Yawn Patrick.

Cheers, I’m off today and wanted something to do, think I’ll head along

Thanks for the info. Will check it out some day.

Glasnevin cemetery do free tours twice a week too, and they’re great.

Poblachtánach, Gaeilgeoir, Fíor laoch!

A true Irish hero, unlike the ones that are being held up as heroes to us today, the John Humes and the Bonos of this world wouldn’t have been fit to lace this man’s shoes

I went to visit Glasnevin Cemetry last Thursday , it was fantastic. The museum , the history and the the appearance of the place . I would say it was a great day out .

It’d be only deadly if they recreated scenes of volunteers shooting de forces of the british empire , great idea there Lyons.

If more of Glasnevins residents were in Leinster House than the Imposters we have there at the moment, the country would be in a better state

One of my favourite things to do in Dublin is visit Glasnevin, I’ve taken a few tours there over the years. Ireland’s necropolis. is a more than fitting way to see it. I’ve always loved how so many who were bitter enemies in life are buried in near proximity to each other. As Shane MacThomais pointed out on a tour I took, the trade unionist Jim Larkin is near to his nemesis William Martin Murphy. Frank Ryan, who led Irishmen to Spain in defence of the Spanish Republic, is near to Eoin O’Duffy……..and we all know about Dev and Collins.

Why not recreate some of the scenes whereby people lost their lives as a result of the the actions of this nutter? It would give a more rounded view of his true character.

A seemingly homoerotic poem, open to interpretation as is all poetry, is hardly compelling evidence. If you have any qualifications in literature or poetry I’d be glad to discuss your interpretation, or if you have any real evidence to support your claims I’d be glad to hear them also.

Oh, and the irony of calling someone a “bloodthirsty lunatic”, while giving pride of place to the Butchers Apron in your profile picture is laughable.

There is a long history of casting slurs on Irish patriots. Throwing dirt and hoping some will stick. It’s a low and shameful tactic.

What are talking about? Pearse is not my messiah, nor was he infallible. Frankly I couldn’t care a jot about his sexuality, it’s not going to change my politics. I’ve have this discussion before, and someone already put it better than I could on another thread…

“When Pearse wrote that poem, he showed it to Thomas McDonagh and Joseph Mary Plunkett. (From Wikipedia) When they explained to him the (unsavoury) construction which might be placed on it, Pearse was both “bewildered and hurt.” Unless the man was a fool (which he clearly was not), it is very unlikely he would have written (and published! This was not a private poem, after all) a poem about kissing a boy if he at all considered that it meant what modern detractors seem to suggest. It is much more likely that Pearse was an innocent (in matters of sex) and his emotions expressed in the poem were similarly innocent and, therefore, well meaning (believe it or not!). Sometimes a kiss perhaps just means a kiss…

It is interesting that some attempt to taint Pearse with these allegations, considering that they are completely immaterial to the central actions of his life (his fight for Irish/Gaelic freedom), and are unsubstantiated. I remember, a fair few years back, Pearse was also accused of being a homosexual (as a slur) before this became politically incorrect. Now, the attacks have changed to accusing him of ‘paedophilia’ (with no proof). This is posthumous blackening of a man’s name, with no proof save for a single poem, with the various interpretations that could be put on it. [No hint, not even a hint, of anything untoward has ever been heard from the boys who attended St. Enda's. After all these years surely some evidence would have appeared, if only hearsay; but there is nothing.].

We (you) are judging a man who put his life on the line for his country, who had a messianic, heroic drive to free Ireland, to make it Gaelic once again. This was an exceptional man and to judge him, his actions, on the level you wish to bring him is absurd. Men like Pearse would hardly sacrifice themselves for their country, as he did, if their motivations were so base as suggested. A man like that, a ‘paedophile’, would surely care little for higher motivations, if concerned only for carnal pleasure with a child. Hardly the type who sacrifices themselves to awaken national sentiment, surely?
Or must all be dragged down, all brought down to the level of those who wish to blacken the name of one of our true heroes (in all the meanings of that word)? ”

I believe these attacks on Pearse have nothing whatsoever to do with the man himself and are likely merely an attempt to attack what Pearse stood for, using Pearse as a proxy. It is shameful stuff. Particularly when it is carried out posthumously…a posthumous character assassination 93 years after the man’s death. Pathetic.

