TERENCE MacSWEENEY: LORD MAYOR OF CORK

New Zealand Tablet, 24 February 1921, Page 9

TERENCE MacSWEENEY: LORD MAYOR OF CORK

Born on March 28, 1879—Arrested and began hunger-strike on August 12 Died in Brixton Prison on October 25, 1920. (By Daniel Corkery.) I have but a few simple things to say of Terence MacSweeney. In this sore-tried corner of the earth and in stricken corners elsewhere there must be other young men built of the same earnest clay, who, already knowing him on the heroic side, will wish in the impulsive way of healthy human kindliness to have some hint of him as we m Cork in our great privilege knew him—comrade and friend. To such 1 speak. ...... “A Vl ™ oSt * wo ™? nth , bfor his agony had spent itself ,• ' " rote . nobly of him in the Times, hoping (as he himself has since declared) to stir the conscience of the English —hoping in vain: Brixton Prison, August 31, 1920. See, though the oil be low, more purely still and higher ihe flame burns in the body’s lamp ! The watchers still Gaze with unseeing eyes while the Promethean will the Uncreated Light, the Everlasting Fire ’ Sustains itself against the torturers’ desire Even as the fabled Titan chained upon the hill. Burn on, shine here, thou immortality, until VJ e too have lit our lamps at the funereal pyre: lill we too can be noble, unshakable, undismayed • lill we too can burn with the holy flame, and know Inero is that within us can triumph over pain, And go to death, alone, slowly and unafraid. Ihe candles of God are already burning row on row farewell, Lightbnnger, fly to thy heaven again.

When I read these lines I felt in mo a strong desire h? m I t I>oet te lr ing him , on, the word of one who knew him, that Terence Mac Sweeney was fully worthy of them telling him especially -that he was as great in the hundred and one disconcerting, scrutinising surprises of the everyday which take a man unaware, as he was when the last scene of all wasi dressed and. he had stepped upon the stage in the eyes of the world; and this I should certainly have done had the poet been an unknown wayside singer and not one who was bound to meet with many who could make him better aware of our Lord Mayor’s greatness by word of mouth than I could in a formal letter. Let England be as callous as a vicious war could leave it, yet this man has not lain there in his death agony of 73 days without at least disturbing it: and other lands than England, which are tree to express themselves, have spoken of a breath ot renovation passing across the seas from that cell in Brixton Gaol, have spoken of a new revelation. Yet all the time we in Cork have been walking in a sort of aloof silence that denies the revelation: to us there certainly has been no revelation; the flower has opened in all its bright and pure beauty, but only as the bud promised; +w music has clashed out its finale—and ceased, but that exuhing finale was inherent in the motif— indeed also was the tragic silence that closed it. We had seen others of our fellow-countrymen go nobly to their death—uearse, Casement, many others: we thought occasionally of forerunners of theirs that died in .and other lands - in literature there was “Brand” for our kenning—well, long before the world had heard of him we'had put Terence Mac Sweeney while still living out his days within the confines of a little provincial city, alongside the great ones of history and literature. Of late years we never lad any doubts that he would die tragically, nor that the end would crown his life; 11. Any -great movement towards a spiritual end, such as Ireland s present push for freedom, obviously endows itself with creative power, as if otherwise ' it could not progress, it takes the most diverse types and unifies them as all who to-day walk the streets of Ireland must openly acknowledge. The explanation is that in such movements' men like Terence Mac Sweeney act out the desires of their souls, express those desires in living matter, tin. dearest that is, flesh and blood. Such men we speak of as master-spirits, master minds, outstanding figures commanding personalitiesall good words, if none be quite the right word. : ' 1 f , „ ri H But-: this, the outstanding aspect of Terence' MacSweeney, is not that on which I would dwell; f . and yet how to give the sense of that homelier, more . intimate" human being that was in him as in all others, I do not know Who can impart the full sense we !; have of a lyric that little by little has become-?' one ■ with :: us, or the sense of a country-side in . which we lived when ’ young The features

of the country-side, the cold words of the lyric, will not do so. * 5 We■. can but try. c "ty ' Pearse has -a noble poem, written out of his very being: “Why will ye torture me, desires of my heart?” More obviously than Pearse, ■aMacSweeney’s desires tortured him, hunted him, as the poem has it, like a poor deer on the hill. That was what the eager, wistful leanness of his face meant, the spiritual hunger in it, the brooding shadow. That was what the headlong . rush through the streets meant. One felt it too in his swift, onward-rushing penmanship, in the swift run of his speech. His verses, his plays, the propaganda he wrote — are full of it. . . He was right, he knew it; he had the key of things; there were waverers everywhere, but they could be gathered in, straightened up and set marchingthey could be even taught how to die.

