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 national identity as anything but British. I remember my late mother (1917 - 2013) repeating the shibboleths of her youth, mostly in jest, mind you, like "Burn everything English except their coal," a slogan dating from the Anglo-Irish Trade War or Economic War which lasted from 1932 until 1938.  The then Free State was refusing to pay what was called the "land annuities," payments to Britain resulting from loans to Irish farmers in the late nineteenth century. We were too young as a nation and too lacking in a strong sense of national identity to throw off its shoulders the cloak of our own much-needed mythology. The young nation and all her children felt anything but English or British.  And yet, that is but one side of the story, albeit a necessarily strong one.

History is far from monochrome.  They say that victors write the history of whatever conquest, war or struggle occurred.  That may be true in the immediate aftermath of whatever cataclysm occurred, but as the years recede both professional, amateur and local historians set to work with more objective lenses at their disposal and attempt to paint in a more technicolour picture of what actually happened and attempt to give the stories of the vanquished as well as the conquerors, including accounts of the real pain of individuals caught up in the hatred of a war they really cared so little about in the first place. These historians begin to excavate the truth or truths from as many sides of any particular dispute as they possibly can and consequently they lay bare many bloodier truths that have lain hidden under the seemingly noble cloak of specific mythologies.

Therefore, we need at times to demythologise our heroes by painting in a fuller picture of what actually happened - to re-tell the story from as many angles as possible.  And yet, as a philosopher and teacher, I am aware that our legitimate efforts at demythologizing* must not totally destroy legitimate myths which after all are very central to the national identity of every country in the world. (One can advert to a parallel truth here that a certain amount of personal mythology is needed for the establishment of a personal sense of identity as an individual.  Indeed, I would content that the idea of individuality is one of the myths we as persons have invented to give us a sense of our own selves in the first place. This philosophical point will have to wait for another post on personal identity to be explicated more fully.)

What I am arguing for here in this prolegomenon to the books I will list here below with just a few brief comments, rather than full reviews thereof, is that demythologizing our heroes is essentially about painting in a fuller picture of things rather than an attempt merely to smash those images held sacred by some. Iconoclasm for the sake of iconoclasm achieves nothing but rather foments further hatreds.  In fact, it merely attempts to smother another truth, perhaps one against which we are deeply prejudiced in the first place and need to acknowledge. I will list here merely the books I have recently read myself on the subject of 1916 just to bring myself up to speed with this important commemoration - the 100 anniversary of the 1916 Insurrection.

1. The Easter Commemoration Digest: Centenary Edition 1916-2016. 

My copy of the Commemorative Digest

This is a very comprehensive publication with contributions from the Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Joan Burton leader of the Labour Party, the leader of the Fianna Fail party Micheál Martin and Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin. We are informed that many of the other articles are taken from the previous editions of this journal and represent the best of the crop therefrom. However, bearing in mind what I have said above, there is a strongly mythological presentation of the lives of the heroes of 1916 given here, and, in places, it reads like a hagiography with the writers being often mere "laudatores temporis acti" rather than offering critical appraisal of the times. Bearing this in mind, the reader will still be able to learn many relevant details about the 1916 insurrection in all its dimensions.  In short, this volume seeks to mythologize our heroes, though, once that is borne in mind, it yields up plentiful facts and finer detail. See HERE

2. 1916: Dream and Death. 

