SO Yeats wrote of Pearse and his comrades. There were other hearts with one purpose alone, and that of Terence MacSwiney was one of them.
Francis J. Costello's new book is worth reading for several reasons: it is a transatlantic and fresh revision; it offers a psychology that explains a history; it illuminates an aspect of our present as well as our past.
MacSwiney, born in Cork in 1879, grew up in an impoverished and fatherless household. The joint influence of his English born mother and elder sister Mary was augmented by the teaching of the Christian Brothers in the North Monastery in Cork: strongly nationalist and Catholic. He left school at the age of 15 and worked as a clerk, desperate to improve his condition, ultimately completing a degree course in Mental and Moral Science. Aloof and solitary by disposition, he wrote bad romantic poetry and rather more successful plays, which tended to be of a politically didactic character.
Like some few of his fellows, MacSwiney is interesting because his political thinking went beyond the agenda of separatist nationalism. He was a republican; he opposed monarchy on principle. He was a feminist of sorts, a social conservative who disliked Connolly's ideas, an urban Catholic who drew daily inspiration from Thomas a Kempis's Imitation of Christ, a clericalist, a writer on political theory, a liberal in some respects, a believer in pluralism, but rigid of mind. He became an effective organiser of the Volunteers after their foundation in 1913, and of the various literary, financial and other enterprises through which revolution was fostered, and his business like efficiency in such matters won him the approval of Collins and brought him both election to Dail Eireann and the succession to his murdered friend and comrade Tomas McCurtain as Lord Mayor of Cork.
As TD he tried to look beyond the immediate struggle to the new Ireland that was to be built, and was extremely critical, for example, of the running of the Limerick Technical Institute, which had been taken over by the Dail, deploring the tendency "to undervalue technical and scientific proficiency and to accept, in lieu thereof, political enthusiasm." He married, against the wishes of her parents, a well to do young woman, Muriel Murphy, but spent most of their brief marriage apart from her, in various British jails or on the road of revolutionary organisation. He expressed the view (in Principles of Freedom) that "the man should learn to let his wife and children suffer rather than make of them willing slaves and cowards".
BECAUSE of the muddle and confusion attending the event, the Cork Volunteers, of which McCurtain and MacSwiney were commanders, took no part in the Easter Rising. This preyed on his mind until he was given the opportunity to emulate Pearse. On August 12th, 1920, the Lord Mayor was arrested in Cork City Hall and charged with possession of the key to a cipher used by the RIC. MacSwiney denied the jurisdiction of Crown, police or court, and said he would free himself dead or alive. He refused food.
The British government would not yield, in spite of world wide protests and attempts at intervention bye many highly placed persons, including King George V. Principle fought principle. MacSwiney thought of himself to the end primarily as a soldier, but in his writings he acknowledges that "war is hell". He died after 73 days, winning a propaganda victory of sorts for the cause of the Republic, but raising one of the persistent and troubling 20th century questions: the justifiable means available to the weak in fighting the strong.
Francis J. Costello touches on these questions, and others. The book probes. He speculates on how MacSwiney would have voted on the Treaty, had he lived; but it is not necessary to call on the fanatical speeches of his sister Mary to come to a conclusion. He would have jibbed at the Oath. His hunger strike would have happened two years later.