P.H. Pearse
Mise Éire (translated from the original Irish)
By P.H. Pearse
I am Ireland:
I am older than the old woman of Beare.
Great my glory:
I who bore Cuchulainn, the brave.
Great my shame:
My own children who sold their mother.
Great my pain:
My irreconcilable enemy who harrasses me continually...
Great my sorrow
That crowd, in whom I placed my trust, died.
I am Ireland:
I am lonelier than the old woman of Beare.
Click here to purchase Mise Éire tickets (miseeire.ie)
Life After Desperation?
An extract from my diary description of Mise Éire I, August 2025
It’s a long time since I saw a room with a thousand Irish people in it and looking so happy. We might have to go back to the Casino Ballroom in the Grey Castle, around 1977, or the Sound of Music Club in Glenamaddy, or the Midnight Club in Ballaghaderreen, in the dying days of the ballrooms in the early 1980s, and maybe with Horslips at the top table, or The Fuze, all the way from Galway, or Brush Shiels doing his droll and acrobatic thing in front of hangarful of sweaty hopefuls, looking for love or something lesser — a dance, a kiss, a ‘court’, a cup of tea and a sandwitch, a ‘mineral’, some kind of new connection or promise, some instant of fellow-feeling to blur out the loneliness and make the night alright.
That’s what the magic was — of Mise Éire, I mean — more or less: the sense of a landing, of liberation, of emergence and arrival, of having found an oasis in which it was permissible to be oneself, to speak spontaneously to fellow travellers in the reasonable certainty that you would not be rebuffed or treated to a blank stare or a dismissive slogan from the TV. I have not laughed as much for sixty-six months. I have not seen so much joy on people’s faces for maybe fifteen or seventeen years. It was enough to bring a strong man to tears. I would not use the term ‘awakening’, which I find insulting and reductive, since it implies sloth and inattention rather than what we are dealing with: bemusement, horror, no little terror. I do not believe that our people have been asleep, so much as isolated and lonely in their bafflement and trepidation. What has happened to everything they had and loved? Where has their country gone to? Why are those they trusted as its custodian taking it apart, sod from sod, and giving it away to indifferent aliens and their sponsors? On whose authority? By whose consent? In response to what orders and from whom? At what signal was this process of destruction set in train?
A friend of mine would later say that it was ‘like a big wedding’. Bingo! But who was the bride, and who the groom? The answer is something like: each of us, in his or her loneliness, meeting another in a corridor, on a stairwell, in a moment, for an instant, greeting as though lovers after an extended separation or tiff. Strangers until then. Maybe as many as a hundred thousand brief encounters, each one adding its share of intoxication, exhilaration, relief — that there is life to be found after tyranny.
I was pretty apprehensive beforehand. The saboteurs nobbled the security team on Friday evening, so I arrived to the possibility that the whole thing might have to be cancelled at that eleventh hour and fifty-fifth minute, but Cliff the Magician and Stephen the Inquirer stepped up with not one but two alternatives. The replacements were actually an improvement, not merely as capable as their yellow comrades but sympathetic to the spirit of the event, distinguishable from the patriotic punters only by their black uniforms and mandatory bald heads.
The venue, the Ivy Tower Hotel, was once the Welcome Inn, back in the day Castlebar’s premier ‘singing lounge’ and accordingly a place with rather dark connotations for me, as it was the music venue I attended on the night in 1977 just before I was beaten to a pulp on the street as a result of a freakish series of circumstances having nothing to do with me. I wrote about that episode in my diary in the immediate wake of the election count in Castlebar in June of [2024]. I do not think I mentioned in that entry that the man who ended up assaulting me had been the singer in the band playing in the Welcome Inn that night, a husband and father who had, after the gig, been alerted to some form of assault on his wife and young son, in the streets of Castlebar, even while he was singing less than half a mile away. Having gathered up a posse to avenge his family’s honour, he went out in search of the dastardly wretches who had committed this assault, but had landed his first flurry of blows on a hapless bystander, on foot of which, the next day, unprompted by anyone, he had walked into Castlebar copshop and reported himself. I was that punchbag. He has since died, I believe, but his name was Mick Cuffe, and bizarrely he was the first cousin of my best friend’s wife. I regret that I never went to see him afterwards, to say that there were no hard feelings. There are no hard feelings now.
Back in the present, having opted for an early night and left the organisers and early-arriving participants in the bar, I hit a wall of disconsolateness before my head could hit the pillow. I think the withdrawal of the security team (most likely bought off) had rattled me deeply, even though an alternative had been found. All through the night, I felt enormously sorrowful, waking numerous times in a state of agitation and sadness — sad, above all, that our country has come to the state of affairs we have observed over the past month, of bullying and stupidity and cowardice, our beautiful country, once so alive with humour and irony and wryness, now brought down by leaden cretins and criminal politicians. Contemplation of the lengths to which the forces of darkness are prepared to go in their mission to destroy truth and innocence and passion always has this effect on me. In my periods of wakefulness, I read some of the essays of P.H. Pearse, written just before the Rising, and which I planned to talk about come the morrow, and was becalmed.
My ‘instructions’ from Cliff — as the most conspicuous ‘red rag’ face — were to stay out of sight in the morning, order my breakfast in my room and wait until about midday to show myself. I awoke about 7am, showered and dressed, and then sat uneasily in the room for a while, counting crows through the window. By 9am I was climbing the walls, so I decided to disobey my orders and sneak downstairs in the hope of getting a quiet corner of the dining room, perchance to disappear. When I walked in, I carefully avoided making eye contact with any of the diners present and, unable to immediately see a sufficiently sheltered spot, started to panic moderately. Almost instantly, the proprietor, Mary, emerged from the kitchen and asked me, without explanation or introduction, if I would like to have my breakfast in the bar. Having no idea what she had in mind, but having last evening formed the view that she was a most sharp and watchful woman, I placed my life in her hands and allowed myself to be led through the kitchens to the bar, which was empty except for a barman counting small change into the till. Mary found me a table in a darkened corner, where I settled in while she delivered me orange juice, tea and toast, and a mini-breakfast (no egg). In due course, a couple of the other speakers passed through and we sat talking for a while about the coming event and its risks and implications. They too were nervous, though they too denied it. No cock crowed.
