The Pascal Fire of Patrick by Denis Florence MacCarthy
On Tara's hill the daylight dies,
On Tara's plain 'tis dead.
"Till Baal's unkindled fires shall rise
No fire must flame instead".
'Tis thus the king, commanding, speaks,
Commands and speaks in vain;
For lo! a fire defiant breaks
From out the woods of Slane.
For there, in prayer, is Patrick bent,
With Christ his soul is knit;
And there, before his simple tent,
The Pascal fire is lit.
"What means this flame that through the night
illumines all the vale?
What rebel hand a fire dare light
Before the fires of Baal?"
"O King! when Baal's dark reign is o'er,
When thou thyself art gone,
This fire will light the Irish shore
And lead its people on;
Will lead them on full many a night
Through which they're doomed to go,
Like that which led the Israelite
From bondage and from woe.
This fire, this sacred fire of God,
Young hearts shall bear afar
To lands no human foot hath trod,
Beneath the Western Star;
To lands where Faith's bright flag unfurled
By those who here have knelt
Shall give unto a newer world
The sceptre of the Celt".
“A poet or a patriot first?” - That is the question which inevitably strikes the surveyor of the biography of Denis Florence MacCarthy.
Born in the wake of the Congress of Vienna, MacCarthy’s life was co-extensive with the great happenings of 19th century Irish political life, albeit with the necessary qualification that he died at the cusp of Parnell’s fall from national grace.
Originally destined for a vocation in the Priesthood, MacCarthy opted to enrol in Trinity College Dublin, and soon found himself mixing with future Republican royalty, such as Thomas Davis.
Rejecting a lawyer’s career, he instead devoted himself to the less remunerated path of becoming a national poet. He was a promiscuous writer, submitting both verse and prose to innumerable journals of contemporary import.
Most notably, MacCarthy was a contributor to Davis’ ‘The Nation’; his ‘Proclamation Songs’ debuted in 1843, and for the next half decade MacCarthy established himself as a poet of eminence - not a small feat when one considers that both Thomas Davis and Thomas D’Arcy McGee contributed concurrently to ‘The Nation.
Despite coming under fire from Catholic prelates for his association with Republican radicalism, fidelity marks MacCarthy’s relationship to the Faith - as evinced by the above poem, which depicts the overthrow of Evil’s (personified by Baal) hegemony and the enshrinement of a national mission for the Irish; to be stalwarts of the Faith:
To lands where Faith's bright flag unfurled
By those who here have knelt
Shall give unto a newer world
The sceptre of the Celt".
Events proved MacCarthy to be more of a dallier in ideological and romantic currents, than a political solider. Whilst a solid, consistent contributor to ‘The Nation’, MacCarthy did not partake in the 1848 Young Ireland rebellion.
In researching for this piece, I happened across comments regarding the poem; the comments uniformly express a fondness for it, noting that they first heard it at home or in school.
That our pedagogical institutions were once, in the not too distant past, nationalist is a fact easy to forget, and may knowledge of this inspire us to revive such an ethos in our times.