I would wish to point out that Pearse was also involved in setting up St. Ita’s school for girls, a school with similar aims to St. Enda’s, which would somewhat take away one of the ‘planks’ of the OP’s ‘argument’ (if one can charitably call it an argument)…

Substantive evidence, not hearsay. It’s incredibly presumptuous to say someone is a paedophile based on one poem, ludicrous even.

And you don’t think things smell a bit fishy there at the moment

If they were around today they would be called German backed terrorist extremists destroying the peace and tranquility of the Union.

@Gearoid – typical discounting! What do you want – pictures of him kissing young boys. Pearse was a pedophile and an embarrassment to the real leaders of the 1916 rising. Perhaps it bursts your republican bubble but sometimes the truth hurts.

LITTLE LAD OF THE TRICKS (written by pearse in 1909)

by Padraig Pearse.

Little lad of the tricks,
Full well I know
That you have been in mischief:
Confess your fault truly.

I forgive you, child
Of the soft red mouth:
I will not condemn anyone
For a sin not understood.

Raise your comely head
Till I kiss your mouth:
If either of us is the better of that
I am the better of it.

There is a fragrance in your kiss
That I have not found yet
In the kisses of women
Or in the honey of their bodies.

Lad of the grey eyes,
That flush in thy cheek
Would be white with dread of me
Could you read my secrets.

He who has my secrets
Is not fit to touch you:
Is not that a pitiful thing,
Little lad of the tricks ?

What’s 32 got to do with it? Last time I checked there were 26 counties in our country. A country that owes its birth to the war of independence, not some stupid grand statement led by a teacher in 1916. Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith were the true fathers of this country.

Agree with Mr. Lyons. In any case Ireland has been free since the early twenties. No thanks to Pearse.

The terrible legacy of Patrick Pearse We can now openly discuss Patrick Pearse’s sublimated homosexual leanings and how they might have affected his fanatical n
We can now openly discuss Patrick Pearse’s sublimated homosexual leanings and how they might have affected his fanatical nationalism so why is it still a heresy to suggest that the Easter Rising was misconceived and without justification, asks RUTH DUDLEY EDWARDS

On the day my biography of Patrick Pearse was published in 1977, I was interviewed for the RTE lunchtime news. The first question was along the lines of “So you think Pearse was a homosexual?”

In my inexperience and naivete, I was shocked and disconcerted. I had done everything in my power to construct a fair and rounded picture of Pearse and to replace the myth with the man. In a book of almost 400 pages, I had devoted fewer than two to discussing his sexuality.

And since I was sure Pearse was celibate and as innocent as he was honourable, I thought it no big deal that the evidence showed him to have been attracted by boys and young men. Additionally, agree or disagree with Pearse’s actions, he did sacrifice his life for his country; to focus on his sexuality seemed to demean him.

I should have known that back then, Irish heroes had to be heterosexual. I think back to University College Dublin in the 1960s and remember Dr Herbert O Mackey’s talk to the History Society. Dr Mackey was obsessed with proving that the Casement diaries were forged. I was enraged by his argument that they must have been forged, since because Roger Casement was a patriot, it was inconceivable he could have had homosexual fantasies or experiences.

Though most scholars now believe that Casement, rather than a British dirty tricks outfit trying to discredit him, was the author of those diaries, there is still a hardcore of nationalists who will never accept this as even a possibility. Indeed, incredibly, a young Englishman who believes the forgery theory has been given a large grant from the Irish Government to help him with his research.

This is a strange action for a government that claims to be tolerant and inclusive and is introducing equality legislation right, left and centre. It is one thing to subsidise scholarly research and quite another to give taxpayers’ money to historians you know will tell you what you want to hear.

An exchange of letters in An Phoblacht a couple of years ago was an excellent illustration of the clash between traditional piety and contemporary political correctness. A letter reaffirming that the diaries were forgeries by the wicked Brits provoked an indignant response from the Sinn Fein Gay and Lesbian Workshop, who were happy with Casement being homosexual and explained that homophobia had been unknown in Gaelic culture and had been exported to Ireland by … guess who? Yep. The Brits.

