26 Facts About Patrick Pearse

Patrick Henry Pearse was an Irish teacher, barrister, poet, writer, nationalist, republican political activist and revolutionary who was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916.

Patrick Pearse, his brother Willie, and his sisters Margaret and Mary Brigid were born at 27 Great Brunswick Street, Dublin, the street that is named after them today.

Patrick Pearse's father was a mason and monumental sculptor, and originally a Unitarian from Birmingham in England.

Patrick Pearse was James' second wife; James had two children, Emily and James, from his first marriage.

Pearse's maternal grandfather Patrick was a supporter of the 1848 Young Ireland movement, and later a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

Patrick Pearse recalled a visiting ballad singer performing republican songs during his childhood; afterwards he went around looking for armed men ready to fight, but finding none, declared sadly to his grandfather that "the Fenians are all dead".

Patrick Pearse's father had had very little formal education, but was self-educated; Pearse recalled that at the age of ten he prayed to God, promising to dedicate his life to Irish independence.

Patrick Pearse did all he planned, and even took students on field trips to the Gaeltacht in the West of Ireland.

Patrick Pearse found it in The Hermitage in Rathfarnham, County Dublin, now home to the Pearse Museum.

Patrick Pearse was involved in the foundation of Scoil Ide for girls, an institution with aims similar to those of St Enda's.

Scoil Ide closed in 1912 after just two years; Patrick Pearse strove continually to keep ahead of his debts while doing his best to maintain Scoil Eanna in existence.

Patrick Pearse was one of four speakers, including Redmond, Joseph Devlin MP, leader of the Northern Nationalists, and Eoin MacNeill a prominent Gaelic Leaguer, who addressed a large Home Rule Rally in Dublin at the end of March 1912.

Patrick Pearse was co-opted onto the IRB's Supreme Council by Tom Clarke.

Patrick Pearse was then one of many people who were members of both the IRB and the Volunteers.

On 1 August 1915 Patrick Pearse gave a graveside oration at the funeral of the Fenian Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa.

Patrick Pearse was the first republican to be filmed giving an oration.

Patrick Pearse was the person most responsible for drafting the Proclamation, and he was chosen as President of the Republic.

Thomas Clarke, Thomas MacDonagh and Patrick Pearse himself were the first of the rebels to be executed, on the morning of 3 May 1916.

Patrick Pearse submitted copies of them to Prime Minister Asquith, saying that some of the content was "objectionable".

Patrick Pearse wrote stories and poems in both Irish and English.

Patrick Pearse wrote several allegorical plays in the Irish language, including The King, The Master, and The Singer.

Patrick Pearse wrote many essays on politics and language, notably "The Coming Revolution" and "Ghosts".

Patrick Pearse is closely associated with his rendering of the Jacobite sean-nos song, "Oro Se do Bheatha 'Bhaile", for which he composed republican lyrics.

Also according to Louis de Paor, Patrick Pearse's reading of the radically experimental poetry of Walt Whitman and of the French Symbolists led him to introduce Modernist poetry into the Irish language.

Largely as a result of a series of political pamphlets that Patrick Pearse wrote in the months leading up to the Rising, he soon became recognised as the main voice of the Rising.

Patrick Pearse's ideas have been seen by Sean Farrell Moran as belonging to the context of European cultural history as a part of a rejection of reason by European social thinkers.