Was it needless death after all? For England may keep faith For all that is done and said. We know their dream; enough To know they dreamed and are dead. And what if excess of love Bewildered them till they died? I write it out in a verse -- MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. https://youtube/watch?v=yaS3vaNUYgs Easter 1916 was the poem written by William Butler Yeats, in response to the executions of its leadership, over a prolonged, daily period, in the weeks following the failed Rising. The Foggy Dew is a gorgeous, 20th century song, recounting the British gunboats coming up the Liffey, and shelling downtown Dublin. The destruction of old Georgian buildings was the least of it, as many civilians were killed, who in no way supported the 1916 Easter Rising, since most of their kin were fighting with the Allied forces in WW1. This tragic divisiveness is the content of familial history in all colonial regimes, including that of French Canada. My tragic grandfather, William Beveridge, served as an officer with the Irish Citizen Army, in The Rising, just four months before his own brother was gravely wounded, serving with Canadas Victoria Rifles, on Sept. 15, 1916, at The Battle of Courcelette. The video, here accompanying The Foggy Dew, was added to the original voicetrack, and shows how the British Army commander at Kilmainham Gaol tied the wounded James Connolly (Labour Leader, and founder of The Citizen Army) to a chair, to hold him upright for execution in the jails courtyard. These executions, after summary courts marshall, of the Risings leadership, including poet Padraig Pearse, are what changed the mind of the nation, to one of support of the failed rebellion, after the fact.
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 21:53:59 +0000
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