life and career were acted out within the shadow of his brothers’ unworldly and somewhat undeserved aura of saintliness and flecked with both huge failure and considerable success. He became a Democratic Massachusetts senator in 1962, replacing his brother when he resigned to become president, and was re-elected seven times. Senator Kennedy was a dominant force in US politics for almost 50 years.


Ted Kennedy's election to the Senate 1962

A more considered assessment than those found in the British media is provided by Steve Clemons on Huffington Post.

“Sen. (Edward) Ted Kennedy is dead. He was a friend of Ireland and a foe of gunmen. A hero of the less privileged and a champion of peace. The last tower of Camelot is gone but the change he campaigned for all his life in Ireland and in America is happening today in many ways because of him.
The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die.”

President Barack Obama, of whom he was an active supporter, said he was "heartbroken" to hear of his death. "An important chapter in our history has come to an end," he said. "Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States senator of our time." Senator Kennedy had championed issues such as education and healthcare, central to Mr Obama's first term.

In 2006, Time magazine named him as one of America's "Ten Best Senators" saying that he had "amassed a titanic record of legislation affecting the lives of virtually every man, woman and child in the country". He one of the most effective and popular legislators in American history skilled at forging alliances across party lines: pushing an education initiative with President George W Bush, and immigration reform with Republican John McCain. But he was a fierce critic of the Bush administration, in particular over Iraq and the prisoner abuse scandal.


The Kennedy Brothers, JFK, Robert and Ted

Edward Kennedy was the only one of four brothers to die a natural death. His brother Joseph was killed in an air crash in World War II, and both President John F Kennedy and presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy were assassinated in the 1960s. He was widely expected to be the next Kennedy in the White House, but he was never able to fully overcome the scandal caused in 1969, when he drove a car off a bridge at Chappaquiddick near his home, killing his female passenger. The incident helped derail his only presidential bid, more than a decade later.


Kennedy Dynasty

But he remained active in politics right up until his death, famously endorsing Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination during a tight race with Hillary Clinton last year. At his death, he was the third longest serving senator in US history. Last week, he asked the Massachusetts governor to change state law to allow a speedy succession when his Senate seat became vacant. Analysts suggest that Senator Kennedy feared a lengthy gap could deny Democrats a crucial vote on Mr Obama's flagship health reform. His death comes weeks after that of his older sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, on 11 August. With his passing Jean Ann Kennedy Smith, 81, the sister of President Kennedy is the only surviving child of the nine born to Joseph P Kennedy Snr and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Appointed US ambassador to Ireland in 1993, she now runs a charity which promotes the artistic talents of mentally and physically challenged children.


Kennedy family with Ted in a Boston Hospital

Edward Kennedy sometimes failed to meet the huge expectations placed upon him following the deaths of his older brothers. But his commitment to what he called their "justice, excellence and courage" ensured he guarded their memory fiercely and, despite his flaws, he left a substantial political legacy. He will be missed, especially in Ireland.

“In many ways, he was the last man standing, straddling a mythic family mantle of fame and a vaunted career of political service, all the while wearing the crown of Camelot decades after its heyday...the senator's death brought to a close a storied political era - of assassinations, Jackie O, Palm Beach, Chappaquiddick - and a lifetime of both tragedy and public service. “

Andrea Billup writes in the “The Washington Times” that 'Camelot' fades with Kennedy passing

“He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable by his shock of white hair, his florid, oversize face, his booming Boston brogue, his powerful but pained stride. He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly. He was a Kennedy. “

“New York Times” journalist John M Broder describes the Kennedy effect.


Teddy Kennedy 1932 - 2009

Hill of Tara

The Hill Of Tara

TaraWatch is calling on the public, around the world, to make submissions to an advisory group that has been set up by the Irish Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, to review the current list of potential UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Ireland, known as the Tentative List (of potential nominees as World Heritage Sites).

The Irish Government is currently building the M3 motorway through the heart of the archaeological complex associated with the Hill of Tara, in County Meath, at the same time that it is proposing to nominate Tara to Ireland’s Tentative List. We are asking members of the public to sign our petition and to make submissions, before Friday, January 30th, 2009.

Email your submission to worldheritagetentativelist@environ.ie

Our position is that:

- The Hill of Tara complex qualifies for World Heritage status as a natural and cultural landscape of outstanding universal value, due to its unique cultural significance, and the extent of the surviving remains. Tara covers a much larger area than that the 100 acres of State-owned land on the summit of the Hill, which currently delimits the ‘national monument’. The M3 passes through the middle of the area to be protected.