This is an informative and up-to-date commemorative annual, published by the well-known bimonthly journal/magazine History Ireland, which critically assesses the importance and significance of the 1916 Rising.  The range of authors, experts, and historians who are writing on this issue is broad. It represents a comprehensive treatment of its subject: Joseph Connell, Joe Duffy, Roy Foster, John Gibney, Bartle Faulkner, Lar Joye, Darren Kelly, Mary Mc Auliffe, Lucy Mac Diarmid, Derek Molyneaux, Brian P. Murphy, Maurice Walshe, Pádraig Yeates and Joost Augusteijn. The book is divided into five sections: (i) Setting the Scene, (ii) Rebels, (iii) Crown Forces, (iv) Civilians and (v) Reflections. They explore such topics as Padraig Pearse as a modern man of the early twentieth century, the political philosophy of James Connolly, the role of the Auxiliaries, the slaughter at Mount Street of English troops, and a broad descriptive account is offered of the weapons and arms used by the British troops. This is riveting and informative stuff.  Then, there is a whole section given to exploring how the civilians fared during those dangerous and heady times. Importantly, within this section, Joe Duffy writes about the subject of his latest book, the forgotten children - from all sides - who were shot during the Insurrection. Mary MacAuliffe writes that while the number of male rebels during the Rising was about 2,500, there was a notable group of some 250 very courageous women who belonged either to the ICA or Cumann na mBan: "For the most part these women operated as helpers, nurses and cooks, although a few, such as Margaret Skinnider, stationed with Mallin and Markievicz at the Royal College of Surgeons, took part in the fighting." (p.35) 

My copy of 1916: Dream and Death

The role of non-combatant women is also critically explored by the author Lucy Mac Diarmid - "The Irish Mammy on the threshold of Rebellion" - while Pádraig Yeates writes about looters, deserters and "ordinary decent criminals." The reflection section of this journal concludes with a comprehensive survey of reactions to the Rising as it raises questions about the significance of 1916 for us today one hundred years later.  Joe Lee, Roy Foster and John Gibney raise important questions for us to discuss in twenty-first century Ireland. Lee cautions us that we must never sacrifice facts or evidence on the altar of polemics like P.H. Pearse and his later critic Rev Professor Francis Shaw S.J. both so readily did. Pearse, he argues, can be more readily forgiven this serious flaw than Shaw who was allegedly a professional historian with more evidence at his disposal than the 1916 hero. R.F. Foster writes about the background of Yeats's famous poem "Easter 1916," which, he informs us, is far more ambiguous than it at first seems and notes that Yeats' first reaction to the execution of Major John McBride among the others was to rush to Normandy and propose to Maude Gonne now that she had been widowed.  This famous poem was composed in Coole Park, the home of his friend and benefactor Lady Gregory. Finally, John Gibney briefly reviews a plethora of books written in this centenary year and praises the scholarship of Rev Professor F.X. Martin OSA, whom I knew myself, for opening up serious scholarship on this period of our history by returning to new and overlooked sources.  This reviewer here notes a certain poetic and dramatic balance in this as Fr Martin redeems the ecclesiastical prejudices of a polemical and poor historian that was Fr. Shaw.  In short, this book calls us to a necessary demythologizing and demystification of our heroes.

3 Remembering Ireland 1916: 

This is a comprehensive workbook for schools published by the educational publisher C.J.Fallon Ltd., (Dublin, October 2015). It contains 8 individual and self-contained teaching units: (i) The Story of the Rising, (ii) Boats and Guns, (iii) The Proclamation, (iv) Our National Flag, (v) Mná na hÉireann, (vi) Children of the Rising, (vii) Evidence and Eyewitnesses and (viii) Tears and Jails.  This book concentrates on the evidence of witnesses and avoids all traces of the mythologising and mystification that encumbered and obfuscated the historical facts in the schoolbooks of this reviewer's life.

4 1916-1966: Scoil Iósaif, Marino Privately published, Scoil Iósaif, 1966

This is a book, written in Irish in 1966 for the fiftieth anniversary of 1916, that recounts the lives of those past pupils of the school who fought in the Rising.  While it was written and compiled by Rev. Br. A.P. Kavanagh, C.F.C., a scholarly brother with definite Republican leanings, it nevertheless gives an enormous amount of information that was obviously laboriously and painstakingly gathered by the said writer and editor.  It is only in rare places completely biased, and is consequently an important document in local history that dates from a highly mythologizing period in our country's history, namely 1966. It can be viewed at the following link Iris Chuimhneacháin 1966.  The present reviewer is currently translating this book into English.

5. Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland 1890 - 1923 by Roy Foster (Penguin, Random House, 2015)

I remember well the following lines which I learnt at college, lines from Yeats's poem "Easter 1916":

I have met them at the close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteen-century houses.

