Demythologizing our Heroes: Some Recent and Not so Recent Books on 1916
A Note on Mythology and Demythologising Here in Ireland, we are commemorating the one-hundredth anniversary of what we commonly call the Easter Rising , or simply the Rising , or even more simply still 1916 . All three terms are etched into the consciousness of every Irish man and woman since birth almost - at least into that of my own generation anyway (I was born in 1958 and recall well its fiftieth anniversary). Looking back at that anniversary through the twin lenses of my own age and that of the repeated documentaries from those more innocent days of 1966, one can say without a shadow of a doubt that the 1966 commemoration by our young state was shot through with almost pure mythology. After all, we were only a young nation some 44 years free of the British yoke, freedom having come in the watershed year of 1922. As a young nation we needed a strong mythology to bring us safely and surely through years of economic struggle with a determination to forge an nat...