- The entire Tara archaeological complex and cultural/natural landscape should be declared a World Heritage site. Expert bodies such as the World Monuments Fund, the Heritage Council, have recognised Tara consists of the entire Hill of Tara along with the Tara / Skryne valley, as well as the defensive forts that encircle the hill, including national monuments such as the defensive forts of Rath Lugh (to the east), Rath Miles (to the north) and Ringlestown Rath (to the west), and have called for the re-routing of the M3.

-The M3 motorway, due to open in 2010, should be re-routed outside of the Tara complex, before the site is given UNESCO World Heritage Protection. It would be a breach of the World Heritage Convention for UNESCO to inscribe the site, with the M3 passing through it. This is confirmed by the fact that Tara was placed on the World Monuments Fund, 2008-2010 List of 100 Most Endangered Sites

For more information please visit http://www.tarawatch.org/?p=780


View of Skyrne Hill and Church from The Hill Of Tara at St Patrick's statue


Background on why Tara is so special.

The Hill of Tara (Irish Teamhair na Rí, "Hill of the Kings"), located near the River Boyne, is an archaeological complex that runs between Navan and Dunshaughlin in County Meath, Leinster, Ireland. It contains a number of ancient monuments, and, according to tradition, was the seat of Árd Rí na hÉireann, or the High King of Ireland. Current scholarship based on the research conducted by the Discovery Programme, indicates that Tara was not a true seat of Kingship, but a sacral site associated with Indo-European Kingship rituals.

In Irish mythology it is said to be the sacred place of the Gods and a door way to other worlds. From atop Tara one can see half of the counties in Ireland and other sacred sites like Newgrange and further north the Hill of Slane where Saint Patrick lit his Pascal fire just prior to coming to Tara to confront the ancient pagan religions at their most powerful spot. There are many, many monuments and earthen structures on Tara dating as far back as 2500B.C. along with over 30 visible monuments and even more that have not been discovered.

A grave was found near the hill that is supposedly that of King Lóegaire, who was said to be the last pagan king of Ireland. During the rebellion of 1798, United Irishmen formed a camp on the hill but were attacked and defeated by British troops on 26 May 1798 and the Lia Fáil was moved to mark the graves of the 400 rebels who died on the hill that day. In 1843, the Irish Member of Parliament Daniel O'Connell hosted a peaceful political demonstration on Hill of Tara in favour of repeal of the Act of Union which drew over 750,000 people, which indicates the enduring importance of the Hill of Tara.


Proposed Road

It is also under attack to be ripped and torn in a most sacrilegious manner by those who have no respect for such things and are blinded by greed with tainted hearts filled will corruption. A privately funded toll road is planned to run right through the Tara Hill Valley desecrating the bones of our ancient ancestors and forever scaring the heart of Tara.

This road is needed to be sure, but an alternate route could easily be instigated around the valley saving Tara and protecting it for future generations. However, the National Road Authorities will have nothing to do with this alternate route and plan to go ahead with the original destructive route.

A Surly Republican

Regular followers of the Celtic Sage will know that he has a perverse regard for the writer John Milton (1608-74) whose 400th Birthday is being celebrated on the Tube (and elsewhere!) this year as part of the hugely successful and much imitated Poems on the Underground public arts programme.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/06/poems-on-underground.html

This is part of a year-long international celebration of his writings with exhibitions taking place from Cambridge to New York. The new series of Poems on the Underground features The Expulsion from Eden – the final lines from Paradise Lost, Book 12 by Milton, which is considered by many as one of the greatest poems written in the English language.

Four hundred years after John Milton's birth, the greatest poet and polemicist of the English Revolution still speaks to us loud and clear. Once disparaged by Samuel Johnson as "an acrimonious and surly republican" John Milton must be counted as one of the most significant writers and thinkers of all time. Indeed when you ask people which writer has given the most phrases to the English language most would automatically answer William Shakespeare but they would be wrong. Those who track such things (a man in the basement of a college in Oxford) reckon Shakespeare’s writings have given us roundly 229 English phrases whereas Milton’s writings have given us around 694 phrases ranging from “every cloud has a silver lining” to “Hobson’s Choice.” According to Gavin Alexander, lecturer in English at Cambridge University and fellow of Milton's alma mater, Christ's College, who has trawled the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) for evidence, Milton is responsible for introducing some 630 words to the English language, making him the country's greatest neologist, ahead of Ben Jonson with 558, John Donne with 342 and Shakespeare with 229. Without the great poet there would be no liturgical, debauchery, besottedly, unhealthily, padlock, dismissive, terrific, embellishing, fragrance, didactic or love-lorn. And certainly no complacency.