Foster's title "Vivid Faces" comes from this poem.  I have already mentioned that this poem is a highly ambivalent and ambiguous one penned by W.B. Yeats who would have known some of our "great" heroes.  It is also worth noting that the author of this book, Professor R.F. Foster has written a widely acclaimed two-part biography of W.B. Yeats. In this comprehensive book, Foster is far more inclusive than the poet who only mentioned four rebels by name - he actually tracks the lives of dozens of rebels, recounting their interests such as learning Irish, their love lives, their reading matter, their involvement in literary as well as military pursuits.  He plunges headlong into the rich pool of contemporary diaries, articles, books and the later recollections of people involved in this revolutionary era to create a compelling cultural history of the men and women who lived then.  Not surprisingly, each chapter has extensive footnotes - ranging from some 50 to 100 or more. There is also a wide ranging and extensive bibliography appended to this well-researched book. Foster's main point is that the revolutionary leadership then was, in fact, reacting against its elders, that is, the previous generation of whom Pearse was to say that "there has been nothing more terrible in Irish history than the failure of the last generation." John Kerrigan's review in The Guardian points out that this work of scholarship avoids the age-old Irish vice of "turning history into commemoration." See Guardian Review. I would have preferred if Kerrigan had used the word "myth" instead of "commemoration" here because all nations commemorate historical events.  Indeed, it is also plainly arguable that all nations turn history into mythology, not only Ireland - we are no exception to the faults of humanity! However, while this book is a gripping read, it leaves out of its scope how the Labour movement under Larkin and Connolly contributed to the revolution.  There is room here, no doubt, for another well-researched and learned book from Mr Foster's pen and he knows it all too well. 

6.  A City in Wartime: Dublin 1914- 18 (Gill and Macmillan, 2011)

My copy of this book

This book is a salutary reminder that social history is as important in the life of any nation as its political (and often consequent military) history.  The author, Pádraig Yeates is a well-respected journalist and trade union activist.  Moreover, he is a distinguished social and labour historian and the author of Lockout, the standard work on the great 1913 labour dispute.  He is also the author of the acclaimed A City in Turmoil and the third book in that series a City in Civil War which was published in 2015.  The present book, A City in Wartime reminds us that for all the headline-grabbing events like those of Easter Week 1916 and the War of Independence, putting bread on the table was still the most important priority for most.  This history book looks at how the lives of ordinary Irish citizens in Dublin were affected by the above-mentioned revolutionary or military activities.  It also recounts, needless to say, the sacrifice of some 25,ooo Irishmen who joined the British Army during World war 1.  Yeates examines in this well-researched book the motivations of all soldiers and citizens on all sides of the political divide, how ordinary families survived those war and revolutionary years and the impact of those same war years in social culture, music halls, theatres, child cruelty, prostitution, public health and so on and so forth.

7. The Easter Rising. Stroud: The History Press. First published in 1999, but comprehensively updated and revised in 2011 in the light of important developments such as the release in 2004 by the Bureau of Military History of almost 2,000 witness statements written by participants in the events of 1912 - 21. (See HERE) 

Professor Roy Foster describes this book on the cover as "(t)he best survey of the 1916 Rising."   It is often that comments given in the blurb, and most especially on the cover, overstate and even exaggerate the importance of a book.  However, this is not the case with the present book, which is written by a duo of scholars, Michael T. Foy and Brian Barton. Mr Foy is the former Head of History at Methodist College, Belfast and is a Tutor in Irish History at Queen's University, Belfast while his co-author Mr Barton is a Senior Research Fellow in Irish History and Politics in the same university.  This is an especially objective and clearly written account of the Rising from two scholars from Northern Ireland, and as teachers and tutors, they are very good at setting the scene for the uninitiated history student.  Even a complete beginner will find this book a good introduction to the subject.  I cannot comment on whether Professor Foster's comments are true - certainly their account, if not the best survey, is surely the clearest.  What this reviewer especially loved are the wonderful pen pictures the authors paint of the individual leaders of 1916, especially that of Thomas Clarke who had spent fifteen years in an English jail - Chatham Prison where "he avoided insanity through his 'unconquerable will,' endlessly practising mathematical calculation by counting the number of bricks in cells, bolts on doors and arrows and buttons on inmates' clothes," and that "he re-emerged as a terribly damaged man, physically wizened, prematurely aged, socially inept, paralysingly shy and filled with hatred for British politicians and British rule in Ireland... yet... he was also now a man 'steeled and hardened, the embodiment of Fenianism, an impregnable rock', convinced that he had survived for a purpose." (pp. 12 -13) In short, a gripping read and a brilliantly clear exposition.