My anxiety turned out to be a total waste of spirit-energy. Once I allowed myself to walk freely through the building, meeting and talking to people, I loosened up and started to enjoy myself. I don’t think Elvis could have received a better reception, had he risen from the dead to head the bill. The place felt safe and secure, and yet normal, with no sense of siege. ‘There’s a thousand of us,’ I told myself, ‘and only a couple of dozen of those nutjobs.’
The new security team proved exceptional in their helpfulness and gentleness. For several days, I had been warning our people that if they happened to be outdoors for a smoke or whatever, they should avoid interaction with the dark forces, should anything of the kind happen to show up. Well, there I was about lunchtime at the front door, talking to a lad from the Podcast of the Lotus Eaters, whose name momentarily escapes me, when the devil tempted me. The Lotus Eater was in town doing some filming for a documentary he’s making about Ireland, but had no idea about the (media-generated and spurious) ‘controversy’ surrounding the festival until I told him about the events of the past month. Some more people, recognising his face, butted in and buttonholed him, so I stepped back to survey the street, which was rapidly filling up with happy-looking people. In their midst, however, were four whose humourless visages suggested potential trouble. Among the small group, a tall spindly woman with a bouffant hairdo, and a wreathed straois on her face, came towards me holding up a sign that said, ‘Hope Not Hate’, which I recognised as the name of an extreme communist organisation from the UK, affiliated to and funded by the UK Labour Party, which purports to oppose fascism while actually enacting it, and in its spare time defends child groomers and rapists. The woman was flanked by two acolytes with somewhat less self-assured expressions, and a third individual bearing a camera phone with obvious intent. When the bouffanted woman shoved her sign in my face, I abandoned my firm purpose of non-engagement. Breaking my own rule, I said: ‘You know, the only one here exhibiting hatred is yourself.’ She smirked a watery smirk and said something I didn’t catch about ‘far right’. A profoundly original mind, withal, I thought to myself. At that moment, she started to move closer and I noticed the acolyte with the camera phone lining up to take the photograph that would be used to demonstrate their resilience in the teeth of defeat, so I turned and walked back indoors, but not before my guardian angel would send me a message. Just inside, one of the security team who had been observing events stopped me and said, ‘John, you shouldn’t engage with those people, it only encourages them!’
The mood in the immediate vicinity of the venue was upbeat and, on the part of the locals, mostly welcoming. People returning from pubs, cafés and restaurants reported being greeted with courtesy and good humour all over town. I heard a few tales of encounters with youngsters, especially young women, who seemed to have swallowed the ‘far right’ smear, but most people are way past that now, although the journaliars have yet to get the memo saying ‘cop the fcuk on!’
Our event at 2.30pm went off well, at least when measured by the feedback. There were some issues of a presentational nature: it would have been better to have Thomas Sheridan, Kevin Flanagan and myself on stage all at once and just throw the ball in, rather than seriatim like in a confessional. A couple of trolls popped their heads up at the end, asking ridiculous questions and spreading snide innuendos, but I’m well used to that kind of thing and was able to deal with it pretty deftly, if I do say so myself. The most irritating thing is when people suggest that we shouldn’t be ‘sitting around talking’, but should be ‘doing something’. Whenever you ask them what we should be ‘doing’, they lose their tongues. Of course, as I pointed out, talking is doing — it’s the most important element of consciousness-raising, which is the sole route to recovering our lives and our country.
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This year, on September 19th at the same venue, I hope (health improvement permitting) to conduct a conversation with the wonderful Neil Oliver, the legendary Scottish shaman of the Covid years, the most passionate and articulate voice of the current British public conscience.
In this video, Stephen Kerr announces Neil Oliver as this year’s Mise Éire headliner.
We have not yet discussed our themes, but anyone who’s seen any of our recent YouTube engagements will know what to expect.
A couple of samples:
Click here to purchase Mise Éire tickets (miseeire.ie)
And here’s a list of some of the other speakers and their topics:
Totalitarianism, War, and Resistance in the Post-Covid Era
David A. Hughes — click here
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Replacement Immigration and the Islamisation of Europe
Simon Elmer — click here
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The System Is Already Here: Digital Identity, Interoperability and the Smart Society
Melissa Ciummei — click here
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Sovereignty Starts With Your Nervous System
Ronan O Brien (Breathwave Ireland) — click here
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Grow, Gather, Prepare: Food Security for Uncertain Times
Sue McMillan (Ballagh Farm Shop) — click here
Luke Ó hErodáin (Celtic Fox) — click here
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Homeopathy, Natural Health, & Practical Solutions For Individuals, Families & Homesteads.
Jenn Ryan & Laura Oestreich — click here
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Raising Wildly Healthy Children: Food, Nature & Traditional Healing for Modern Families
Aisling Fitzgibbon — click here
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The Path of the Forgotten Horses: Building Éire’s Greatest Equine Healing Centre
Sean Kilkennyy — click here
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Physical and Mental Strength in Times of Tyranny
Ivor Cummins — click here
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Can Brehon Law Save Ireland Today?
Kevin Flanagan — click here
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Solutions to Escape the Digital Matrix — Mayo’s Boycott, Davitt’s Speech, Daly’s Media, Gold & Silver
Mark O’Byrne + panel
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