Gaelstát - Odyssey of a Concept
‘Reports of public meetings at this time often end with the enigmatic phrase “… and William Rooney spoke in Irish.”’ (Kelly, 30)
The term ‘Gaelstát’ has been bandied about in certain circles as of late. Multiple pieces in MEON have made use of the term, it has seen use in political paraphernalia (The National Party, 2025), a speech was dedicated to the concept, it has received attention in Scottish media, and particular niches of social media are saturated with its use.
To the best of my knowledge I am the person who coined the term, but I am not at all responsible for its popularisation. It was somewhat strange for me to watch the term take on a life of its own, years after I had first coined it.
HISTORY
The term is about a decade old at this point. The various little groups which constituted Irish Nationalism at that time were lacklustre; at best paying lip service to all things Irish while not adhering to the ideas or practices to a serious degree. Many of the people involved were heavily influenced by foreign ideologies which were in vogue at the time. One word which was in frequent use was ‘ethnostate’.
That word was strongly connected to white nationalist movements in the United States and more broadly in the Anglosphere. I coined ‘Gaelstát’ ad hoc in response to this, because I do not support white nationalism, and believe that the people involved in what they call Irish Nationalism should not be adopting the ideas of Anglosphere movements and trying to fit them awkwardly into an Irish context. Ireland has its own tradition of Nationalism which far surpasses in theory and in practice anything that foreign movements have to offer.
Not much thought went into the term, being that it was an ad hoc substitution that, frankly, didn’t address the root problem of foreign influence. I am of the belief that, ten years on, progress has been made, little by little; however, much more remains to be done, and hopefully done quickly. The use of ‘Gaelstát’ has caught on, and has spread like wildfire in the past few years.
Only as of recent, however, has anyone put much consideration into the idea behind it—at least in public. I am not particularly fond of the term and since I am not responsible for its recent popularisation, and in fact almost never use it, I am also not responsible for putting any consideration into the idea; this has all been left to others. As a result there is no coherent, unifying thesis, but multiple people attempting to build upon something ill-defined and ephemeral; and naturally there is quite a bit of disagreement and debate.
OVERVIEW
The first piece of writing that makes use of the term appears to be ‘No compromise on the road to victory’ on the National Party website. The page claims that the article was submitted by a member of the party. It is a polemic railing against compromising on the party’s ideals. It doesn’t have much to say on the concept of the Gaelstát:
‘Today we stand, as Nationalists have always stood, for Ireland and Ireland only. Our struggle is the struggle that our ancestors fought and died for. We organise towards the establishment of a Gaelstát.’
The next reference to the term appears, amusingly enough, in the Scottish press. The Daily Record published a piece on a group called Active Club Scotland titled ‘Hundreds of Scots sign up to far-right fight club who promote white supremacy’. The relevant extract is thus:
‘The group claims to stand for “Gaelstát”—a cultural unity of the Scottish and Irish Gaelic race. It highlights how Edward the Bruce, brother of Robert the Bruce, was the last crowned High King of Ireland. The blurb adds: “We require a Gaelstát in Ireland and a Gaelstát in Scotland, we require the unity of the Gaels in the face of modernity.”’
As aforementioned the raison d'être of the term was to move people away from white nationalist modes of thought and towards a more authentic Irish Nationalism. An interesting thing worth drawing attention to is that this being in a Scottish context means the term had been percolating behind the scenes for quite some time and emerged in a foreign country as fast as it emerged in Ireland.
Comhaltas na nGaedheal are a group similar to Active Club Scotland but located in Ireland. The group published a Substack post titled ‘Towards the Gaelstát’ which is the first substantial attempt to actually explain the concept in detail to an Irish audience:
‘The Nine Years War fought to secure Ulster and re-establish political Gaeldom in the south, the United Irishmen sought to unite sectarian divisions, the revolutionaries of 1919 sought to establish the Republic, the Republican Movement sought to create a Federal Ireland based on communities. The modern Nationalist Movement must propose how it will change how Ireland is governed, how wealth is generated and distributed, how her pride can be restored.
‘That conceptualisation is the Gaelstát—the National State. The Gaelstát will be the rallying cry of the Irish nationalist, its establishment is not contingent upon electoral success but will exist as fact in the hearts and minds of its adherents from this day forth, and we must work to bring it about in the material world. It will be the thankless toil of years and decades, all the monotonous work in establishing a lasting community, no imminent glory or success other than the success of putting one step in front of the other.’
