"You must not grieve for all this. We have preserved Ireland's honour and our own. Our deeds of last week are the most splendid in Ireland's history. People will say hard things of us now, but we shall be remembered by posterity and blessed by unborn generations." – Pádraig Pearse
After the guns stop, an eerie silence descends on Sackville Street. It is heavy, placing a cruel load upon the shoulders of hard-worked men with little payment. Boys with empty pockets, however burdened by the picture of a lost brother or father, wipe sweat and tears from their faces with bloody sleeves. They scream, once again voiceless, into a din of despair.
Oh, blessed bloodshed, my country is so beautiful.
The green of our glorious hills, the white of our tranquil clouds and the orange of our rosy setting sun. Though today, the blazing star ever-gifting in its warmth, lays wounded behind a blanket of clouds. The hill of Sisyphus defies us now, with a boulder of sneering weight; the buckling weight of death.
Our brothers lay under the dead eyes and stilled bodies of foes, placing down their guns, or perhaps with dead bodies and stilled eyes, having met the disloyal kiss of a bullet. Our world is engulfed into a fearsome grey, colourless and dispassionate, painting our blurring faces black and white.
Tomorrow we'll look in the mirror and see red, so we must appreciate this grey before it dies too.
Young Carney Ó Ceallaigh, dubbed "Cearnach" by bright-eyed friends, is kneeled some ten steps from me. "Victorious Champion", translates his god given name. Reilly Ó Laighin, nineteen and ever-smiling, is the Baptist of so vigorous a nickname. He's a handy shooter, blessed with a silver handgun and ne'er shaking hand.
Reilly Ó Laighin lies dead in Carney's arms.
I can't explain why they did it, staring at his blooded face. A sanguinary shade of sangria, he is almost unidentifiable. It leaves a hallow feeling in my holey chest… I just cannot understand why they aimed for sweet Reilly's perfect smile.
"Carney," falls limp from my bleeding lips. "Carney are you okay?"
"We need help," he replies shakily. "Reilly's bleeding and I can't make it stop!"
"Carney," I say again, if only to bring his dimming name to life. "He's dead. Carney, Reilly's dead."
His voice trembles. His eyes are clouded with pain, and I doubt he even recognizes me anymore. "He's not, I swear, he promised. Ireland won't let him die! Ireland will save him!"
"Ireland's bleeding, Carney, we need to save… him," I remind him, though the words taste like blood and I can hardly watch his horrified expression. The pain in my chest grows, though this time it touches my heart.
"But Reilly's bleeding too!" Carney screams now, his desperate shriek flying with the cold winds of a breathless land. "Reilly! Reilly, wake up!"
"Ó Ceallaigh!" barks some bloodied leader. His high head, once commanding respect, is filthy with the ichor of a thousand souls. "Snap out of it!"
"I'll avenge them," Carney whispers instead. "I promise, Reilly, that all these bursting veins will mean something!"
Kind, brave, foolish Carney searches mindlessly for his gun. When his shivering hands touch against the cold metal, something savage resembling a scarlet hope flickers in his deadened eyes.
Bang.
Carney Ó Ceallaigh dies with such hope burning in his orbs, just as Reilly would have wanted.
My breath catches, and I meet the eyes of his killer for but a moment, turning away from the shivering boy almost immediately. He looks as dead as the man he placed so morbid a mercy upon. Carney would be insulted, I think, to be shot by the shaking hand of some Romeo of a child.
My tears, however few, are polluted by the wicked lipstick of death. Her kiss has sliced open my wary face, and my sobs are for naught but her.
Voices, muted with the macabre choking of dying breaths, carry through the carnage. We are defeated. We failed. It seems, I think dully, closing my eyes; that our sacrifice was for nil.
My finger feels cold under crimson, as I remember how so many must be sitting right now, beside their warm fires. Their hands brushing over the divine rings resting on their hallowed fourth fingers… Joseph Plunkett, a dear ally and friend, has a sweetheart at home. I watched him write a final love letter to her as the sounds of shots fired in the distance. Whatever wretchedly beautiful words he wrote will most likely be his last.
I hate it, but a single tear rolls down my bloody cheek. None of them deserved to die.
"Ireland!" someone calls the name that is hardly even mine. "Ireland, you're alive!"
I place my blackened palm against my blackened heart, nearly ignoring the shouting of a friend unhurt. Forcing my numbed legs to turn to him, I offer a smile. It falls limp, as though hanged from a noose.
"Oi, Turlach, I think I'm wounded."