Lines from Milton pepper the phrase and fable of our modern language: "darkness visible"; "eyeless in Gaza"; "all passion spent"; "pastures new"; "they also serve who only stand and wait"; "amid the blaze of noon". Milton's influence is enormous; his rhetorical range seldom rivalled - from the limpid pastoral of the opening of "Lycidas", via the thunderous "organ-music" of Paradise Lost or the white rage of his sonnet "Upon The Late Massacre in Piedmont", to the strange, broken psychodrama of "Samson Agonistes". In L'Allegro' Milton also 'tripped the light fantastic'. Our images of Hell, the devil and the fall of man have been irrevocably shaped by Milton's versions of them.



Great deals of his tracts were political and the Puritan Cause he espoused has not worn well in our memories. It failed as a political force in an England which has proved itself in history to be generally resistant to extremism. Eventually as a political creed it was exported on the Mayflower with the “Puritan Fathers” to America where its seeds fell on more fertile soil. In Ireland it is particularly reviled for the toxic mix of vicious anti-Catholicism and the brutal re-conquest of Ireland by the forces of the English Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Cromwell landed in Ireland with his New Model Army on behalf of the English Parliament in 1649 to defeat the Confederate rebellion which had controlled Ireland since 1641 and which was allied with the Royalist cause. The vicious Parliamentarian campaign is estimated to have resulted in the death or exile of about 15-20% of the Irish population and its legacy of death followed by the confiscation of land and the passing of draconian anti-catholic Penal Laws is remembered to this day. In vain can you argue to an Irish person that time was not on Cromwell’s side as he vainly tried to save England from a Third Civil War for there was a definite sectarian and racist overtone to the campaign spurred on by tales of Protestants massacred in the Irish Rebellion. Ireland lives with the results of Cromwell’s actions to this day.

Bur we must also remember that by attempting to establish the rights of the people to be represented and the independence and sovereignty of Parliament, the English Puritans laid the foundation for every modern democracy. No longer would an individual rule by Divine Right and not be accountable for his actions. Or as it was expressed in America there would be no Taxation without Representation.

It is odd then that for somebody caricatured as a dour Puritan that Milton wrote a musical masquerade, Comus, albeit on the virtue of chastity and tracts in favour of divorce and free speech. His speech “Areopagitica”, which was subsequently published as a polemical pamphlet was a condemnation of the licensing of printing presses under the Stuart Monarchy. It is a foundational text in the philosophy of the freedom of speech and is famously quoted in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution: Milton denounces censorship, and argues for toleration and the free expression of ideas. It is a tract which still resonates today in the world of the Internet and the Beijing Olympics. Indeed it is the basis for the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.



First Amendment to the United States Constitution; (1791)
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

No doubt Milton would be tickled that this amendment is the reason Airports cannot stop Christian fundamentalists proselytising when you try to escape from an American airport but it is also perversely the reason why American states can’t outlaw pornography and why Americans take libel actions in London and not in their home country.

Thomas Hobson (1545–1631), was a real historical figure and he ran a thriving carrier and horse rental business in Cambridge, England, around the turn of the 17th century. Hobson rented horses mainly to Cambridge University students but refused to rent them out other than in their correct order. The choice his customers were given was 'this or none', i.e. Hobson's choice. The Spectator, No. 509, from 1712, explains how Hobson did business, which shows clearly how the phrase came into being:

"He lived in Cambridge, and observing that the Scholars rid hard, his manner was to keep a large Stable of Horses, ... when a Man came for a Horse, he was led into the Stable, where there was great Choice, but he obliged him to take the Horse which stood next to the Stable-Door; so that every Customer was alike well served according."

After his death in 1631 he was remembered in verse by John Milton in a jocular jape, saying "He had bin an immortall Carrier". That seems rather a strange thing to say just after he had died. Eighty six was a very good innings in the 17th century, but hardly immortality. The phrase was still well enough known in the 20th century for Hobson’s to be adopted then as Cockney rhyming slang for voice. The most celebrated application of Hobson's choice in the 20th century was Henry Ford's offer of the Model-T Ford in 'any colour so long as it's black'.

