A dreadful doom my father found
On that ill-omened even-tide;
And here I mourn beside the mound,
Where, whelmed by numbers, Kian died,—
This lonely mound of evil fame,
That long shall bear the hero's name!

Alas! an evil deed is done,
And long shall Erin rue the day:
There shall be strife 'twixt sire and son,
And brothers shall their brothers slay;
Vengeance shall smite the murderers too,
And vengeance all their race pursue!

The light has faded from mine eyes;
My youthful strength and power have fled
Weary my heart with ceaseless sighs;
Ambition, hope, and joy are dead;
And all the world is draped in gloom—
The shadow of my father's tomb!

The Fate of the Children of Tuireann - Old Celtic Romances, P.W. Joyce (1920)

Our literature is heroic. The ancient sagas – the strong warlike tales of the Red Branch, and the more romantic and charming and naturally beautiful tales of the Fianna – remained the chief substance of our Gaelic literature as long as that literature was being made folklore was in harmony with the manuscripts that the scribes copied. Down to our days, the typical Shanachie was he who could recite a Fenian lay. Every poet sprinkled his verses with allusion to the heroic tales, and the Gaelic folk whom the planters replaced were likened to the companions of Fionn. The heroes, in brief, were to the folk of all our cottages the household mythology, and our people dwelt imaginatively in the heroic world.

Heroic Ireland - Aodh de Blácam (1935)

What meaneth this sad, this fearful change,
That withers my heart with woe?
The house of my father all joyless and lone,
Its halls and its gardens with weeds overgrown,—
A dreadful and strange overthrow!

No conquering heroes, no hounds for the chase,
No shields in array on its walls,
No bright silver goblets, no gay cavalcades,
No youthful assemblies or high-born maids,
To brighten its desolate halls!

An omen of sadness—the home of our youth
All ruined, deserted, and bare.
Alas for the chieftain, the gentle and brave;
His glories and sorrows are stilled in the grave,
And we left to live in despair!

From ocean to ocean, from age unto age,
We have lived to the fulness of time;
Through a life such as men never heard of we've passed,
In suffering and sorrow our doom has been cast,
By our stepmother's pitiless crime!

The Children of Lir, Old Celtic Romances - P.W. Joyce (1920)

War is a terrible thing, but war is not an evil thing. It is the things that make war necessary that are evil. The tyrannies that wars break, the lying formulae that wars overthrow, the hypocrisies that wars strip naked, are evil. Many people in Ireland dread war because they do not know it. Ireland has not known the exhilaration of war for over a hundred years. Yet who will say that she has known the blessings of peace? When war comes to Ireland, she must welcome it as she would welcome the Angel of God. And she will.

Peace and the Gael (1915) - Pádraig Mac Piarais (Patrick Pearse)

O Son of God, it would be sweet,
a lovely journey,
to cross the wave, the fount in flood,
and visit Ireland:

to Eolarg Plain, by Foibne Hill,
across Loch Febail,
and listen here to the matching music
of the swans.

Flocks of gulls would fill with pleasure
as we sailed swiftly
into the welcome of Port na Ferg
in our 'Red-with-Dew'.

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)

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 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 despoiled of those lands and liberties by the English.

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

Heed not the cringing traitors' jeer,
Heed not the despot's darkling frown;
But press ye on - the goal is near,
Tho' Saxon bandogs hound ye down.
Heed not the worthless guilty crew
Who fain would block your onward way;
To Ireland's glorious Cause be true -
For Ireland's sake be Men to-day.

By Heaven's decree - by Right Divine -
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)

What this pyramid of kingship, conjured up in the law tracts, did not allow for was a king operating at a higher level than a province-king, i.e. a high-king of Ireland. But this does not mean that no such notion existed: it occurs occasionally in legal texts and is a commonplace in historical texts and in literature. 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’), from the assumption that the island had been, or should be, divided into five provinces—though in the historic era there were always more — and of course the concept of a fifth presupposes a whole of which it was a part.

Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf - Seán Duffy (2013)

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.

Set but a limit to the loss
And something shall at last abide,
The blood-stained beams that formed
the cross,
The thorns that crowned the crucified;

But who shall lose all things in One,
Shut out from Heaven and the Pit
Shall lose the darkness and the sun,
The finite and the infinite;

And who shall see in one small flower
The chariots and the thrones of might
Shall be in peril from that hour
Of blindness and the endless night;

And who shall hear in one short name
Apocalyptic thunders seven
His heart shall flicker like a flame
'Twixt Hell's gates and the gates of Heaven

The Dark Way - Seosamh Pluincéid (Joseph Plunkett)

Dear K,

I am in better health and more satisfied than for many a
day—all will be well eventually—but this is my good-bye
and now you are ever before me to cheer me—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, Tomás Séamus Ó Cléirigh (Thomas James Clarke)

His songs were a little phrase
Of eternal song,
Drowned in the harping of lays
More loud and long.

