Ireland’s eternal Easter: Sorley MacLean and 1916

Abstract

This essay examines the treatment of the 1916 Easter Rising by Scottish Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean. From his early work onwards, the Rising assumes a mythical significance in MacLean’s poetry. Throughout, this aetheistic, socialist poet uses rhetoric borrowed from the Gaelic Christian tradition to present the rebels of 1916 as exemplary secular martyrs. James Connolly plays a crucial role as the Scottish son of Irish immigrants. MacLean’s later praise poem for Connolly, “Àrd-Mhusaeum na h-Èireann”, deploys biblical rhetoric to present the Rising as an act of ritual sacrifice, recalling Patrick Pearse’s “Fornocht do Chonaic Thu”. MacLean’s valorisation of violence takes place against the backdrop of the modern Troubles, and prompts a reassessment of the political legacy of his poetry.

Keywords:

• Gaelic poetry
• socialism
• communism
• religious rhetoric
• pan-Gaelic identity

Notes

1. Ó Grianna, “Samhain agus Féile na Marbh”, 34. In Ulster Irish the word “Albanach” (“Scot”) traditionally also meant “Protestant”. English versions from the verse of MacLean and Pearse are by the poets, all other translations are my own.

2. MacLean, “Aig Uaigh Yeats”, in Caoir Gheal Leumraich, 272–73.

3. Ibid.

4. “Dàn do Eimhir VI”, in Caoir Gheal Leumraich, 102–03.

5. “Dàn do Eimhir XIII”, in Caoir Gheal Leumraich, 106–07.

6. “Dàn do Eimhir XXXII”, in Caoir Gheal Leumraich, 134–35.

7. “Dàn do Eimhir XVIII”, in Caoir Gheal Leumraich,116–17.

8. See MacInnes, “A Radically Traditional Voice.”

9. As MacLean explains in a letter to Douglas Young on 2 May 1943, the opening of the poem was changed to avoid offending religious sensibilities within the poet’s family: “I have altered the first two lines … by putting ‘dìon’ ‘refuge’ for ‘Dia’ and ‘m’iarrtas’ ‘my asking’ for ‘Crìosda’. All very disingenuous but it will remove the very worst nightmare to my mother.” (MacLean, Dàin do Eimhir, 205).

10. MacAoidh, “‘s trom an èire, an Eire, an èirigh, an èirig”, 109.

11. See MacInnes, “Language, Metre and Diction in the Poetry of Sorley Maclean.”

12. Smith, “The Poetry of Sorley MacLean”, 39.

13. Dymock,“‘An Cuilithionn’ anns an Roinn Eòrpa”, 137.

14. Ibid, 154.

15. MacLean, “An Cuilithionn” (1939), VI, ll.81–83, in An Cuilithionn 1939, 86–87.

16. MacLean, “An Cuilithionn” (1939) VII, ll.100–01, in An Cuilithionn 1939, 103.

17. MacLean, “An Cuilithionn” (1939) VI, ll.122–29, in An Cuilithionn 1939, 88–91.

18. MacLean, “An Cuilithionn” (1939) VI, ll.19–24, in An Cuilithionn 1939, 98–99.

19. MacLean, “An Cuilithionn” (1939) VII, ll. 204–07, in An Cuilithionn 1939, 108–09.

20. Ní Annracháin, Máire, Aisling agus Tóir, 151–52.

21. See Mackay, Sorley MacLean, 84.

22. The present author took part in Cuairt na bhFilí Albanacha in 2011, reading poetry in Belfast, Ráth Chairn and Dublin on the fortieth anniversary of Sorley MacLean’s inaugural tour.

23. “Àrd-Mhusaeum na h-Èireann”, in MacLean, Caoir Gheal Leumraich, 270–01.

24. Heaney quoted in Caoir Gheal Leumraich, xxx.

25. Iain Crichton Smith’s remarks about MacLean’s reading notwithstanding, it is worth quoting Connolly himself here, writing about the Twelfth in 1913: The Irish question is a part of the social question, the desire of the Irish people to control their own destinies is a part of the desire of the workers to forge political weapons for their own enfranchisement as a class. The Orange fanatic and the Capitalist-minded Home Ruler are alike in denying this truth; ere long, both of them will be but memories, while the army of those who believe in that truth will be marching and battling on its conquering way (James Connolly, “July the 12th”, Forward, 12 July 1913).

26. Mackay, Sorley MacLean, 84.

27. Ciarán Carson’s criticism of North bears repeating here, in which he describes his fellow Ulster poet as “the laureate of violence – a mythmaker, an anthropologist of ritual killing, an apologist for ‘the situation’, in the last resort, a mystifier” (Carson. “Escaped from the Massacre?” The Honest Ulsterman 50 (Winter 1975)).

28. Pearse, “Fornocht do chonaic thu”, in The 1916 Poets, 3 and 15–16.

29. Heaney, “The Trance and the Translation.”