Comhaltas grasp that Nationalists today find themselves as inheritors of a centuries-old tradition, which adopted many forms in many times, sometimes through confederated kingdoms, sometimes through Republican rebellion, each with their own particular aims, suited to their own particular circumstances. The Gaelstát idea is a ‘National State’ for Gaels, but what is a Gael?
‘The Gael is the Irishman who speaks Irish, who plays Irish music and sports, who bears a love for his nation and homeland.’
Comhaltas also lay out a plan of action for how to approach manifesting a Gaelstát:
‘The Gaelstát and its adherents must endeavour to restore the Irish language, to restore the unity of Ireland and the sovereignty of Ireland to the Irish race, to produce wealth within our race—wealth in material terms, wealth in spiritual terms, wealth in cultural terms. We believe in centralised power and legitimate authority, in living productive lives as members of our race.’
While there is a vision laid out by Comhaltas above, the clear forms and features of a realised Gaelstát are lacking; Comhaltas can hardly be blamed here, the state of both the Nation and the Nationalist movement, as far as we could be from any real, lasting successes do make dwelling on the particularities of the concept somewhat pointless.
Two pieces that were syndicated by MEON from the respective authors’ Substacks make reference to the Gaelstát. The first is ‘An Ghluaiseacht Nua: A Call to Action for 2025’ by Creeve Rua. In it he addresses the challenges and problems within the Nationalist movement, and his titular Gluaiseacht Nua, an attempt to address those flaws, takes form here:
‘I believe nothing short of a totalising cultural and spiritual revolution is necessary if Gaeldom is to survive to the next century. To have Anglicised patriots elected, and naturally become leaders of counter-cultural Ireland, would arguably set our nation back rather than forward.’
Gaeldom, as we can imagine it, though ill-defined, is roughly as Comhaltas laid out in their definition of a Gael: a community of Irish people who engage in an Irish way of life, speaking the Irish language, playing Irish sports, wearing Irish dress, playing Irish music, dancing Irish dance, and so on. Creeve issues a call to action:
‘Over the next five years, all of us should make it our duty to contribute to establishing an alternative cultural world to modern Anglicised neoliberal Ireland. This does in a sense mean eschewing petty politics, and embracing a Meon Gaelach in one's life, public and private, inner and outer.’
His advice is threefold: learn Irish properly, to at least a conversational level; Gaelicise your area; make use of the Irish language wherever possible, and at all opportunities, as well as partaking in Gaelic art and culture. He acknowledges that this is not some passive undertaking:
‘If any of this seems daunting, it is because it is exactly the antithesis of the current Anglicised machine we’re dying under. To escape its grasp, and to liberate our province into being a nation once again, one must make himself or herself anew.’
Lastly, he issues some words of caution:
‘It's not about purity or radicalism, in fact it's about normalising the Gael in modern Irish life. We are not returning to some ancient former time, nor are we burying our head in the sand pretending we've already established the 2048 Gaelstáit.
‘While it may seem trite, to envision the future we want we first have to see it and live it within ourselves and in our own lives.’
Proponents of the Gaelstát, if they really are serious about the matter, should take the concept seriously, should aspire to live up to the ideal in their own life, and should appeal to the common Irish person who can be won over to these ideas en masse, with time, effort, and patience.
The second syndicated piece, ‘The Vulgar Image of Ireland’, largely deals not with the idea of the Gaelstát but correcting misconceptions about Ireland’s ancient and medieval forms of statecraft, and how language can perniciously shape our own conception of our ancestors’ forms of government. Towards the end the author discusses the formation of a new state:
‘[I]t follows simply that as states proceed from nations, and as nations are distinct, and as Ireland is a distinct nation, that the sort of state which we shall produce must be one which emerges from our unique genius, not from poorly copying a foreign project.
‘How one describes that state matters little. Call it a Worker’s Republic or socialism with Irish characteristics, call it Irish traditionalism or the rebirth of the kingdom—it matters little, so long as what one talks about is the product of Irish nationalism. The Gaelic State which will be as a beacon and guiding light for Europe must emerge from an awakened Ireland—awakened not only from the nightmare of today, but also from the false dream of what we were before.
‘The Gaelstát will, as a mirror, reflect the old image of Ireland. The gallant image of Ireland, not the vulgar. In rediscovering our past, we will surely discover our future. We have the perfect blueprint and we must use it.’
