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  • Great War Strains and Easter Rising Breaking Point: Douglas Hyde’s Ideological Ambivalences
  • Liam Mac Mathúna (bio)

This article is concerned with the skein of ideological threads that motivated and animated Douglas Hyde (1860–1949) and, more broadly, the body politic in twentieth-century Ireland. First president of the Gaelic League (1893–1915), first professor of modern Irish at University College Dublin (1909–32), and first president of Ireland under the 1937 Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann (1938–45), Hyde remains a difficult historical figure to pinpoint ideologically. Professor David Greene once referred to Hyde as “that strange and complex man,” a tellingly accurate characterization given that behind his outward affability and gregariousness, Hyde maintained an unwavering commitment to the Irish language and Irish nationality in ever-changing political and social circumstances.1 Much of the challenge of understanding Hyde revolves around trying to reconcile the thinking and actions of the private and the public man, a task that is complicated by the presence of two competing and conflicting emphases that may be noted in examining Hyde’s long public career. One is the insistence on the nonsectarian, nonpolitical nature of the language movement’s credo, a movement that united nationalist and unionist, Catholic and Protestant, landlord and tenant. Hyde himself repeated this mantra so often that he more or less came to believe it and decided that he had to resign as president of the Gaelic League at the 1915 Ard-Fheis in Dundalk after Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) protégés swept the board at the elections to the League’s executive committee. But away from the spotlight, buttressed by a vitriolic opposition to Trinity College’s ethos, there continued to be [End Page 7] indications of the Fenian leanings of the younger Hyde that were hidden behind his second—and less widely addressed—nom de plume, “An Géagán Glas.” In fact, as early as 1918, and overwhelmingly by 1923, Hyde had reinterpreted his nonsectarian, nonpolitical stance to embrace the new status quo of militant separatist nationalism that had by then been endorsed by most of the people on the island. When it was no longer expedient or advantageous to speak of overarching Redmondite Home Rulers and IRB republicans, Hyde simply abandoned the previous gospel and projected his new public stance back to the beginning of the Revival and his famous 1892 lecture, “The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland.”

To fully comprehend this holistic interpretation of Hyde’s ideological stance, one must begin with his formative years. As he came of age in Frenchpark, Co. Roscommon, the young Douglas chose for his friends and informal tutors Irish-speaking countrymen who had strong Fenian leanings.2 The most influential of these was undoubtedly Seamus Hart, Lord De Freyne’s gamekeeper, who was the first person to teach Hyde Irish. Indeed, Hart became a father figure to him, and his death at the end of 1875, when Hyde was just fifteen years old, affected him significantly.3 Hyde never forgot Seamus Hart. The Dunleavys maintained, accurately and insightfully, I believe, that when Hyde became president of Ireland in 1938, Hart was with him in Áras an Uachtaráin, the president’s residence in the Phoenix Park, Dublin.4

The vehemence with which the young Hyde expressed anti-English sentiment in the Irish-language poems he composed in the period 1877–82 is quite striking. The tone is set in the first poem he composed, in March 1877. This was in English and was entitled “Graun ’a Peeca Géur” (Graun of the Sharp Pike): [End Page 8]

Those damnable English and traitors and allSays Graun a peeca géur,I’ll close with them soon and I’ll get them a fallSays Graun a peeca géur,And I’ll bid them bewareAnd I tell them take careFor I’ll come like a snareOn the face of them allAnd I’ll give them a fallSays the peeca géur.5

Although the poem proceeds to advise the peeca géur to “take care of yourself when the bullets are flying,” the reader is assured that “the danger of falling, the...

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