No one ever saw him dawdle. He never made holiday, if tho mass of men know how to make holiday. If he did sit still, and ho . could sit still for hours, it only meant that the chase was harder than before. It was the sitting still rather than the rushing from place to place that left him so lean of aspect. A cigarette looked strange in his mouth. Ido not think he ever carried ciigarettes of his own, but of a social evening he would with the rest accept of one. If in a farmhouse in Iveleary we caught him dancing the rinnce fada with great boyishness, laughing with entire guilelessness, we knew well he did so not to discomfort the others. Of his own he had no amusements,,, no hobbies. Yet no one ever heard him reprove another for giving his leisure to hurling or fishing or hunting: they could do so and yet fulfil their duties. He often looked on while I made a sketch among the mountains of West Cork —looked on as if he were assisting at some holy rite, taking my hobby with a disconcerting seriousness.

Of the technique of painting, as of that of music, he knew little or nothing; but he loved both with a passion almost as great as his passion for literature. His culture, which was wide and deep, did not explain it: the truth is that every manifestation of beauty—a child's face, a cloud, an old gardenthrilled him with delight. I recall a wild day that we both found ourselves looking at the swollen river rushing and foaming under the narrow arches of South Gate bridge in Cork, how he spoke of water as being in all its aspects one of the marvels of the world. He lived then at Blackrock, a few miles down the river, where the river is widest and noblest; and he often spoke to me of the joy it was to be near the wide waters after the rush of the day.

: Music with him was, I think, the supreme art: he would listen to it with reverential awe ; but literature was the one art he practised. At that time he. thought that his life's work was to write books— Ireland; and, once he, had taken his degree, he. threw himself into the work with great zest. His preparation for the writing of drama was very characteristic of his earnest spirit. He began by reading, re-reading in some cases, all the standard works of criticism he could lay hands on. The only copy of Aristotle's Poetics I ever read I had on loan from him. Lessing's Laocoon he also read; modern criticism as well, and of course he.kept fully in touch with the literature of the Irish renaissance. Shaw's dramatic technique he admired very much, but Shaw's philosophy we never discussedit was so far apart from Irish life. He also read Moliere and the other French classics; and both Shaw's technique, as in the matter of stage-directions, and that of- the French, as in the unfamiliar use of the word "scene" to denote a change in the number of characters, on the stage, left their traces on his work, most noticeably so in the. one play he published,' /The, Revolutionist. " Ibsen and Maeterlinck he also read. The Mary Magdalen I read was his. Of Moliere and Ibsen he had full setsvery fine editions. Synge he did not like but then Synge's's outlook on life and his own were frankly opposite.

Shelley, I think, Mas his favorite poet. He Si ke of "I Arise From Dreams of Theo" with 'delight; and Shelley's influence is in all his verse. Rosetti he also canv ti admire very much. He once quoted a sonnet of his to i in Ballingeary, and finding I did not know it, he -put into my hands the next- day a little "terra-cotta" notebook into which he had copied a full hundred of the best sonnets in English, including many of Rossetti's. I find myself now wondering where that little book is. I speak of his reading -in pure literature. Of all the books written on Irish history, more especially of those about the modern periods, the r Wolfe Tone period, the Fenian period, he , had an intimate knowledge: Wolfe Tone he loved as a living mam ' . ~ . ;•

And all the time he was studying Irish. It is many years since we ceased to speak English to each other; and a soon as his wife had learned it, it became the language of his home: woe betide the person that would speak any other language to their little child. S*mm*o»„* yo«

. i 111. He practised literature" for the sake of Ireland —never to become famous or to make money. One idea had him constantly in its grip, the freedom of Ireland; and with him freedom meant just freedom and nothing else; he was always a . Separatist. Cf;; ;: :: * None of us of the. Cork Dramatic Society of those days—now ten years agowere ardent politicians; but we knew that Terry, as we always called him, used to attend the meetings of the few old Fenians that were left in the city. We would occasionally argue on the question of physical force as practical politics, but his standpoint was that to hand on the idea of Separation was very practical politics ; and at that time I fancy he never dreamt that he could do anything beyond assisting in the propagation of the mere idea.

Of the Gaelic League we were all members—some of us in one branch, some in another: it was the biggest thing in our lives; and indeed it was the Gaelic League, although a strictly non-political body, rather than the remaining tradition of Fenianism that accounts for Irealnd being being so overwhelmingly committed to Republicanism to-day. This it brought about unwittingly. It trained up a body of young men as free from the passion of party politics as they were alive to the sense of the continuity of the Irish tradition, the continuity of the Irish struggle, Ireland against England. The moment Pearse began to speak of Liberty it was the Gaelic Leaguers that gathered to him. The moment the Volunteers were set up —first as a counterblast to the Carson Volunteersit was the Gaelic Leaguers that took the movement in hand. To the day of his death, in season and out of season, Terence Mac Sweeney preached the Gaelic League idea. There was another body in which at this time he played even a bigger part —the Celtic Literary Society. It conducted a manuscript journal, and I fancy that he had often to write practically the whole of it.