8.  Children of the Rising: The Untold Story of the Young Lives lost during Easter 1916. Hachett Books, Ireland, 2015.  

My copy of Joe Duffy's book.

This book is another salutary reminder of the effects of war on the ordinary civilian population who get buried behind all the headlines in the papers or on the broadcast media.  That has surely been the foremost tragic consequence of the nature of war in the twentieth century, namely the deaths of millions of innocent civilians.  The well-known RTÉ broadcaster, Joe Duffy, took an early and timely interest in the 40 children killed during and as a result of the 1916 Insurrection and has written this informative and lavishly illustrated book that gives the names, the details of the all too untimely deaths of these children and outlines their family backgrounds.  In short,  Mr Duffy puts a human face to mere statistics that are too often just rattled off mindlessly and consequently ignored.  The present reviewer had the privilege of meeting the author and hearing him speak passionately about the subject or indeed subjects of his book at an event to mark the centenary of the Rising in his own school. (See HERE)  The following few lines from the book are both moving and illuminating: "It is likely that more children died violently in Dublin during Easter week 1916 than anywhere else on God's earth, making it the most dangerous place in the world for young people to be that historic week.  Forty children aged 16 and under died as a result of the Rising, which broke out at noon on Easter Monday." (p. 3).

Duffy starts his account of these forty little brittle, but important, lives with the death of a two-year-old Sean Foster, shot in crossfire while being wheeled in a pram by his mother, Katie, on Church Street.  We learn, to add to the tragedy, that his father, John Foster, had been killed on the Western Front the year previously, and further, Katie's brother, Joseph O'Neill, was fighting with the Irish Volunteers during the Rising.  In other words, history is so much more complicated than a mythologised account of it would have us believe.  We, modern Irish citizens, have much to be thankful for both to professional historians and to good amateur ones like Mr Joe Duffy for filling in many of the complex tributaries that flow into the river of so-called mainline history. 

9. Patrick Pearse: A Life in Pictures: Mercier Press 2013, Brian Crowley

My copy of this book

Brian Crowley has worked at the Pearse Museum, Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin since 2001.  In 2006 he took over as curator of that museum.  He has contributed to many conferences related to P. H. Pearse and modern Irish history.  The collection of photographs in this short book (160 pages), most of which this present reviewer has never seen before, offers a unique insight into one of the most significant figures of twentieth-century Irish history.  Pearse was the greatest visionary among many lesser visionaries who dreamt the great dream of Irish liberty.  That mythology should have grown up most especially about Pádraig Mac Piarais is most understandable given the universal search for the sense of nationhood during the earlier and middle decades of the twentieth century.  This book helps the reader understand the force of that mythology and why it grew so strongly in this one leader of rebels who, unusually was the son of a union between an English father and an Irish mother. This book is an enlightening and riveting read that is lavishly illustrated. Its author, Brian Crowley studied in TCD where he gained his B.A. in English and History after which he completed a Masters in Museology at the University of East Anglia.  As well as being curator at the Pearse Museum, he is also director of the Irish Museums Association and has served as editor of its journal Museums Ireland. 

*Demythologization is a hermeneutic approach to religious texts that seeks to separate cosmological and historic claims from philosophical, ethical and theological teachings. The term demythologization (in German, Entmythologisierung) was introduced by the Protestant biblical scholar and theologian Rudolf Bultmann, but it has earlier precedents. The author of these reviews is a postgraduate in both theology and philosophy and believes strongly that the notion of demythologization can profitably be used in the fields of politics and history just as it can so profitably be used in either theology or the Scriptures. That is why I have italicised this word and cognate forms of it in the above review.