Turlach laughs, drawing a chuckle from my own weakened chest. Both sound raw. Subdued. "You think you're wounded? Well, we best hope for some help pretty damn soon then, eh?"
Hit by the hand of some violent exhaustion, I mutter an affirmation before leaning numbly against what once was a shop rooftop. Turlach hears the cries of some unfortunate men trapped beneath debris and offers quick apology.
It takes but a starcrossed minute to realize that I am going to die.
I am going to die, alone and abandoned in the torn skin of a slaughtered republic, and my blood will do nothing but add to that of my fellow fallen comrades. My friends are dead- and their loves may well be buried. Pádraig and his brother William, Éamonn, Thomas MacDonagh and Thomas James Clarke, James, Seán and Joseph… if only to name a few… they tried so desperately to free me.
My own little brother put shackles on my wrists so very long ago. There were times when all I could dream of was setting him aflame and simply watching him burn. He saw my people as his inferiors, though I saw his as beasts. There are surely as many dead now as years passed, I think to myself, and so many more to follow.
"I'm sorry."
Turlach does not return, and neither do the men he was called to aid. Is he dead? Shot and left to bleed as many others have been? Perhaps he discovered his wife, a mere civilian killed by one side or the other. Or perhaps he is simply dead as well. Though this could be the better of fates. My brother will have many rot in prison for this. I wonder if they'll pardon the brave women, such as Countess Markievicz, or leave her shot as well.
This Easter Monday has seen me bleeding. We knew we couldn't win. We knew we were doomed from the start. Perhaps some will see it as selfish. Over half of our dead are mere civilians. They will loathe us, without a doubt, if only for a moment. But my people could never hate me. They've seen me at the pubs, be it weekend or day, the laughing drunk or the weeping fool. Clawing at my shackled wrist as though I alone could pull the metal from my skin. They'll understand soon how everything was all for them.
… Please, dear God, let this be true, even if all else was a lie.
I write no notes, and make no final will. With tired hands I dig through the wreckage, shoving unrighteous detritus away with impaled limbs. I push through glass and wood and stone, forming a large hole amidst all the chaos. Said hole is not perfect, dusted with shards too many to clean and defiled by my own gore. It is not what I had so foolishly expected, no spectre of my many romantic dreams. It is ugly and dark, a trench of my most diseased nightmares.
My own wretched feet as my hearse, I move to lay in my grave.
For a moment, I think I am dead.
"Ireland has seen her sons - aye, and her daughters too! - suffer from generation to generation, always for the same cause, meeting the same fate, and always at the hands of the same power. Still, always a fresh generation has passed on to withstand the same opposition . . ." – Roger Casement
I don't know how long I lay there, waiting for the sounds of screaming and crying to be silenced. I can hardly move. A pool of blood has gradually formed to blanket me from the cold wound.
The sound of crunching footsteps wake me from my drunken reverie, though I play dead. It's not the first time I have played the dog. A shadow rests above my face, and a hesitant hand brushes against my shackles wrist. It pulls back immediately, as though shamed, and the shadow retreats.
"Get up." A pause. "Get up, Ireland. You're not done yet."
Speaking of diseased nightmares. I nearly sneer. All his fault… England reaches for my shoulder and I flinch back, ignoring the pain of my growing wounds that ache against the movement.
"You're alright," he seems to realize, almost sounding relieved. There is silence, and I refuse to stand. I wonder if he feels anything for his brothers anymore. As though reading my mind, his voice hardens. "Get up. Now."
I lick my cracked lips, carefully opening a lid not stained with blood. "Oh, Iggy. Did'ya miss me?" Through the agony of blood-loss and resignation I sound almost drunk. "Must've, to come crawling back out here. I thought'ya only did that when you wanted my land…" I paused, my head spinning. "… 'Effing bastard…"
England snorts. My eyes flicker open to see him, standing on the crumbling wall of the local sweets store. And I had liked their chocolate, too. Damn. "Drunk as usual, I'd assume?" he asked snootily, though he seemed warily amused regardless.
"Don't be presumptuous, mo dheartháir beag. More like bleeding from fecking everywhere." I'm almost tempted to check my arse, just to be sure, but England is out-staring me and that is not to be allowed. "What are you doing here anyways? Just leave me alone."
"You're not dead yet."
"Is cuma sa toll feisithe liomsa."
"I can't understand you when you talk like that," England mutters exasperatedly. "Besides, I taught you-"
"Yeah, yeah," I think for a moment, throwing him a dull smirk. "Gabh trasna ort fhéin." He is no longer smiling. I ponder quietly whether he has actually understood my kind suggestion that he should go screw himself sideways, but I doubt it. "… England?"
