Resistance moon: Wild Rebels

Like the Jews and the Chinese, the Irish have some experience with resistance, rebellion and resilience. We have learned, of a necessity, to play the long game, although I’m thinking that it’s not really natural.

(Something just occurred to me: a colleague of mine, a Jew, once told me that the entire history of Jewish holidays is contained in this sentence: “They tried to kill us; we won; let’s eat.” The Irish equivalent would be something like, “We rebelled against the Sassenach; they won, but it’s temporary; let’s drink and sing.” Not quite the punch, but…)

Jokes aside, the history of the British occupation of Ireland is both sad and vicious. G.K. Chesterton (an Englishman) famously said, “The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry and all their songs are sad.” The sadness would also apply to Irish poetry, since so much of it is about that history. Ireland was essentially England’s first colony, and it’s her last one. Of course all the arts will reflect that.

In the past I’ve given you Seamus Heaney’s “Requiem for the Croppies”, with its heartbreaking image of the barley growing from their graves. And the classic example is Yeats’s “Easter 1916”; pretty much everyone knows the last line. This time round, let’s have something from a lesser-known poet.

Eva Gore-Booth was the sister of the revolutionary Constance, Countess Markievicz. Markievicz was an active participant in the Easter Rising in 1916—a rifle-wielding commander of the Irish Citizen Army. Following the surrender to the British, she was held in solitary confinement at Kilmainham Gaol. She was sentenced to death, along with the other leaders, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment because of her sex. She served only a year, and was elected to Parliament—the first woman ever—although she declined to serve.

Gore-Booth was two years younger than Constance. Like her older sister she was a suffragist and activist on behalf of labor rights. Unlike her sister, she was a pacifist and a social reformer. Yeats himself was an admirer of her poetry. In “Comrades”, she skips over the violence that brought these men and women to their prison, and instead speaks of how night and its cover unify those behind bars with those who are free. It’s another perspective on the everlasting struggle.

“Comrades”

The peaceful night that round me flows,

Breaks through your iron prison doors,

Free through the world your spirit goes,

Forbidden hands are clasping yours.

The wind is our confederate,

The night has left her doors ajar,

We meet beyond earth’s barred gate,

Where all the world’s wild Rebels are.