Religion, Mythology and Irish Nationalism

Analysis Questions

1. How are 'Nationalised Myths' created?
2. How does Seamus Heaney reinforce myths of Irish nationalism?
3. How do the myths and poetry work to compliment each other?
4. How is the idea of a Romantic Ireland important for Irish identity?

In an Irish context, and speaking specifically in terms of the
Gaelic and Celtic revivals, mysticism was part of the cement that helped to
‘energise the ideologues of the revival and shape their thoughts’ (Jackson 1999,
172), and it is this mystical imperative that we see at work in Pearse’s discourse.
His frame of reference is directed at an audience whose unconscious is
saturated with Roman Catholic religiosity. The rhetorical device polyptoton
used to cement the adequation of Tone with Saint Patrick in the opening line.
This adequation transforms Tone from an historical figure, subject to the veridical
discourse of history, into a mythico-religious one, comparable to the legendary
Saint Patrick, about whom comparatively little is known, apart from his
spectacular religious success. The connection between the two, the hinge upon
which the whole rhetorical structure turns, is based on this lococentric
comparison in terms of the holiness of a specific place. This connection is then developed in the contradiction that
while Patrick ‘brought us life,’ a phrase which clearly implies religious life, Tone
‘died for us.’ By now, the adequation has done its work, and the unconscious
religious background fills in any blanks in the narrative. In Catholic teaching, the
notion of sacrifice, the one for the many, is a central tenet. The adequation
between Tone and Saint Patrick is now elided and a stronger connection is set up.
Given the religious frame of reference (reinforced by the lexical field of the
paragraph: ‘faith’; gospel’; ‘soul’; ‘communion’; ‘baptism’; ‘regeneration’;
‘cleansing’), the notion of someone dying ‘for us’ implies an adequation between
Tone and Christ, and at a broader level, between nationalism and religion.

A further dimension of this classic example of nationalist epistemology is
to be found in the anagogical vision of nationalism as a force which ultimately
is
used to cement the adequation of Tone with Saint Patrick in the opening line.
This adequation transforms Tone from an historical figure, subject to the veridical
discourse of history, into a mythico-religious one, comparable to the legendary
Saint Patrick, about whom comparatively little is known, apart from his
spectacular religious success. The connection between the two, the hinge upon
which the whole rhetorical structure turns, is based on this lococentric
comparison in terms of the holiness of a specific place, a trope to which we will
return in chapter three. This connection is then developed in the contradiction that
while Patrick ‘brought us life,’ a phrase which clearly implies religious life, Tone
‘died for us.’ By now, the adequation has done its work, and the unconscious
religious background fills in any blanks in the narrative. In Catholic teaching, the
notion of sacrifice, the one for the many, is a central tenet. The adequation
between Tone and Saint Patrick is now elided and a stronger connection is set up.
Given the religious frame of reference (reinforced by the lexical field of the
paragraph: ‘faith’; gospel’; ‘soul’; ‘communion’; ‘baptism’; ‘regeneration’;
‘cleansing’), the notion of someone dying ‘for us’ implies an adequation between
Tone and Christ, and at a broader level, between nationalism and religion.

A further dimension of this classic example of nationalist epistemology is
to be found in the anagogical vision of nationalism as a force which ultimately transcends issues of real-world politics and discourse. ‘Irish Nationalism’ (the
double capitals are indicative of the status of the term), is seen, not as a political
set of principles, nor as a response to historical pressures and circumstances;
instead it is seen as a ‘faith,’ a belief-system which, by definition, is not subject to
any form of rational or intellectual critique. As a ‘faith,’ nationalism is not
required to set out its aims, goals and methodologies; all that is needed is for the
people (and Pearse constantly uses the vatic ‘us’), to give it their ‘full
acceptance.’ Tone’s special value, and it is here that the unconscious religious
agglomeration of images is used to full effect, is his ability to ‘formulate’ the
‘gospel of Irish Nationalism’ in ‘worldly terms.’ It is as if this nationalist gospel
has some form of mystical existence and requires some form of elite interpreter,
some clerisy, to reveal its truth to ‘us.’ Here one thinks of Ernest Renan’s
aphorism that a ‘nation is a soul, a spiritual principle’ (Renan 1990, 19), as this is
precisely the realm of discourse which Pearse utilises, as it has a shaping power
over our notions of the present.
In terms of this use of the personal pronoun, first person plural, the
relationship between the people, ‘us,’ and this ‘gospel’ is reflexive and mutually
constitutive. We become ‘the people’ through our shared allegiance to the
narrative in question, at both conscious and unconscious levels. The ‘adhesion to
the faith of Tone’ is what creates the notion of the Irish people, or at least those of
the people who merit the designation ‘Irish Nationalists.’ Tone, like Saint Patrick
and Christ, becomes one more character in this nationalist narrative. His
rhetorical captation from historical figure into mythico-religious icon has been
achieved: communion with him brings about ‘baptism,’ ‘regeneration’ and
‘cleansing.’ Pearse clearly saw, like Renan, that ‘a heroic past...is the social
capital in which one bases a national idea’