Here are some of the extracts from Milton’s works which give us some of these 630 Milton inspired English phrases;

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe.
Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 1.



How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year.
On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-three (1631).

Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.
Arcades (1630-1634), line 68.

Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy,
At a Solemn Music (c. 1637), line 1.

Where the bright seraphim in burning row
Their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow.
At a Solemn Music.

Truth...never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth.
The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), Introduction.

Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.
The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643)

For such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not bettered by the borrower, among good authors is accounted Plagiarè.
Eikonoklastes (1649), 23.

Peace hath her victories
No less renowned than war.
To the Lord General Cromwell (1652).

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless.
On His Blindness (1652).

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones
Forget not.
On the Late Massacre in Piedmont (1655).

In mirth that after no repenting draws.
To Cyriack Skinner, upon His Blindness (c. 1655).

But oh! as to embrace me she inclined,
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.
On His Deceased Wife (c. 1658).

O fairest flower! no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken primrose fading timelessly.
Ode on the Death of a fair Infant, dying of a Cough.

License they mean when they cry, Liberty!
For who loves that must first be wise and good.
On the Detraction which followed upon my writing certain Treatises.

No war, or battle's sound
Was heard the world around.
The idle spear and shield were high up hung.
Hymn, stanza 4, line 53.

The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty.
Line 36. L’Allegro (1631)

And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Line 67. L’Allegro (1631)

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy!
Line 61. Il Penseroso (1631)

Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
Which men call earth.
Line 5. Comus (1634)

Was I deceived or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
Line 221. Comus (1634)
Origin of the phrase “every cloud has a silver lining.”



What hath night to do with sleep?
Line 122. Comus (1634)

That power
Which erring men call Chance.
Line 587. Comus (1634)

Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind.
Line 663. Comus (1634)

Love Virtue, she alone is free,
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or, if Virtue feeble were,
Heav'n itself would stoop to her.
Line 1019. Comus (1634)

A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. Areopagitica: (1644)

A man may be a heretic in the truth, and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy. Areopagitica: (1644)

Seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books. Areopagitica: (1644)

• Beauty is nature's brag, and must be shown in courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, where most may wonder at the workmanship.

• Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

• Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined; Till at his second bidding darkness fled, Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.

• Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity.


John Milton and his father's grave. St. Giles Cripplegate, City of London.

• Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself. Paradise Regained: Book IV, Line 327

• The childhood shows the man, As morning shows the day. Paradise Regained: Book IV, Lines 220-21.

• For what can war, but endless war, still breed?

• Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to my conscience, above all liberties. Areopagitica: (1644)

• Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.

• He that has light within his own clear breast May sit in the centre, and enjoy bright day: But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the mid-day sun; Himself his own dungeon.

• He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

• He who reigns within himself and rules passions, desires, and fears is more than a king.

• Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live.

• Love-quarrels oft in pleasing concord end.

• No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free. Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649).

• None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but licence.

• Nothing profits more than self-esteem, grounded on what is just and right.

• The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
Satan, Paradise Lost, Book I, Line 254-255

• The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller.

• The superior man acquaints himself with many sayings of antiquity and many deeds of the past, in order to strengthen his character thereby.

Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.
On His Blindness (1652).

• Though we take from a covetous man all his treasure, he has yet one jewel left; you cannot bereave him of his covetousness.

• Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinions in good men is but knowledge in the making.

• To be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable.


• True it is that covetousness is rich, modesty starves.

• Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her birth.

• Virtue could see to do what Virtue would by her own radiant light, though sun and moon where in the flat sea sunk.

• When complaints are freely heard, deeply considered and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for.

• Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but thee who destroys a good book, kills reason its self. Areopagitica: (1644)

And finally, this is the one George W. Bush should have memorised when he was at Yale;

• • Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe. Paradise Lost, Book I, Lines 648-49.

The Years of the French.

Storming of the Bastille

Bastille Day 14th July 2007, was the 218th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille Prison in France, an event profoundly ignored here entre les Rosbifs.

It is hard to recall the French Revolution without thinking of the response of the Chinese Premier Chou En Lai, who when asked what he thought was its impact answered "It is too early to tell!"