I’m not suggesting that sexuality is irrelevant. Roger Casement’s clandestine homosexuality must have put a great strain on him. And Patrick Pearse’s sublimated sexuality, combined with his passionate nature, must have been a powerful driving force.

From boyhood he was single-minded and dedicated beyond the norm. A Pearse with a wife and family would have been obliged to concentrate more on reality than on romance. He knew this himself, lamenting when he heard Eoin MacNeill was engaged that this would distract him from the Gaelic League. It would be frequently remarked of Pearse that he had no understanding of the mundane day-to-day concerns that precluded others from showing the same fanatical dedication to his successive causes: he lived and died for a people that did not exist.

Would Pearse have had the same yearning for immortality if he had had children? Or even the nieces and nephews denied him because of the strange inwardness of the Pearse family. None of the four children went into the Church, and yet none of them married or, apparently, had any normal sexual relationships. Pearse’s three siblings seem to have sublimated their sexuality by helping their big brother with his cultural and educational causes. And Willie, of course, gave his life for Patrick’s last crusade.

It is a sign of our increasing self-confidence as a nation that we are at last beginning to debate without hysteria the sexual inclinations, the failings and the complexities of our traditional heroes. But are we yet ready to look honestly at our past and to think about it coolly?

Can we accept that our nationalist icons Tone, O’Connell, Parnell, Casement, Pearse and all the rest of them were living, fallible people, not plaster saints? Or that John Redmond and Edward Carson deserve our respect? Can we detach ourselves from the unremitting nationalist propaganda that distorted our thinking during the 20th century and look honestly at our past?

There is still almost no debate, for instance, about the validity of the physical force tradition. It is almost 30 years since Conor Cruise O’Brien pointed out that logic dictated that the IRA were the heirs of Pearse. Why was it right for a small group of conspirators in a democratic country to stage a revolution in 1916 in which many innocent people were killed, he argued, yet be wrong for the Officials, the Provisionals and now the Continuity and Real IRA to emulate them? For Pearse and his colleagues had no mandate merely a belief that because their judgement was superior to those of the population at large, they were entitled to use violence.

The Pearse legacy was hijacked during the Civil War by Republicans, during the Troubles by the Provos and is now becoming the property of dissidents. For, as Danny Morrison explained in the Pearse documentary Fanatic Heart last Monday, Pearse’s rhetoric was useful to the Provos when they were making war, but is inconvenient when they are trying to make peace. Should we not, at last, begin to consider the possibility that though many of those involved were selfless, the 1916 Rising set an unfortunate and tragic precedent?

Without Pearse, the 1916 Rising would probably still have happened, but it would have left a far less damaging legacy. For that propagandist of genius deliberately crafted in prose and poetry a justification for 1916 which has been a gift for successive generations of fanatics who have ruined innumerable lives and hindered, rather than helped, forward the cause of a united Ireland.

It is hard to imagine that Pearse would have approved of atrocities like Omagh … but try telling that to RIRA. Or to those heirs of the Irish-Americans whose goading helped to turn him into a revolutionary. Did Pearse not sanction actions that led to the deaths of more than 250 uninvolved Dublin civilians, they will ask. And did he not sing the praises of those who refused to compromise?

Many European nations have learned to look at their history and face up to past mistakes and crimes. We have made a start in acknowledging the wrongs done to many children by church and state after independence.

With another generation of intransigents murdering in our name, isn’t it time we contemplated the heresy that the 1916 rebellion was misconceived and without justification, and that the physical force tradition in the 20th century has been an unmitigated disaster?

Very good Paul. We cannot begin to see until we open up our eyes and our minds.

Shouldn’t it be a reenactment?

Wish I could be there myself. Tiocfaidh ar la from NYC!

Paul you are not allowed quote people that have not been approved by Gearóid.

There is none so blind as the revisionists.

What normal heterosexual male should write about how he preferred kissing boys to girls?

Wake up and stop being so bloody blinkered and see the man for what he was, a human with all the faults that come with that.