Those four, societies, in those pre-war days, took up all his leisurethe Celtic Literary Society, the Gaelic League, the Fenian body, and the Cork Dramatic Society. The rehearsals of the last he attended constantly for the purpose of getting a knowledge of stagecraft. It produced four of his plays, of which one could say much if there were space. IV. Sir Edward Carson doing more than a man’s work in the matter, it came about that at the opening of the War the young men of Ireland were drilling on the hills with real guns in their hands and real ammunition in their knapsacks. Think what it meant to Mac Sweene y! He that was content to give his whole life to merely dreaming that such would one day come to pass—even after he was dead! In his published play, The Revolutionist, the central figure does not get beyond preaching revolution; but here was something very like revolution itself actually in being. I am not in' a position to follow him, to tel] the- whole story, but I can realise what it meant to him. He had always been an optimist: now he was exultant. If he had always rushed from place to place, now he flew. The city, then the county Cork, was his province; he would push his bicycle 20, 30, 40 miles against a windy rain to speak brave words to some little hamlet or other hidden in the hills. Then there were frequent -journeys, to and from Dublin. And all the time he was writing—the noblest propaganda that perhaps ever was written.

He set up a paper of his own, Fianna Fail, and kept it going for nine months. Then he had to foot the bill; and the only thing of value he had to sell was his library—his complete sets. Among ourselves we spoke ,of what that must have meant to him but in himself, in his look, his. words, we never saw a sign: the great work was going ahead like wildfire—that was all he cared'. Then, as ever, he was radiantly optimistic. * His constant companion in these activities of his in spreading the Volunteers was Thomas Mac Curtain, his predecessor in the mayoralty of Cork, who was murdered in his own house not by Sinn Feinersin March, 1920. They were exactly opposite in type Terence Mac Sweeney being an intellectual for good and : harm ; ; his friend being a man of shrewd, homely wit, high-spirited, and gifted with any amount of brain, having moreover an insight into men and affairs that astonished all who came into contact with him. Exactly opposites, they yet worked most happily in harness; and, except Thomas Mac Curtain, I.; have never heard of anyone else who had ft the least influence over Terence Mac Sweeney, who could get him to reconsider a decision or postpone its execution. To think of Terence Mac Sweeney is to feel-one's'soul rising up in admiration; to think of Thomas Mac Curtain is to feel one's heart expanding' with- love. ; i' : , > ;:^M; Then came the Rising, and, from that on, frequent gaolings for him. At the time of his marriage he was in

fen forced exile in England; when his - child - was - born he was a prisoner in Belfast Gaol.

I Out of gaol, the rushing from place to place was resumed, only at an ever-increasing pace. He seldom dared to sleep at home. Once lie did : "in the dead of the ; night he had to rise and escape through the back garden while the military were coming in at the front. He slept at one end of the city one night, at anotheri end' the next night, seldom three nights running in the one house an exhausting life. Then he steps into the place of his murdered friend, Thomas Mac Curtain, becomes Lord Mayor of Cork, adding burden to burden; and the World knows the rest. - V. .. Only a few things remain to lie said. “He would‘rise at six, but he could have done the "business equally well if ho rose at eight.” He who says this of him had often to keep pace with him on the long roads. Yes, he was too anxious, would burn himself away, and all others about him. He was a “Brand.” He had only small respect for tact, which is the homely word for diplomacy.. “hie treated us all like small boys,” one who was just as long in the movement'as himself says of him. ;. But he had also patience and forbearance, and was instinct with reverence and chivalry and forgiveness." Without a touch of pietism or of puritanism, he was deeply religious. He would treat the others like small boys, and would call them at six, yet could still maintain his place among them -because he took far greater toll of himself than of any'others, gave more than he asked, was entirely selfless. It is only a poor type of soldier that will not follow such a leader to the end. He was an idealist. His view of life, as expressed in all his writings, was that life could he heightened, on and Tin, for evermore. Now no one ever knew a genuine idealist who was not housed in a body all sensibility and finenessmade of a rare clay: from which thought we may learn that the martyrs who delivered their bodies to he burned delivered such bodies as would of themselves shrink from the least touch of a taper. Lips of a more sensitive mould than Terence Mac Sweeney’s lips I have never laid eyes on. We have as yet but rouglily very roughlyestimated his martyrdom. We will never know it. Act those who went to see him lying on his bed. of torture came homo to us dazzled at the constant activity of his mind, at the serenity of his spirit. In those long hours that ho lay there on his death-bed, what thoughts must have come to him, what places must have flashed on his inner eye, what reckonings as to how the end would at last come! For all of us there was one constant consolation that those who were about himhis wife, his sisters and brothers, as well as his faithful chaplain, Father Dominic, were all worthy of himself.—R.l.R.