Madam, - The diversity of both opinion about the 1916 Rising and versions of the event itself on display in your Letters page recently has been educational. I attended national school in the 1960s and learned my history. I attended secondary school in the 1970s and learned another version.
It is reasonable to argue that there are as many versions as there were witnesses, multiplied by how many times each witness told their story. As the author TR Pynchon said, history "is not a disentanglement from, but a progressive knotting into".
If we can accept that the many versions and opinions represent a "knotting into" the fabric of our Ireland of today, perhaps we should support some kind of ceremony to mark the anniversary of the Rising; but please, let us not shame ourselves with military displays. - Yours, etc.,
PETER FELLOWS-McCULLY, Abberley, Killiney, Co Dublin.
Madam, - For Kevin Myers (An Irishman's Diary, January 31st and February 1st) to refer to President McAleese's speech at UCC as "imbebilic", "utter rubbish" and "smugly sectarian tribal silliness" is totally lacking in courtesy.
In the light of his words of ridicule and abuse, her concluding remarks are worth repeating. "This year," she said, "the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, and of the Somme, has the potential to be a pivotal year for peace and reconciliation, to be a time of shared pride for the divided grandchildren of those who died, whether at Messines or in Kilmainham."
"Shared pride" and "peace and reconciliation" was the message the President drew from the events taking place on the world stage in 1916. Why is Kevin Myers so stridently and so uncouthly opposed to these ideals? True, the President did refer to those who were executed in 1916 as "heroes", but in that judgment she was reflecting the views of several distinguished Protestants at that time. Take, for example, George Bernard Shaw. Writing in the Daily News of May 10th, 1916, as the executions were taking place, he declared that "an Irishman resorting to arms to achieve the independence of his country is doing only what an Englishman will do if it be their misfortune to be invaded and conquered by Germany in the present war. . . it is absolutely impossible to slaughter a man in this position without making him a martyr and a hero."
Protestant poets expressed the same sentiments in verse. The poems of W.B. Yeats are well known; those of Dora Sigerson Shorter, Alice Milligan, Eva Gore-Booth and Dorothy Macardle are less familiar, but they all manifested the same sympathy with those who had participated in the Rising. There was no trace of sectarian discord as Protestant poets paid their tributes to the Catholic poets who had died in 1916. Their views were encapsulated by the lines of George Russell's Salutation:
"Their dream had left me numb and cold, / But yet my spirit rose in pride,/ Refashioning in burnished gold/ The image of those who died /Or were shut in the penal cell./ Here's to you, Pearse, your dream not mine,/ But yet the thought, for this you fell,/ Has turned life's water into wine."
How can one blame the President for giving voice to sentiments such as these? And she did more: she paid due respect to those who had died fighting in the Great War. The words of Tom Kettle, that the Easter rebels "will go down to history as heroes and martyrs, and I will go down - if I go down at all - as a bloody British officer", were not used to demean the memory of those who had died fighting at the Somme. Instead the President made it clear that those Irishmen who had fought in British uniforms in 1916 were to be commemorated with the same respect as the Irish Volunteers who had fought in Dublin.
Many questions, often phrased with a distinct lack of protocol, have been put to President McAleese. The time has come for Mr Myers to answer some questions. Firstly, is he not happy that the commemoration of 1916 should be based on the "shared pride" of the two traditions in Ireland? And secondly, when will he present the events of the Easter Rising in a historical context that reflects the original sources available rather than his own particular agenda? - Yours, etc,
Dr BRIAN P MURPHY osb, Glenstal Abbey, Co Limerick.