As with Comhaltas the exact form of the Gaelstát is ill-defined and vague, deliberately so. What Mac Ármair focuses on instead is his notion that whatever form the state may take, it must be authentically Irish. There is a great degree of flexibility that would accommodate everything from Ó Néill’s Confederation to Tone’s Republic to Connolly’s Socialist Republic. What is essential is not how the state is constituted, but rather who constitutes the state and how best does it reflect them.
Justin Barrett, the ousted leader of the National Party, delivered a lengthy speech with the given title ‘On the Concept of the Gaelstát’. Despite the title the speech has little to do with the concept of the Gaelstát; in a brief section wherein he does touch on the topic, he bemoans the lack of a coherent political vision among the various dissenting groups that oppose state policy and direction:
‘There has been a complete failure on the part of the dissident right to elaborate an alternative, and to explain to people how it is that we would do things so very differently, as to transform the situation we are currently in, into something that would be fundamentally different and more important fundamentally better.
‘For what the Irish people see is an incompetent government and an alternative that is equally incompetent within the context of Dáil Éireann, and what they see outside of Dáil Éireann in terms of political opposition is precisely that—just political opposition, just antagonism, just negativity.’
Barrett is correct in this analysis that most of the various groups that oppose the state are lacking in a positive future vision, and of the groups that do have one, it does not go nearly far enough.
‘But we don't see any coherent strategy or coherent vision of what it is that we would actually replace it with. And it is simply not good enough, and yet it is exactly what has been done. It is simply not good enough to form a political party, or for that matter a political movement of any kind, on the basis of simply saying: “Immigration is bad, so therefore if the immigrants were gone everything would be fine.” I remember before the immigrants got here and things weren't great.’
Many are nostalgic for the time around the turn of the millennium, when things seemed to be hopeful for the country. The peace process had finalised, there would be no more war, the economy was starting to do well, and the popular culture was more positive and uplifting. Of course it is not possible to turn back the clock, and even were it possible, those times were purchased on credit, and we are now paying the debt. Something new and better is required:
‘There is a word that gained currency shortly before I started to use it myself, as a description for what we actually want, and I like it, and so I started to adopt it before the tumultuous events within the National Party somewhat derailed my efforts. But it was the Gaelstát. And I put that to you again, is that that's what we are actually trying to arrive at. No matter how long it takes, no matter how hard it is to do, if we don't get there. Now, that word gained currency, and I like it. I like it for a lot of reasons. First of all, I like when large concepts can be reduced to, without inaccuracy, to a simple phraseology. The same as the National Idea can be reduced fundamentally to “Ireland not free merely but Gaelic as well, not Gaelic merely but free as well.”’
MEON published a scathing piece titled ‘A Letter to the Editor—On the Status of Ireland’s National Cause—Some Disturbing Truths’, by Edmund Spenser. The piece is critical of the actions, or lack thereof, undertaken by the Nationalist movement thus far. Criticism is good, and being able to criticise oneself or receive criticism in good faith, is necessary for improvement; all too often is criticism met with a lashing out, scarcely hearing what the critic has to say. Addressing the patriotic movement that has swelled as of late, he writes:
‘Mumbling modern patriots profess deportations, remigration, the protection of éiRe, and the establishment of a mystical Gaelstát, as their ultimate aims. Yet these ideas reflect a thought process which has allowed itself to drift from the realm of actionable might, towards an—at times delusional—imaginative day-dream from which its proponents would rather never wake.
‘To rectify these mores—a total and full reconsideration is required of; what the Irish nation’s purpose is on the stage of history; how will it achieve its aspirations; why are they justified—and when will they be achieved!’
It is clear, as Spenser here says, that many people treat the Gaelstát as an inevitability. Nothing could be further from the truth: Tone’s Republic was never realised, Emmet’s Republic was never realised, the Young Ireland rebellion was quashed, the Fenians were cut down, the Irish Republic of Easter Week fell, and the IRA failed in three subsequent campaigns to bring about an All-Ireland Republic. Realising a lofty political ambition such as the formation of a new state, governing millions of people, in a radically new fashion, and bucking global trends is more of an impossibility than an inevitability, especially as things presently stand.
