Padraig Pearse and Bodenstown

As he emerged the shadows of Irish nationalism in 1913 before taking a central role in the Easter Rising which would follow three years later, the activities of PH Pearse, the man who read the proclamation, can be traced in the Irish Radical Newspaper Archive. One such source is ‘The Irishman’ newspaper which as the War of Independence commenced was keen to promote what Pearse had said and written. Undoubtedly the moment of Pearse’s making had occurred at Bodenstown, county Kildare in June 1913 when he gave the annual Wolfe Tone commemoration oration. Pearse, as The Irishman reported stated:

We have come to the holiest place in Ireland; holier to us even than the place where Patrick sleeps in Down. Patrick brought us life, but this man died for us. And though many before him and some since have died in testimony of the truth of Ireland's claim to nationhood, Wolfe Tone was the greatest of all that have made that testimony, the greatest of all that have died for Ireland whether in old time or in new. He was the greatest of Irish Nationalists;

I believe he was the greatest of Irish men. And if I am right in this I am right in saying that we stand in the holiest place in Ireland, for it must be that the holiest sod of the nation's soil is the sod where the greatest of her dead lies buried.

I feel it difficult to speak to you to-day; difficult to speak in this place. It is as if one had to speak by the graveside of some dear friend, a brother in blood or a well-tried comrade in arms, and to say aloud the things one would rather keep to oneself. But I am helped by the knowledge that you who listen to me partake in my emotion: we are none of us strangers, being all in a sense own brothers to Tone, sharing in his faith, sharing in his hope, still unrealised, sharing in his great love. I have, then, only to find expression for the thoughts and emotions common to us all, and you will understand even if the expression be a halting one.

We have come here not merely to salute this noble dust and to pay our homage to the noble spirit of Tone. We have come to renew our adhesion to the faith of Tone; to express once more our full acceptance of the gospel of Irish Nationalism which he was the first to formulate in worthy terms, giving clear definition and plenary meaning to all that had been thought and taught before him by Irish-speaking and English-speaking men; uttered half articulately by a Shane O'Neill in some defiance flung at the Englishry, expressed under some passionate metaphor by a Geoffrey Keating, hinted at by a Swift in some biting gibe, but clearly and greatly stated by Wolfe Tone, and not needing now ever to be stated anew for any new generation. He has spoken for all time, and his voice resounds throughout Ireland, calling to us from this grave when we wander astray following other voices that ring less true.

Pearse spoke for a number of more minutes calling on the people to take on the spirit of Tone if nothing else.

Later that summer the newspaper An Saogal Gaedealac reported that the 1919 commemoration at Bodenstown had imbued the spirit of the 1913 speech by Pearse and called him one of the prohphets of the insurrection. The speaker in 1919 concluded by quoting Fanny Parnell who stated:

To the dead under our feet we bring the far-off rumble of  the tramp of feet victorious’.

Ah! the tramp of feet victorious, I should hear them mid the shamrocks and the mosses! And my heart should toss within its shroud and quiver as a captive dreamer tosses.

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