On July 14, 1789, the storming of the Bastille in Paris immediately took on a greater historical dimension; it was proof that power no longer resided in the King as God's representative, but in the people, in accordance with the theories developed by their philosophers of the eighteenth century. Within two days the Revolution could not be reversed. For all citizens of France, the storming of the Bastille came to symbolize liberty and democracy in the struggle against oppression.

People are often unaware of the unique Irish contribution to both sides of the events. The charge of the mob on the Bastille Prison was led by Robespierre’s Irish assistant and of the only seven prisoners they found inside one was an Irish lunatic who thought he was Julius Caesar!

This was to be only the beginning of the influence of French Republicanism on Ireland as Republicanism provided a model to Irish Nationalists opposed to English domination of Ireland. The republican revolutions in France and United States during the late 18th century greatly influenced radical Irish thinkers, who wanted democratic reforms, more independence from Britain and an end to discrimination, particularly against Catholics. The Irish leaders were mainly drawn from the professional educated middle classes and were inspired by the ideas of Tom Paine, Voltaire and Rousseau. What is not widely realised is that Irish Republicanism was founded by Ulster Protestants as the Penal Laws and The Act of Uniformity which decreed everybody had to belong to the Established Church of England also discriminated against the Presbyterians of Ulster. These (along with Quakers and Huguenots) were the Dissenters or non-conformists, labels which are in disuse today.

The original non-sectarian nature of Irish Republicanism, which was later debased by crypto fascists using the “Republican” label, can be seen from this extract from the Original Declaration of the United Irishmen.

“That no reform is practicable, efficacious, or just, which shall not include Irishmen of every religious persuasion. Satisfied, as we are, …………………………………And we do call on, and most earnestly exhort, our countrymen in general to follow our example, and to form similar societies in every quarter of the kingdom for the promotion of constitutional knowledge, the abolition of bigotry in religion and politics, and the equal distribution of the rights of men through all sects and denominations of Irishmen.”



The United Irishmen were the first group to advocate an independent Irish republic. With military aid from the republican government in France, they organised the failed Irish Rebellion of 1798. Whilst not sharing the virulent anti-clericalism of the French Revolutionaries there was a definite commitment to a secular Republic with a clear separation of Church and State. The United Irishmen looked to their fellow Republicans in France and the Directoire sent fraternal assistance on two occasions.

In 1796 French ships carrying 12,000 troops and the United Irish leader Wolfe Tone arrived unseen and unchallenged just outside Bantry Bay, a large naval base in Cork. This amazing success was outweighed by the fact that they could not land due to the unfavourable winds. After six days of waiting dangerous storms blew up and the attempt to land was abandoned. The fleet returned to France and Ireland had to wait a while longer for her revolution. There is endless and largely fruitless speculation ever since about how different the next 200 years might have been had Tone landed. This was the second time the French and Bantry Bay had met in Irish history for a French fleet had arrived there in 1689 to support James II against William of Orange in the campaign which resulted in James defeat at the Battle of the Boyne.


French Fleet Bantry Bay

In 1798, the Catholic peasants of Wexford, driven to desperation by savage landlordism, created a movement powerful enough to capture and hold Wexford town and many of its outlying areas. At one stage it seemed that the Wexford rebels would link up with their comrades from Carlow and Kilkenny and march on Dublin. In June mainly Protestant Ulster caught the revolutionary fever.

In August 1798, Nine years after the French Revolution, a fleet of ships carrying over 1.100 officers and men from revolutionary France and Irish patriots landed in County Mayo, in westernmost Ireland. They were supposed to be an advance guard, followed by other French ships with the leader of the rebellion, Wolfe Tone. Briefly they triumphed, raising hopes among the impoverished local peasantry and gathering a group of supporters. The hope and despair of the remarkable “Year of the French” is caught in the marvelous historical novel of the same name by Thomas Flanagan and by Thomas Pakenham in “The Year of Liberty.”


Battle of New Ross 1798

Following on the Irish Rebellion of 1798, a French invasion force landed near Killala in County Mayo on August 22, hoping to join forces with Irish rebels. After some initial successes, the French force of about 1000 men were confronted by overwhelmingly greater numbers of British troops at Ballinamuck and shortly surrendered. An Irish irregular force, including Irish deserters from the British army, continued to fight on and suffered heavy casualties. Whereas the French prisoners were treated honourably and repatriated, some 200 Irish including their General George Blake were hanged as traitors.