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 (Thomas Stanislaus MacDonagh)

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 !

O, brave young men of Eirinn !
Be steadfast, leal and true,
Be generous in your daring
For the cause of Roisin Dubh;
Be hers in joy and sorrow,
Even though you stand alone
For the stainless Right, 'gainst England's might,
Like our own unconquered Tone !

His fame is in your keeping,
To hold without a stain,
Till freedom's fires are leaping
- From every hill and plain;
Till Ireland's battle slogan
Shall reach to the despot's throne,
And swords aflame shall trace the name
Of our own unconquered Tone !

A Song of Tone - Brian Ó hUigínn (Brian O'Higgins)

The ancient institution of professional story-telling held its ground both in Ireland and in Scotland down to a very recent period; and it is questionable if it be even yet quite extinct. Within my own memory, this sort of entertainment was quite usual among the farming classes of the south of Ireland. 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.

Old Celtic Romances - P.W. Joyce (1920)

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, inspiring the leal and unselfish to hold out until comes the first glimmering of the dawn, saying to those who will listen that never yet has our cause gone down in utter defeat, that never yet has Ireland surrendered to her enemy and admitted that the long struggle 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. 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)

‘The case is simply this, that Irish is the language of Ireland. It is because it is the language of Ireland, and not because it happens to be a rich and beautiful language, a strong and flexible language, a subtle and delicate language, that we would fain preserve it. 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, and to disown it, for that it were unlovely, would be to disown ourselves.’

The Case for Irish (1905) - Pádraig Mac Piarais (Patrick Henry Pearse)

So the foul fiend works: he tires our hearts with fury,
and with evil temptation shakes our innermost hearts.
Keep Christ in your minds, my men, and let your cry re-echo.

Stay stern in your resolve, spurn the lures of the enemy
and seek your safety in the weapons of virtue.
Keep Christ in your minds, my men, and let your cry re-echo.

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.

The King of every good, the source, the height of power,
gives promise as we strive, gives the prize when we succeed.
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)

I, for my part, hold that victory lies not in senseless armour, nor in the vain din of cannon, but in living and courageous souls. Remember how often when you were not so well equipped or disciplined you have overcome greater generals and forces, and even Bagenal himself. 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.

This very Catholic faith will stimulate your valour. Here you are to defend Christianity, fatherland, children and wives. Here must well-deserved chastisement be meted out to Bagenal, of all heretics, your bitterest enemy, who assails your properties, who thirsts for your blood, who impugns my honour.

Speech At The Battle of Yellow Ford (1598) - Aodh Mór Ó Néill (Hugh O’Neill)

The man is thine, O Emer,
He has broken from me, O noble wife,
No less, the thing that my hand cannot reach,
I am fated to desire it.

Many men were seeking me
Both in shelters and in secret places;
My tryst was never made with them,
Because I myself was high-minded.

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.

With fifty women hast thou come hither,
Noble Emer, of the yellow locks,
To overthrow Fand, it were not well
To kill her in her misery.

Three times fifty have I there,
—Beautiful, marriageable women,—
Together with me in the fort:
They will not abandon me.

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

Right noble and valiant defenders of your country and liberty, let us consider with what nations and for what causes we are now about to wage battle. That enemy of his country, that tyrant of his people, and foe of all men, who was formerly driven out of the land, is now returned with the support of foreign troops, and bent on the general ruin of the state. 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. Himself an enemy, he has called in our greatest national enemy; a people who have long aimed at being lords over him as well as over all of us, and give out that the dominion of our land justly belongs to them, and is even destined to them by ancient prophecies.

Speech by Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair to the Men of Ireland - The Conquest of Ireland, Giraldus Cambrensis (1189)

Naked I saw thee,
O beauty of beauty!
And I blinded my eyes
For fear I should flinch.

I heard thy music,
O sweetness of sweetness!
And I shut my ears
For fear I should fail.

I kissed thy lips,
O sweetness of sweetness!
And I hardened my heart
For fear of my ruin.

I blinded my eyes,
And my ears I shut,
I hardened my heart
And my love I quenched.

I turned my back
On the dream I had shaped,
And to this road before me
My face I turned.

I set my face
To the road here before me,
To the work that I see,
To the death that I shall meet.

Ideal - Pádraig Mac Piarais (Patrick Henry Pearse)