Echoing Creeve Rua’s call to action Spenser says:
‘It is no-doubt that populist sentiment is brewing across Ireland, yet a failure to build solid, real foundations, upon this ground will send nationalism burning like a firecracker, it may receive a sudden surge in support, yet it will absolutely fizzle out, and one-day remembered as nought but a fanciful light-show.
‘The Irish Right must abandon its hubris and embrace normalcy.’
Filib Ó Sandair wrote a response to Spenser’s piece, ‘Letter to the Editor—Freagra ar Éamonn de Spinsear’ in which he addresses the accusation of fantasy with regard to the Gaelstát and, in response to the question ‘Nationalists must determine precisely: what is the raison d'être of the Emerald Isle?’ replies:
‘Is dóigh liom, má chuireann tú as an áireamh mar ceisteanna neamhábhartha, ceisteanna amhail inimirce, díbirt, cosaint, tithíocht, sláinte, fostaíocht, athaontú na tíre, slándáil, athbheochan na teanga, ealaín, litríocht, teaghlach, saibhreas, oideachas, infreastruchtúr, tionscadal, fuinneamh, agus gach rud eile atá riachtanach do mhuintir na hÉireann le maireachtáil de réir a ngéineas féin, gan chead seachtrach, go deimhin, tá ceart ag an Uasal de Spinsear cur i gcoinne teacht an Ghaelstáit.’
Ó Sandair lays out a whole host of domains which, in order for Irish people to live according to their own ways, and without the interference of foreign powers, must be tackled and dealt with. Scant few of these are paid any attention by the broader Nationalist movement. Speaking as to the raison d'être itself he says:
‘Cad eile atá ann, ach sinn féin? Le bheith inár mbealach féin.’
In answer to this Spenser writes:
‘To be succinct, the right-nationalist cause in Ireland is polluted by day-dreamers—individuals who would rather, in fanciful and mastubatory [sic] fashion, pleasure themselves at the thought of your beloved "Gaelstát", than commit themselves to work of any kind.’
In ‘An Ghaelstát [sic] — A Defence of Gaelic Nationalism’ the author, An Deoraí, argues in favour of a narrowly-defined Gaelic identity which would exclude traditional Republican figures such as Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, Thomas Davis, and John Mitchel. An Deoraí relies heavily on D. P. Moran’s essays, published in The Leader, to buttress his argument.
‘We can speak of Tone and Emmet, but did they motivate the common solider [sic] of Kilmicheal? Was it their ideals that motivated the common footsolider of 1798?’
The author cites Moran in agreement:
‘The United Irish Movement was a colossal failure, for it was not a movement running in line with the genius of the Irish people, and it took but a poor hold on the peasant. What did the peasants know of republics? What did they understand about English-speaking independent states? What did they care about the glorious Pale victory of 1782? The peasant was crushed and ignorant and conservative.’
It is at this point that I feel the need to interject and offer up a counter because what is being relayed to us is provably false. Moran’s caricature of the Irish peasant as ignorant and feckless is not at all something to be celebrated. Do we need to celebrate ignorance to make the case for Gaeldom? Textual evidence suggests that, contrary to Moran’s caricature, the Irish were not crushed, ignorant, and conservative; rather, they were motivated, defiant, intelligent, and radical.
Miles Byrne, born in Wicklow to a Catholic farming family, by all means one of Tone’s common footsoldiers, fought in ’98, and later stood with Emmet, before leaving for France and serving in Napoleon’s legion. In his memoir, on the introduction of the United Irishman system to Wexford, he writes:
‘[I] worked to the best of my abilities in every way to forward the cause, and to show the great advantages that might be obtained by the union of Irishmen of all religious persuasions; and I now most solemnly declare, in the presence of the Almighty, that I never regretted the part I took.’ (Byrne, 6).
He writes of how eagerly the Irish of the country did adopt the program: ‘United Irishmen were made by thousands daily. No one scrupled to take the test’ (Byrne, 6). Contrary to Moran’s lowly caricature, the United Irishmen movement did not fail because the Irish peasant was ignorant and crushed; rather, it was defeated in a military struggle with a world empire.