Memorial, Garden of Remembrance, BallinamuckThis stone stands in the Garden of Remembrance which was opened in 1998 on the site of the old court house to commemorate the Battle of Ballinamuck.

English rule in Ireland did indeed totter in 1798 — but it survived and the insurgency collapsed in the face of a brutal English counterattack. More than 30,000 Irish, overwhelmingly peasants, were slaughtered in the months of revolt. The immediate political legacy was one of repression, terror and communal division.

In the aftermath of the rebellion the British government decided to adopt a new and more drastic solution to the Irish question. They concluded that the self-government that had existed until this point had not only been ineffective but had contributed to the revolutionary mood. It would be replaced with an Act of Union which would ensure that Ireland would be governed from the Westminster parliament on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom. So in 1800, after an infamous campaign of bribery, corruption and intimidation the Act of Union was passed and my home town of Dublin lost it’s Parliament and a great deal of it’s wealth and influence.

This was however not the end to French support for Irish revolution. In 1802 France and Britain had made the uneasy peace of the treaty of Amiens. However, covertly driven by self-interest the French government promised a large military force to support a rising in Ireland. They also had made agreements with revolutionary movements in Scotland and England with the intention of encircling Britain.

In Ireland the United Irishmen gathered pledges from influential backers still opposed to the Act of Union to support a rising financially and morally. Thomas Addis Emmet returned to Ireland in the autumn of 1802 and during the winter of 1802 the first half of 1803 he organised and armed the United Irishmen. Although he was mainly confined to Dublin, he was in close contact with groups in Carlow, Wicklow and Wexford. Everything went as it should until 16 July 1803 when an explosion took place in a house on Patrick Street in Dublin. This house was in use as depot for arms and explosives and the explosion had not only blown up the house, but also the secrecy.

The discovery of the plans forced Thomas Emmet to fix an earlier date for the rising, and therefore a rising without French support. Because the signals from the rest of the country were positive he decided Saturday 23 July as the day of the rising. Despite the promises and intentions Thomas Emmet found out that only a fraction of the men expected had turned up. Groups outside Dublin failed to rise due to poor attendance. The rebellion was doomed before it started and with a signal rocket Thomas' brother Robert Emmet ended the organised rising at 9pm. The soldiers retreated to barracks where they remained until the danger had passed. Thomas Addis Emmet fled to France but his brother Robert was captured and sentenced to death after a trial where he made his famous speech from the dock which includes, amongst others, this ringing passage:


Robert Emmet

“I am charged with being an emissary of France An emissary of France? And for what end? It is alleged that I wished to sell the independence of my country? And for what end? Was this the object of my ambition? And is this the mode by which a tribunal of justice reconciles contradictions? No, I am no emissary; and my ambition was to hold a place among the deliverers of my country--not in power, nor in profit, but in the glory of the achievement!...”

Emmet's trial, at which a Castle spy represented him, is mainly remembered for this stirring speech and his stab at the 'hanging judge' that "Lord Norbury might easily drown in the blood of those he had sent to the gallows". Norbury sentenced him to a traitor's death. On 20 September 1803, Robert Emmet, was publicly hanged, drawn and Quartered outside St. Catherine’s Church in Thomas Street, Dublin. He was the last person to receive this barbaric sentence from a British court. Many years later I had the privilege of being at St. Catherine’s at the unveiling of a plaque to the 18 ordinary Dublin workingmen who were also executed in the same barbaric manner with Robert Emmet.


Execution of Robert Emmet

The truth is that Robert Emmet was an inept revolutionary but his idealism and courage cannot be doubted. His speech from the dock is still a clarion call of integrity, in the context in which it was delivered the courage required is beyond understanding. The image of this young member of the Protestant Ascendancy was further enhanced by two class mates from Trinity College who shared in the revulsion at his fate, Robert Curran whose sister Sarah he courted and Thomas Moore who composed several allegorical ballads in his memory including “The Minstrel Boy”.



When Thomas Emmet returned to France he found the revolution had taken another turn under Bonaparte and in 1815 another member of the Irish Protestant Ascendancy, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, crushed its military power entirely at the Battle of Waterloo.

The Emmet rebellion brought to an end the 14 years of active French involvement in Irish Independence and my home town of Dublin went into a deep slumber in the 19th Century which made it a byword for poverty and paradoxically preserved much of its Georgian inheritance. A slumber which was to dramatically end with the cataclysmic awakening of the 1916 Rising.

