Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from What Made Ireland Sinn Fein: The Chief Political Content of Pearse, the Gael of Gaels; Something of Mac Neill, Ireland's Historian, Griffith, Ireland's Statistician, and the O'rahilly, a Leader of the Volunteers
Even those heretofore unattracted by the sacrifices that have starred the recent years of Irish history are now being held and stirred by the heroic witnesses coming forward wave after wave in testimony of a people's right and duty to live their own lives. They clamor for information. They are eager to know something of Ireland's history. They are avid of learning its salient facts quickly. And their chief query is, What is the best history of Ireland?
I do not know of any adequate reply to this important query unless it is contained, indirectly, in the Observation of Padraic Pearse that the student of Irish affairs who does not know Irish literature is ignorant of the awful intensity of the Irish desire for Separation as he is ignorant of one of the chief forces which make Separation inevitable, and directly, one may almost aver, in the writings of Pearse himself. Boldly I make the claim that the best Short history of Ireland, the history that is most vital and psychological, the history containing the supreme synthesis of Eire's story, is to be had in Padraic Pearse's writings. Bold and novel as this claim may appear, its justice cannot, I think, be assailed. Not professedly a history, still his writings comprehend the very marrow of Ireland's gallant and sorrowful story. Very many of the books which profess to be histories of Ireland are the products of hostile minds, or minds lacking in sympathetic knowledge, or minds that were not thoroughly Gaelic. But Padraic Pearse's mind was Gaelic in its every fibre. Some one has said that the ancient and medieval and modern Gaelic currents meet in Pearse. I would go farther and maintain that they are con centrated in this truly great Gael. Even the most casual studyof Pears'e's writings must compel the judgment that his are the thoughts of a Spiritual and catholic mind; the ideals of a mind generous and refined, the expressions of a mind 'at once faithful, tender and robust, -all the qualities that distinguish the historic Gaelic mind. N O Irishman so vividly or SO elo quently impressed the temper, the vision, and the genius Of the Gaelic mind on what he did and what he wrote as did Pearse.
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