Furthermore, and for the sake of completeness, were the soldiers at Kilmichael motivated by Tone’s ideals? Tom Barry, the commandant at the Kilmichael ambush, explains that at the time of the Rising, he was situated in Iraq, fighting on behalf of the British army. Writing on his reasons for joining the British Army, he says:
‘I wanted to see what war was like, to get a gun, to see new countries and to feel a grown man. Above all I went because I knew no Irish history and had no national consciousness. I had never been told of Wolfe Tone or Robert Emmet, though I did know all about the Kings of England and when they had come to the British Throne.’ (Chapter I)
The Rising was an awakening for him, and upon his return to his native Cork ‘[he] read avidly the stories of past Irish history: of Eoghan Ruadh, Patrick Sarsfield, John Mitchel, Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet and the other Irish patriots who strove to end the British Conquest.’ For the man who planned and executed Kilmichael, the names of Mitchel, Tone, and Emmet sit comfortably next to the name Eoghan Ruadh. Later he reiterates his Republican beliefs:
‘[M]ost of the Republican leaders of the past were members of the Protestant faith: Tone, Emmet, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Russell, Henry Joy McCracken; that Parnell was a Protestant and that the Proclamation of 1916, the political Bible of the I.R.A., enshrined the promise “the Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and opportunities to all its citizens”’ (Chapter XVI).
The freedom fighters the author suggests were not motivated by Republicanism, in their own words, evidently were. It is also contradictory to laud the heroism of those brave soldiers of 1798 and 1920 while nodding in agreement with Moran, who, the author may not realise, considered political Nationalism and separatist aspirations to be deleterious to Irish Nationality (Matthews, 23). To put it plainly:
‘Moran, who is often wrongly supposed to represent the vanguard of separatism, was in favour of replacing an Anglo-Irish elite with a “Gaelic” Catholic one and was content to leave matters constitutional unchanged. Moreover, he was even prepared to court the favour of the British monarch to achieve his aims. “We accept the King,” he was to declare in 1903, “but want fair play in our own country; we want our share of the law-making power and the positions.” Notwithstanding his support for the Irish language, therefore, he was politically closer to the Irish Parliamentary Party than to the embryonic Sinn Féin organization’ (Matthews, 26).
How many Nationalists support Moran’s positions on these matters today? Would you court the favour of the English king? Moran’s relative popularity may largely be down to the appealing title of his collected essays: The Philosophy of Irish Ireland.
A BATTLE OF TWO NATIONALISMS?
In ‘A Battle of Two Civilisations?: D. P. Moran and William Rooney’ Matthews argues that the ‘largely forgotten republican’ Rooney served as a ‘formidable opponent’ to Moran. I would contend that Rooney’s views have won out over Moran’s to such an extent that the author of the above piece didn’t even stop to consider that what they were writing was contradictory.
One of the main disputes between Rooney and Moran was that of acquiescence to British rule. Moran believed that British rule over Ireland had been effectively solidified and, with no realistic opportunity for freedom from Britain being viable, Nationalists should instead divert their efforts into cultural revival. Rooney did not believe in such acquiescence and attempted to rally Nationalists into a more radical politics.
At the time of the ‘titanic struggle’ between Moran and Rooney the Nationalist movement was effectively divided into two camps: Nationalists and ‘advanced’ Nationalists. Where Moran would fall into the former, alongside the likes of the Irish Parliamentary Party and Home Rule advocates, ‘advanced’ Nationalists like Rooney took an unapologetically Republican and more radical approach. For Rooney, the devolved parliament that Home Rule would have offered was little more than what Catholic Emancipation had offered:
‘By discarding the Irish tongue as a weapon to rouse them to action, [O’Connell] made them think it was a thing to be despised, and by perpetually beslavering whatever sovereign happened to be on the throne he weaned them to a respect for that power which their ancestors had contemned. By teaching them to look for the remedying of their grievances to England, he made them distrustful of their own strength. Catholic Emancipation, by opening up offices to Irishmen in the English service, carried off a host of that brain and talent which had previously worked against Britain’ (Gaelicism in Practice).