But I've lost his attention. His eyes wander from body to body, from ruined houses to their neighbours, and his abnormally large eyebrows furrow deeper.
"England?" I try again, softening my voice. He's not the child I once knew, but he's still pretty damn close. "You know I won't join you again. You may have been my brother once, but family don't lock each other in shackles for hundreds of years…"
The trance is broken. He mutters something under his breath, and I strain to hear it.
"What?" I ask, straining myself to sit heedlessly. My hand immediately flies to my bleeding stomach, but I hardly notice as my eyes lock on England. "What did you say? Sasana, please!" It must have been a trick of the eye, but I think he winces at the mention of his name in the language he stripped from me.
"Come with me if you ever want to see your friends again."
My breath catches.
They're all to die, England tells me. They suffered so much to be free just to meet a prisoner's end.
I stand with them on that cursed 3rd of May. Pádraig Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Thomas James Clarke. All painfully brave men, damned now to die for me.
Thomas MacDonagh is marched into the courtyard in a blindfold. I watch a dozen bullets pass through his chest, and he falls without a single cry.
Pádraig follows, clutching his cross to his chest and whistling as he goes. He waits for those thirteen rifles to steady and is dead in seconds.
Thomas Clarke, who often introduced himself simply as 'Tom', is older and those bullets shot do not have him dead. An officer takes to the rifle, hitting him a final time.
And perhaps the firing squad's emotionless faces shouldn't have hurt. Sure, no man knew whether his rifle had been loaded with blanks or with balls, but some had left murderers that day in my eyes.
England stands in the corner of the courtyard, shrouded in shadows. The veil of darkness he bares only increases the pain by tenfold, and I leave to see the others. For all I know, it could be my last chance to ever do so again.
(I don't understand how you could do this to me. You're my brother... sea?
Pádraig's beloved brother, William, dies the next day. They had fought by one another's side until the end. I know Pádraig would never have wanted his dear friend and sibling to follow him to the grave, but I deeply wish them to be reunited in this shared death.
Joe Plunkett is ill. He was ill as a child, and ill as a man. He loved while ill and fought while ill. He will die so, I am sure. Yes, I attended Joseph's execution seven hours after his wedding. He had married his darling sweetheart in the dim prison chapel. Her name is Grace, and she had seemed to hold her tears back until the very end. It was a sombre time for such a joyous occasion. Her sister had been the wife of Thomas MacDonagh, shot dead the day prior. There was little smiling during the grim celebration.
They have a moment to talk - to say goodbye - before he is led back to his cell for the last time.
Mere hours later, he wears his ring proudly into the courtyard, and Grace Plunkett becomes a widow the day she weds.
Éamonn Ceannt is shot four days later. I remember his love of my language, and how we could communicate as I once always had for many hours on end. He dies in silence- the only sounds are the fired bullets, piercing him one by one.
Seán MacDiarmada grew up alongside my history. He walked with a cane and had a love that he had also hoped to marry. He had almost escaped, though I still stood beside him in his last moments. I watched him write with a small smile onto a thin piece of paper, "I feel happiness the like of which I have never experienced. I die that the Irish nation might live!"
And die he did, that 12th of May.
James Connolly is the last of the leaders to die. His parents were Irish immigrants living in Scotland when he was a child. He was born to the slums, and grew up to work difficult and labouring jobs for money. He chose to join the British army when he was fourteen, and during the seven years he fought with them he grew to loathe them. He left the army and married the girl that he loved, named Lillie. At the offer of a job he moved to Dublin. I thought him to be a rather opinionated man, though it did not matter as he was clever, and such opinions were not foolish. And, years later, he was helping to lead a rising. Those following him said they "would have followed him through hell."
After our surrender he had turned to the other prisoners, and said, "Don't worry. Those of us that signed the proclamation will be shot. But the rest of you will be set free."
He is wounded and unable to stand, and though he is likely to die within the day from such injuries they still lead him further through the courtyard. They have him blindfolded, and tied to a chair.
They had asked him to prey for those soldiers about to shoot him. He had replied, "I will say a prayer for all men who do their duty according to their lights."
He is the final leader shot, and maybe that is why I cry as he slumps, blooded, in his chair.
England agrees this will be the last execution. But he always seems to lie to me.
