Patrick Pearse: Thing

“One of the most terrible things about the English education System in Ireland is its ruthlessness…it is cold and mechanical, like the ruthlessness of an immensely powerful engine. A machine vast, complicated… It grinds night and day; it obeys immutable and predetermined laws; it is as devoid of understanding, of sympathy, of imagination, as is any other piece of machinery that performs an appointed task. Into it is fed all raw human material in Ireland; it seizes upon it inexorably and rends and compresses and remoulds…”

Patrick Pearse

The Cause Of Ireland, Liz Curtis, Beyond the Pale Publications, Belfast 1994, pg 190.This quote was taken from the original, in Padraig Pearse’s book The Murder Machine.

Education , Law , Imagination , Understanding

“And let us make no mistake as to what Tone sought to do, what it remains to us to do. We need to restate our programme: Tone has stated it for us:
"To break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country—these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissentions, and to substitute the common name of Irishmen in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter—these were my means."
I find here implicit all the philosophy of Irish nationalism, all the teaching of the Gaelic League and the later prophets. Ireland one and Ireland free—is not this the definition of Ireland a Nation? To that definition and to that programme we declare our adhesion anew; pledging ourselves as Tone pledged himself—and in this sacred place, by this graveside, let us not pledge ourselves unless we mean to keep our pledge—we pledge ourselves to follow in the steps of Tone, never to rest either by day or night until his work be accomplished, deeming it the proudest of all privileges to fight for freedom, to fight not in despondency but in great joy hoping for the victory in our day, but fighting on whether victory seem near or far, never lowering our ideal, never bartering one jot or tittle of our birthright, holding faith to the memory and the inspiration of Tone, and accounting ourselves base as long as we endure the evil thing against which he testified with his blood.”

Patrick Pearse

Address delivered at the Grave of Wolfe Tone in Bodenstown Churchyard, Co. Kildare, 22 June 1913

People , Faith , Hope , Freedom

“To his teaching we owe it there is such a thing as Irish Nationalism and to the memory of the deed he nerved his generation to do, to the memory of ‘98, we owe it that there is any manhood left in Ireland.”

Patrick Pearse

Address delivered at the Grave of Wolfe Tone in Bodenstown Churchyard, Co. Kildare, 22 June 1913

Memory

“O faithful!
Moulded in one womb,
We have stood together all the years,
All the glad years and all the sorrowful years,
Own brothers: through good repute and ill,
In direst peril true to me,
Leaving all things for me, spending yourself
In the hard service that I taught to you,
Of all the men that I have known on earth,
You only have been my familiar friend,
Nor needed I another.”

Patrick Pearse

"To My Brother", poem by P. H. Pearse, written in Arbour Hill Detention Barracks, 1st May, 1916. Published by The Office of Public Works, Dublin.
Pearse did not know that his brother William, was also to be executed.

Men , Faith

“The lawyers have sat in council, the men with the keen long faces,
said, "This man is a fool," and others have said, "He blasphemeth;"
And the wise have pitied the fool that hath striven to give a life
In the world of time and space amongst the bulks of actual things,
To a dream that was dreamed in the heart, and that only the heart could hold.”

Patrick Pearse

"The Fool"

Life , Men , World , Dreams

“And I say to my people's masters: Beware,
Beware of the thing that is coming, beware of the risen people,
who shall take what ye would not give. Did ye think to conquer the people,
Or that Law is stronger than life and than men's desire to be free?
We will try it out with you, ye that have harried and held,
Ye that have bullied and bribed, tyrants, hypocrites, liars!”

Patrick Pearse The Rebel

"The Rebel"

Life , Men , People , Law

“I have spent the greater part of my life in immediate contemplation of the most grotesque and horrible of the English innovations for the debasement of Ireland. I mean their education system. The English once proposed in their Dublin Parliament a measure for the castration of all Irish priests who refused to quit Ireland. The proposal was so filthy than although it duly passed the House and was transmitted to England with the warm recommendation at the Viceroy. it was not eventually adopted. But the English have actually carried out an even filthier thing. They have planned and established an education system which more wickedly does violence to the elemental human rights of Irish children than would an edict for the general castration of Irish males. The system has aimed at the substitution for men and women of mere Things. It has not been an entire success. There are still a great many thousand men and women in Ireland. But a great many thousand of what, by way of courtesy, we call men and women, are simply Things. Men and women. however depraved, have kindly human allegiances. But these Things have no allegiance. Like other Things. they are For sale. When one uses the term education system as the name of the system of schools. colleges, universities, and whatnot which the English have established in Ireland, one uses it as a convenient label, just as one uses the term government as a convenient label for the system of administration by police which obtains in Ireland instead of a government. There is no education system in Ireland. The English have established the simulacrum of an education system, but its object is the precise contrary of the object of an education system. Education should foster; this education is meant to repress. Education should inspire; this education is meant to tame. Education should harden; this education is meant to enervate. The English are too wise a people to attempt to educate the Irish in any worthy sense. As well expect them to arm us. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eoin_MacNeill Professor Eoin MacNeill] has compared the English education system in Ireland to the systems of slave education which existed in the ancient pagan republics side by side with the systems intended for the education of freemen. To the children of the free were taught all noble and goodly things which would tend to make them strong and proud and valiant; from the children of the slaves all such dangerous knowledge was hidden.”

Patrick Pearse

The Murder Machine

Life , Women , Men , Children