Rooney rejected the ‘advanced’ label that was being prefixed to his Nationalist politics; he rejected entirely the premise that Nationalism could acquiesce to English rule or be complicit in England’s empire-making. For Rooney there was only one Nationalism. In his article ‘“Advanced” Nationalism’ he argued:
‘“Advanced” Nationalism, so-called aims at nothing more advanced than an Irish nation—that is to say, an Irish state, governed, controlled, and defended by Irishmen for Irishmen. “Advanced” Nationalism is in truth no petty, compromising propaganda, which talks of healing the wounds of centuries, or guarantees the aid of Irish arms for Imperial buccaneering, “if our rights are conceded.” It is indeed no convenient creed which would toast a foreign queen or flaunt the Union Jack in College-green for the privilege of being allowed to concoct a drainage scheme, or pass an authority for a railway cutting through Cork or Connemara. It is no temporising, time-serving, half-hearted sentiment which fears the future, but likes to take advantage of the present, trusting to the forgetfulness of the popular memory to overlook any vacillation from the right road: It is a spirit which takes something more than an antiquary’s interest in the struggles and belief of the past, which does not talk of the superior advantages of our fathers to excuse inaction or indifference today. It is, in fine, the spirit of Irish Nationality which recognises nothing short of supreme and entire independence as the limit of Irish hopes and aspirations.’.
Rooney helped found the Celtic Literary Society in 1893, the same year the Gaelic League was founded, after the dissolution of the Leinster Literary Society. The Celtic Literary Society eventually merged with the League. Rooney and Arthur Griffith were an almost inseparable duo, with Griffith providing a more moderating stance, and Rooney providing the more radical, uncompromising stance. Together they launched the newspaper United Irishman in 1899, and in 1900 they founded the first Cumann na nGaedheal.
The purpose of Cumann na nGaedheal was to bring together all the disparate Nationalist groupings of that period into one collective organisation. In 1907 the political party Sinn Féin emerged from a formation of the Dungannon Clubs and the Cumann na nGaedheal National Council, but by this time Rooney was already dead. He had died of typhoid fever in 1901 at the age of only 27. His influence on the fledgling Nationalist movement cannot be overstated, and his ideas, which may be taken as standard among Nationalists today, proved quite radical for the time. P. S. O’Hegarty in ‘William Rooney’ describes the emergence of that movement:
‘In the nine years which have elapsed since his death much has changed in Ireland; the self-conscious and self-dependent spirit of nationality for which he lived and died has grown enormously, and the mighty movement which we call “Irish Ireland,” that movement each ramification of which he saw in its cradle and zealously fostered, that movement now overshadows the land, comprising within it vast numbers who ten or twelve years back, when Rooney’s work was being done, had no thoughts for the insane proposals of an inane journal called the United Irishman. In those days its writers and readers were writ down as unpractical lunatics, dreamers, rhetoricians, boys, or castle spies. The change in public opinion since then has been radical …’
It is a testament to his clarity of vision, his purity of purpose, and his dedication to his country that his vision has become normalised to such an extent that many mistake Moran for a separatist; and while many may turn to Moran for his uncompromising attitude towards Gaelic Revival, Rooney and Moran are largely in agreement on this issue.
Rooney committed himself early in his short life to becoming fluent in Irish, taught language classes, organised various revival groups, worked on behalf of the Gaelic League, and overall committed himself not just to expounding on the need for revival but to actually bringing it about.
It is true that Rooney had a much broader view of Irish Nationality than the more narrow views of Moran; his was capable of accommodating such heroes as Tone and Emmet, but Rooney was also more effective at actually rousing a Gaelic revival, proving that such accommodation is no hindrance to actual Gaelicisation.
CONCLUSION
Why re-tread this century old dispute?
A fledgling Nationalist movement, internally divided; a formerly Nationalist political party having turned on its voters; war in Europe and crisis at home; the future of an Irish Ireland in grave doubt—this state of affairs must surely sound familiar to readers today.
My own view on the matter is that the rather Moran-esque attitudes common among Nationalists today are somewhat misguided, and that more attention should be paid to the unsung leader of the Nationalist movement of the last century. That tireless worker on behalf of Irish Nationality led the way.
Rooney combined a steadfast belief in an independent Republic with a tireless effort on behalf of Gaelicisation. He was every bit as conscious of foreign cultural, economic, and state influence over the Irish people as Moran, if not moreso. He also proved that there is no contradiction in accommodating the various Republican heroes and their tradition with a revival of the Irish language and Irish culture. The path he trod was practical and not fantastical, and, had he not died an untimely death, Ireland today would likely be much the better for it.
So perhaps not a Gaelstát or a Free State but an Irish Republic. Beir bua.
‘If you don’t do something—nobody will ever do it. It is youth do all these things.’ — Tom Barry.
WORKS CITED
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Byrne, Miles. Memoirs of Miles Byrne. Vol. 1, Maunsel, 1907. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/memoirsmilesbyr06byrngoog. Accessed 23 Oct. 2025.
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