Irish Historical Archive

[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

Envious of his country’s welfare, he has brought in a foreign race, that, by the aid of a fierce and detested nation, he may be able to inflict upon us the mischief to which his own strength was unequal.

Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair - The Conquest of Ireland (1189)

[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

Joyless she who gives love to one
Who does not heed her love;
It were better for her to be destroyed
If she be not loved as she loves.

The Lamentation of Fand When She Is About to Leave Cú Chulainn - The Poem-Book of the Gael (1913)

[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

The English never could compare with the Irish in spirit, courage or steadfastness in battle, and the Irish who will be fighting against you will be dispirited by the consciousness of their crime and schism in fighting against the Catholic faith.

Aodh Mór Ó Néill (Hugh O’Neill)

[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

Firm faith and a blessed zeal will conquer all.
The ancient enemy will fail and shatter his arrows.
Keep Christ in your minds, my men, and let your cry re-echo.

A Boat Song, St.Columbanus - A New Oxford Book of Irish Verse (1986)

[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

If it were a sterile and unlovely speech, weak and unadaptable, rigid and colourless, it would equally be our duty to preserve it, for it is ours, it is the speech we have ourselves fashioned from our inner consciousness for the purpose of expressing our thought,

P.H Pearse

[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

That is why we have survived as a nation, a wounded nation, a bleeding nation, a pain-filled nation, a heart-sore nation, a mourning nation, but a nation unconquered and unsubdued.

Wolfe Tone Annual 1956 - Brian Ó hUigínn (Brian O'Higgins)

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[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

Look back through the pages of our story-not the false tale given to the world by our one enemy and even still believed by Anglicised Irishmen-and in the darkness of every night of woe you will see some heroic, humble figure holding aloft the lantern of hope,

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[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

for the right against the wrong was ended finally and forever. There has been a sentinel watching unwearyingly through every starless night-each one a link in the chain of remembrance and fidelity-and that chain has never once been broken.

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[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

The family and workmen, and any neighbours that chose to drop in, would sit round the kitchen fire after the day's work—or perhaps gather in a barn on a summer or autumn evening—to listen to some local shanachie reciting one of his innumerable Gaelic tales.

P.W. Joyce (1920)

[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

No craven dirge of sorrow
Our hearts will sing to-day,
No whinings for the morrow
Or for ages passed away;
But a song of bold rejoicing
That the seed by our martyrs sown
Has sprung to bloom by the lonely tomb
Of our own unconquered Tone !

A Song of Tone - Brian Ó hUigínn

[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

His deed was a single word,
Called out alone
In a night when no echo stirred
To laughter or moan.

But his songs new souls shall thrill,
The loud harps dumb,
And his deed the echoes fill
When the dawn is come.

Of a Poet Patriot - Tomás Anéislis Mac Donnchadha

[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

God bless you and the boys. Let them be proud to follow same path—Sean is with me and McG,’ all well—they all heroes. I’m full of pride my love.

Yours
Tom

Message to his Wife from Richmond Barracks, 30 April, 1916,

[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

Rougher than death the road I choose
Yet shall my feet not walk astray,
Though dark, my way I shall not lose
For this way is the darkest way.

The Dark Way - Seosamh Pluincéid (Joseph Plunkett)

[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

A kingship of all Ireland presumed a sense of Ireland as representing a whole, and such a sense certainly existed. Another name for the highest rank of king, the rí ruirech (‘king of overkings’), was rí cóigid (‘king of a fifth’)

Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf (2013)

[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

...
This Irish land is yours alone;
Will ye give up to foreign swine
Without a fight what is your own?
Will ye allow an alien race
To flinch your sacred rights away,
And wipe out every noble trace
Of manhood from your land to-day?

The United Irishman (1900)

[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

despoiled of those lands and liberties by the English.

Remonstrance of the Irish Chiefs to Pope John XXII (1317) - Domhnall Ó Néill

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[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

And after the faith had been preached and received, 61 kings of the same blood, without intervention of alien blood, kings admirably in the faith of Christ and filled with works of charity, kings that in temporal things acknowledged no superior, ruled here uninterruptedly

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[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

in humble obedience to the Church of Rome until the year 1170. And it was they, not the English nor others of any nation who eminently endowed the Irish Church with lands, ample liberties and many possessions, although at the present time she is, for the most part, sadly

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[Irish Historical Archive @IrishHistorical]

I am full of sorrow that I left Ireland
when I had my strength
and then grew tearful and full of sadness
in a foreign land.

Poem Attributed to St.Colmcille - The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse (1986)