Some months later, Roger Casement replaces brave Connolly as "the last" to be killed. There is little support for him as his newfound diaries point out his 'less than holy' sexuality. But when I look at him I don't see anything but a man who will die for his country and its people. Although I am Catholic, and do believe in God- he clearly didn't write the bible with his own hand. God is forgiving, I believe, so I think he'd have simply rolled his eyes at Leviticus's scribblings. At least, that's what I'd have done, if only after I'd punched the man.
It's partially his fault, after all, that I stand here and watch my friend's face darken as he chokes and gasps. His eyes pop and he heaves desperately for air as he struggles against the rope.
Soon his body hangs, limp, and I collapse to my knees. My throat constricts just as his must have, as I choke on sobs and weep for another lost friend.
Building forth a new Sackville Street is agony. All that keeps me from fading and simply dying are my people. Pádraig had given a promise, before his death. He had said, "You cannot conquer Ireland. You cannot extinguish the Irish passion of freedom. If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom, then our children will win it by a better deed." He always flowered his words so beautifully. He always had faith in me. I hope to never disappoint him.
My friends are dead, but their children live on to recount on their brave names by my side. And as I brush a tired hand against my shackled wrist, I dream of a freedom. A bittersweet liberty, poisoned with too many losses to count.
The pubs seem all too full these days. Crying drunks bang their fists upon the walls and tables, and the sober sob along. Someone's brother, another's son, another's beloved beau. We bury them in the scars of my land.
... I have so many scars now, but the deepest wounds my heart. Ach, níl mo chroí briste. I'll live on- if only to piss that damn English bastard off.
(Tá brón orm, mo chairde. I couldn't save you all.)
"We are ready to die and shall die cheerfully and proudly, you must not grieve for all of this. We have preserved Ireland's honor and our own. Our deeds of last week are the most splendid in Ireland's history. People will say things of us now, but we shall be remembered by posterity and blessed by unborn generations. You cannot conquer Ireland. You cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom. If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom, then our children will win it by a better deed. Ireland unfree shall never be at peace." – Pádraig Pearse
Hello, or, well, "Dia duit!" You may have gathered that I am Irish by now… My friends recently made me aware of how much of a bully the Hetalia fandom seems to think us! I mean- if we're all such jerks how come we have the right to tell just about anyone on St Patrick's Day the classic "kiss me I'm Irish!"
It got me thinking, though. What would Hetalia portray Ireland as? The stereotypical drunk redhead? I have red hair, so I wouldn't take offense to that, and sure, we are known for our drinking. Most Irish use alcohol as a coping mechanism rather than just talking about our feelings, 'cos we're lonely BAMFs. And modest. Cough. But yes.
It's been a century this year from when the 1916 Rising took place. The rebels knew they couldn't win, especially after a number of things went wrong before it even began. Instead they hoped to inspire others. Most of them weren't fighters- they were writers, poets, and family men. It wasn't as though England was the perfect little brother, y'know. In fact, he was sort of an asshole.
But the Easter Rising is a big part of our history. So many people died, and many were only civilians. At first the surviving civilians were furious with the rebels and the destruction their rising had caused, but when the leaders were executed the people were horrified.
The events that took place in the story (though of course Ireland wasn't a person and "Turlach", "Reilly" and "Carney" are fictional characters) are all true. Pádraig Pearse really was said to have whistled as he left his cell, and James Connolly was known to have smiled while tied to that chair. It's the events like these that lead to the Troubles in later years, and the hatred that some Irish people have passed down from generation to generation.
So, well… I'd like to think that Ireland is no bully. Perhaps he's a bit of a stubborn asshole at times and has been known to resort to violence, but he really tries to get along with everyone. And though some people still have, well, an extreme dislike for England, most are just pissed that the media calls Hozier "British". I don't hate you English people! I just wish some of you would stop calling me 'carrot top' when I have red hair, not green… But you gave us Sherlock, Doctor Who and my friend's (slightly worrying) obsession Benedict Cumberbatch, so…
I hate how long this A/N is, so sorry about that. If you want to see an Irish song about this time of history you should check out the Wolfe Tones' songs "Grace" and "James Connolly". I'm more of a hard rock girl, but these songs made me sad…
Those men who fought should never be forgotten. I wish they'd died a happy ending.
Sea- yes
Mo dheartháir beag- my little brother
Is cuma sa toll feisithe liomsa- I don't care/give a f
Gabh trasna ort fhéin- screw yourself sideways
Sasana- England
Ach, níl mo chroí briste- but, my heart is not broken
Tá brón orm, mo chairde- I'm sorry, my friends.