The French Revolution may have happened 218 years ago but in Ireland it continues to influence and inform the body politic I can only echo the words of Chou En Lai when considering its impact and suggest "It is too early to tell!"

The First Female Member of Parliament

The media in the U.K. often repeat the common error of referring to Nancy Astor as the "First female member of parliament." This distinction actually belongs to Constance Gore-Booth, The Countess Markiewicz, who in the December 1918 general election, was elected for the constituency of Dublin St Patrick's as one of 73 Sinn Fein MPs. This made her the first woman elected to the British House of Commons.

http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/members-faq-page2/

She did not take her seat and along with the other Sinn Fein TDs formed the first Dail Eireann. She was also the first woman in Europe to hold a cabinet position (Minister of Labour of the Irish Republic, 1919–1922).


Nancy Astor with evacuee children during WWI

When her husband Waldorf Astor went "upstairs" to the House of Lords, Nancy Astor decided to stand in Plymouth Sutton in his place. She won the election in November 1919, beating her main rival, Liberal Isaac Foot - the father of Michael Foot who of course went on to lead the Labour Party. Thus, Lady Astor became the first women to take her seat in the House of Commons. Incidentally, her maiden speech on the evils of excessive drinking could probably be dusted off and re-used today!

The Countess Markiewicz who was the first female MP was also a suffragette and like Nancy Astor a member of the aristocracy but there are few other comparisons except that they both led extraordinary lives.





Constance at 21



Constance Gore-Booth was born into a famous Anglo-Irish family on Feb. 4, 1868 at Buckingham Gate, London. Her father, Sir Henry Gore-Booth was an explorer and philanthropist with a large estate at Lissadell in Co. Sligo. The Gore-Booths were known as model landlords in Sligo. During the famine of 1879–80, Sir Henry provided free food for the tenants on his estate in the north west of Ireland. Perhaps being raised in this atmosphere of concern for the common man had something to do with the way Constance and her younger sister Eva would conduct their later lives. Their privileged position as members of the land owning Anglo-Irish Ascendancy contrasted with that to the lives of the poor dispossessed Irish families along the western coast must have affected them as well. Eva would become an advocate for labour and women's suffrage in England, and Constance would become the most famous women of the Irish revolutionary movement.






Lissadell House, Co. Sligo



A frequent guest to their estate at Lissadell, Co. Sligo was a young W.B. Yeats. Later, after their deaths, in a poem he would capture the atmosphere he recalled of this great house and its two daughters.


Constance Gore-Booth portrait in 1905 when she was living in Paris




“The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.”



From William Butler Yeats' - In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz






Eva & Constance - "both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.”



Her Polish title derives from her marriage in 1901 to Casmir Markiewicz in 1901 when she was pregnant with their child. He left Ireland in 1913 to live back in the Ukraine and she was estranged from him and later their daughter Maeve until just before her death in 1927. After training at the Slade School of Art in London she settled back in Dublin in 1903 and helped found the United Artists Club to bring together nationalist leaning Artists and Literary figures including W.B. Yeats great muse, Maude Gonne, with whom she was involved in the Abbey Theatre. She became involved in the Gaelic revival and made the acquaintance and was influenced by many figures in the Irish Nationalist movement. In the 1908 British Election she went to Manchester, where her sister Eva had settled as a leading Suffragette, and stood unsuccessfully against Nancy Astor’s great nemesis Winston Churchill.







The year after in 1909 Markiewicz founded Fianna Eireann, a para-military organisation outwardly similar to Baden Powell’s Boy Scouts which instructed teenage boys in the use of firearms. She was jailed for the first time in 1911 for speaking at an Irish Republican Brotherhood demonstration organised to protest against George V's visit to Ireland. Markiewicz also joined the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), a small volunteer force formed by the Scottish socialist James Connolly, in response to the lockout of 1913 to defend the demonstrating workers from the police. Markiewicz held the position of an officer, above the rank-and-file members making her a decision maker, and more importantly, able to carry arms.


College of Surgeons, Stephen's Green, Dublin

As a Lieutenant in the Irish Citizens Army she was one of the leaders of the Easter 1916 Rising in Dublin where the rebels occupied strategic buildings. The counter attack by British forces under General Maxwell resulted in widespread destruction. Markiewicz was second in command to Michael Mallin in St. Stephen's Green. She supervised the setting-up of barricades as the rising began and was in the middle of the fighting all around Stephen's Green, wounding a British sniper. Eventually under attack from British forces they retrenched to the College of Surgeons where Mallin and Markiewicz and their men would hold out for six days, finally giving up when the British brought them a copy of the leader of the rising, Padraig Pearse's, surrender order.



