“They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools!” Spittle flies from the mouth of a furious man in dark green uniform. We are back in 1915. At the grave of republican O’Donovan Rossa stands Patrick Pearse, a school teacher who thought it was time for a revolution. He wanted an independent Ireland, free from Great Britain. “Ireland unfree shall never be at peace!”
I am at the enormous Glasnevin graveyard, where 1,5 million souls rest. It is not the ghosts, but the poetic words of Pearse who deliver goose bumps. The actor is so committed to his role, you can feel the powerlessness of the old days.
Irish youths stand around me. The smell of alcohol gives away the night before with pints of Guinness, but the hangover has been beaten to commemorate the Easter Rising centenary. As a member of the military council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) Patrick Pearse helped plan the rebellion. As a teacher he loved the Irish culture and Gaelic language and he saw a blood sacrifice as the only way of ending the suffering of the Irish under the British regime.
The Irish know how to dig up their history in a characteristic way. Not through dry stories, but with anecdotes full of details. At Glasnevin the young guide awakens the dead beneath our feet. On the other side of Dublin, in jail Kilmainham Gaol, Roy Barron shows the site where fourteen rebellion leaders were executed. “The wounded James Connolly had to be tied to a chair, so he would not fall down.”
We walk through dark, cold cells, while Roy explains how the Easter Rising teared families apart. “My grandfather has never talked to his brothers since.”
Bullet holes in school bus
Bernard Bermingham welcomes visitors of The 1916 Freedom Tour with an old rifle in his hands. He wears a long coat in a cream colour, but the driver has a uniform like the one Patrick Pearse used to own. The army green truck The Long Fella is a transformed school bus, with bullet holes and black and white photos, narrow seats which are not ideal for the long-legged.
“I know to what extent a rising can change families,” Bernard says. Far from everyone supported the rebels in 1916. When the British conquered, Dubliners even started celebrating on the streets. “Many Irish were fighting with the British in the First World War at that time, that is why a revolt was considered inappropriate. And during the Rising there were no food supplies for a week, people were hungry.”
The Long Fella rides through the streets of Dublin. Bernard tells stories almost constantly, for almost one and a half hour, without any breaks. About the first rebel who shot a British soldier, but was killed shortly afterwards. The woman urinating on her pistol, before her surrender. The machine guns around St. Stephen’s Green picnic park. At almost every battle the Irish fighters had too few men.
Songs with history
Election signs with portrait photos of Sinn Féin and Fine Gael politicians decorate the roads. Thousands of people walk in and out of fashion shops, cyclists are trying to find some space in between the double-decker busses, fearing for their lives. This flourishing city, where you can sing along with classic songs such as Molly Malone, was a battle field. You can see it for yourself, looking at the bullet holes in the General Post Office at O’Connoll Street, the main headquarters of the rebels during the 1916 Rising.
Not only me, Dubliners also find the severe struggle hard to believe. Singer-songwriter Paul O’Brien, born in harbour area East Wall, went looking for stories and wrote an album about the Easter Rising.
‘You’ll see them walk down Sherriff Street
In two and threes and groups
They’re the lassies from the morning shift
Making bombs for Kitchener’s troops’
Paul’s grandmother was born in Scotland and worked in a British bullet and bomb factory in Dublin. Meanwhile his other grandmother got a British bullet in the leg. “My parents never talked about it,” Paul’s mother Lily O’Brien says. “No one mentioned that time.”
Inclement sea breeze
East Wall is a neighbourhood with narrow houses, where a lot of harbour labourers used to live. Outspoken men not accepting to be walked over, joined the rising in massive groups.
I walk along dark red stone bricks, concrete and plastered walls in pastel colours. The odour of burning peat fills the air. The streets are shining, an image created by the thin film of water that lies almost constantly over Dublin, like never evaporating morning dew. Those who live here, have to keep their fires lit to keep the inclement sea breeze and damp air outside.
“A bomb maker used to live behind this blue door,” Hugo McGuinness explains. Hugo is a member of the East Wall History Group and a good ‘source’ for Paul O’Brien. The woman who brought tea to the rebels lived a little bit further, on another street the fighters proudly walked in one line, until the machine gun of the British started shooting again.
Hugo can literally tell every story behind every stone, knows all names and years by heart. He does not make small talk, is more concerned about the facts in and around 1916. It is better than a BBC-documentary of Louis Theroux, this is live.
We meet Eamon, who shows us the medals of his grandfather Peter Carpenter. And Colm, grandson of Willie Halpin, a fighter small enough to hide in the chimney. “My parents never talked about Willie. Probably because people were laughing about his height.”
A few days after reading out the proclamation of the Irish Republic Patrick Pearse had to surrender. It was the execution of the wounded James Connolly that created a big shock in Ireland and swayed the majority of its citizens to stand behind the rebels. The national sentiment grew. When nationalist party Sinn Féin won the elections in 1918, the Irish ended up in a war for independence.
After more than seven centuries of English power Ireland became independent in the 1930’s, and a republic a decade later, like Patrick Pearse so badly wanted. Colm Halpin smiles. “I am proud of my grandfather. He was brave.”
