Day: August 19, 2015

A plaque will be unveiled next Saturday evening at 7:30pm at Corkery’s Bar, commemorating the visit of Patrick Pearse, a hundred years to the day.

Patrick Pearse became  the Irish Volunteers’ Director of Military Organisation in 1914 and by 1915 he was on the IRB’s Supreme Council, and its secret Military Council, the core group that began planning for a Rising. In that role he visited Millstreet on 22 August 1915 to meet local IRB members and Volunteers. The following are brief accounts of the visit.

“A Unit of the Irish Volunteers had been formed locally in 1914 after the disintegration of the National Volunteers. It was so painstakingly organised that it was considered by the Volunteer Executive in Dublin to be a suitable nucleus for organising the Duhallow and Muskerry districts. Accordingly they sent Pádraig Pearse to Millstreet to address a meeting of the public and a convention of Volunteers. Pearse’s visit on August 22^nd was ostensibly for the local Feis and sports.

The advertised programme is pictured on the right. The organisers were: Tom Griffin and Seamus (Jimmy) Hickey. As the visit took place only a fortnight after his famous oration at the grave of O’Donovan Rossa it attracted a lot of attention, not least from the R.I.C.

However, Pearse slipped through them and made his way to the football field. There he addressed several thousand people who had assembled to enjoy a real Gaelic day and to listen to the gospel of Irish patriotism as preached by its greatest exponent of the time. His address reawakened in many the dormant spirit of Irish patriotism inherited from an unyielding and freedom loving ancestry. More than a few resolved that to give their lives if necessary that Ireland might be free.

Amongst those present were Jeremiah O’Reardon and Jim Buckley, who had been active with the Fenians in 1867, and many veterans of the Land War of the 1880s. Other were mere boys who had learned well the history of their native land.

Following a conference with Pearse, these men and others set to work to expand the organisation of the Volunteers. When the R.I.C. realised that Pearse had evaded them their chagrin was of a high order. However, they had the ‘privilege’ of standing guard outside the Railway Hotel whilst Pearse had an evening meal inside. It is a significant fact that all those known to be associated with his visit were either interned or had to go on the run the following year.”

(“Millstreet’s Green and Gold” by Jim Cronin, 1984)

A small group of Volunteers came down from [read more …] “Patrick Pearse and his visit to Millstreet on August 22nd 1915”