A chara, - It is with great sadness that I write in relation to the auction of 1916 artefacts last week. Irrespective of one's view of 1916 itself, it is of vital importance for the State to safeguard such artefacts for the benefit of future and current generations. They provide a unique link with an important event in this nation's history.
The auctioneers and all others involved showed enormous greed and avarice, symptomatic of Celtic Tiger Ireland. This Ireland is one in which history, heritage and tradition are torn asunder in the pursuit of profit. Surely this is not what the men of 1916 would have wanted. Would they not have been appalled at the current scramble to invest in 1916 Ltd?
To paraphrase Yeats, historic Ireland's dead and gone; it's with Pearse and Connolly in the grave. - Is mise,
DARRAGH CONNELL, Mount Anville Wood, Dublin 14.
Madam, - Your readers may be interested in a Patrick Pearse anecdote that I got 53 years ago from Bulmer Hobson, who was prominent with Pearse in the lead-up to the 1916 Rising. I wonder if any historical document records the incident to which it refers.
At the time I met him Hobson was living in retirement in Roundstone, Connemara, and was visiting his home in Rathfarnham. I was interested in an an afforestation pamphlet which he had written and published anonymously when he was a public servant in the 1930s.
We got around to talking about Pearse. To indicate the kind of man he was, Hobson told me about a meeting that he attended at which Pearse addressed the Fenian faithful. Fixing his gaze on the back wall of the hall, with the rhetoric of the trained barrister he spoke eloquently for an hour or so.
Towards the end, he said: "I am sure all of you here agree with me. . ." If his gaze hadn't been fixed throughout on the back wall, Pearse would have seen that at that stage he was alone in the room. Hobson assured me that this happened. If so, it says much about Pearse and the Fenian faithful of the time. - Yours, etc,
JOE FOYLE, Dublin 6.
A chara, - As someone who grew up a few miles from where the first men to die in the Rising over the Easter weekend perished at Ballykissane pier in Co Kerry, I am too often given cause to think about how they died. They perished in a car accident on Good Friday as they travelled to seize radio equipment to signal Roger Casement.
It is a sad reflection on our supposed progress that so many people die in road accidents every weekend. Could we not dedicate ourselves to a commitment to halve the current level of road deaths by the centenary of their deaths in 2016? - Yours, etc,
DANIEL SULLIVAN, Beaumont, Dublin 9.