GPO Dublin






Easter Rising 1916



The rising was not generally supported in Ireland and especially not in Dublin which had witnessed widespread destruction as well as 132 dead among the British forces and the police and 318 Irish deaths, mostly civilians. Prisoners were jeered after the surrender, and executions were demanded in motions passed in some Irish local authorities and by many newspapers, including the Irish Independent and The Irish Times. This is not too surprising given the atmosphere of the time with thousands of Irish soldiers fighting as volunteers in the British Army in the war against Germany and the general view that by striking in time of war the rebels had committed treason.

For an insight on the schism caused in Ireland by World War 1 see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/towards-somme-personal-journey.html



However, the number and swiftness of the executions, combined with the arrests and deportations and the destruction of the centre of Dublin by the artillery, led to a surge of support for the rebels. Of the ninety originally sentenced to death at summary trials by military courts without representation or rights of appeal, fifteen of those (including all seven signatories of the Proclamation of Independence) had their sentences confirmed by General Maxwell and were executed by firing squad between 3 May and 12 May (among them the seriously-wounded Connolly, shot while tied to a chair because he was too weak to stand). At her court-martial Markiewicz told the court, "I did what was right and I stand by it." Her conviction was not in doubt, only her sentence. She was sentenced to death, but General Maxwell commuted this to life in prison on "account of the prisoner's sex." She told the court, "I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me".



Constance Markiewicz home from prison 1917



The Countess was released from prison in 1917, along with others involved in the Rising, as the government in London granted a general amnesty for those who had participated in it. It was around this time that Markiewicz, born into the Church of Ireland converted to Catholicism. Markiewicz was in Holloway prison when her colleagues assembled in Dublin at the first meeting of Dáil Éireann, the unilaterally-declared Parliament of the Irish Republic.



When her name was called, she was described as being "imprisoned by the foreign enemy" (fé ghlas ag Gallaibh). She was re-elected to the Second Dáil in the House of Commons of Southern Ireland elections of 1921.Markiewicz served as Minister for Labour from April 1919 to January 1922. She left government in 1922 along with Eamon de Valera and others in opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty which resulted in the Partition of Ireland and the British King remaining as nominal head of state. She fought actively for the Republican cause in the Irish Civil War and after the War she toured the United States fund raising. She was not elected in the 1922 Irish general election but was returned in the 1923 general election for the Dublin South constituency. In common with other Republican candidates, she did not take her seat. However her staunch republican views led her to being sent to jail again. In prison, she and 92 other female prisoners went on hunger strike. Within a month, the Countess was released.


Markievicz pictured with de Valera and Mrs Tom Clarke, 16 May 1926. The event was the founding the Fianna Fáil Party. Markievicz had less than a year to live.

She joined Fianna Fail on its foundation in 1926, chairing the inaugural meeting of the new party in La Scala Theatre. In the June 1927 general election, she was re-elected to the 5th Dail as a candidate for the new Fianna Fail party, which was pledged to return to Dail Eireann, but died only five weeks later, before she could take up her seat.


Countess Markiewicz amongst the poor in Dublin

She died at the age of 59, on 15 July 1927, possibly of tuberculosis (contracted when she worked in the poorhouses of Dublin) or complications related to appendicitis. Her estranged husband and daughter and stepson were by her side. When Countess Markiewicz 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, Eamon de Valera, the Fianna Fail leader, gave the funeral oration.


Funeral



In his poem “Easter 1916” W.B. Yeats who was on the other side to her “die hard” republican politics aptly captures the change in Constance Gore-Booth and in Ireland since his earlier visits to Lissadell.



“That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?”

“Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.”



Perhaps the life of this privileged aristocrat who became a Suffragette, a Revolutionary, a Military Commander and the first women MP and Minister is best summed up by the playwright Sean O'Casey, who quit Connolly's Citizen Army in a dispute with Markiewicz, who once said of her: "One thing she had in abundance -- physical courage, with that she was clothed as with a garment."



When seeking history's female heroes, maybe the remarkable story of Constance Gore-Booth, The Countess Markiewicz, should be in the reckoning?