Michael Joseph O'Rahilly ( or ; 22 April 1875 – 29 April 1916), known as The O'Rahilly, was an
Irish republican and nationalist. He was a founding member of the
Irish Volunteers
The Irish Volunteers (), also known as the Irish Volunteer Force or the Irish Volunteer Army, was a paramilitary organisation established in 1913 by nationalists and republicans in Ireland. It was ostensibly formed in response to the format ...
in 1913 and served as Director of Arms. Despite opposing the action, he took part in the
Easter Rising
The Easter Rising (), also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with the aim of establishing an ind ...
in Dublin and was killed in a charge on a British machine gun post covering the retreat from the
Dublin GPO during the fighting.
Early life
Michael Joseph Rahilly was born in
Ballylongford
Ballylongford (historically ''Bealalongford'', from ) is a village near Listowel in northern County Kerry, Ireland. As of the 2022 census, it had a population of 415.
Geography
The village is situated near the estuary of the Ballyline River, ...
,
County Kerry
County Kerry () is a Counties of Ireland, county on the southwest coast of Republic of Ireland, Ireland, within the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster and the Southern Region, Ireland, Southern Region. It is bordered by two other countie ...
, to
Richard Rahilly, a grocer, and Ellen Rahilly (née Mangan). He was educated at
Clongowes Wood College
Clongowes Wood College SJ is a Catholic voluntary boarding school for boys near Clane, County Kildare, Ireland, founded by the Jesuits in 1814. It features prominently in James Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel '' A Portrait of the Artist ...
(1890–1893). He had two siblings who lived to adulthood,
Nell Humphreys and
Anno O'Rahilly, both of whom were active in the Irish revolutionary period. As an adult, he became a
republican and a language enthusiast. He joined the
Gaelic League
(; historically known in English as the Gaelic League) is a social and cultural organisation which promotes the Irish language in Ireland and worldwide. The organisation was founded in 1893 with Douglas Hyde as its first president, when it eme ...
and became a member of An Coiste Gnotha, its governing body. Prior to settling in
Dublin
Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...
he spent a decade travelling in the United States and Europe.
He married
Nancy Brown on 15 April 1899 in New York and the couple had six sons together.
O'Rahilly was a founding member of the
Irish Volunteers
The Irish Volunteers (), also known as the Irish Volunteer Force or the Irish Volunteer Army, was a paramilitary organisation established in 1913 by nationalists and republicans in Ireland. It was ostensibly formed in response to the format ...
in 1913, who organized to work for Irish independence, and initially to defend the proposed
Home Rule
Home rule is the government of a colony, dependent country, or region by its own citizens. It is thus the power of a part (administrative division) of a state or an external dependent country to exercise such of the state's powers of governan ...
; he served as the Irish Volunteers' Director of Arms. He personally directed the first major arming of the Volunteers, the landing of 900
Mauser
Mauser, originally the Königlich Württembergische Gewehrfabrik, was a German arms manufacturer. Their line of bolt-action rifles and semi-automatic pistols was produced beginning in the 1870s for the German armed forces. In the late 19th and ...
s at the
Howth gun-running
The Howth gun-running ( ) was the smuggling of 1,500 Mauser rifles to Howth harbour for the Irish Volunteers, an Irish nationalist paramilitary force, on 26 July 1914. The unloading of guns from a private yacht during daylight hours attracted a ...
on 26 July 1914.
O'Rahilly was a wealthy man; the ''Weekly Irish Times'' reported after the Easter Rising that he "enjoyed a private income of £900" per annum, plenty of which went to "the cause he espoused".
Irish Volunteers
O'Rahilly was not party to the plans for the Easter Rising, nor was he a member of the
Irish Republican Brotherhood
The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB; ) was a secret oath-bound fraternal organisation dedicated to the establishment of an "independent democratic republic" in Ireland between 1858 and 1924.McGee, p. 15. Its counterpart in the United States ...
(IRB), but he was one of the main people who trained the Irish Volunteers for the coming fight. The planners of the Rising went to great lengths to prevent those leaders of the Volunteers who were opposed to unprovoked, unilateral action from learning that a rising was imminent, including its Chief-of-Staff
Eoin MacNeill
Eoin MacNeill (; born John McNeill; 15 May 1867 – 15 October 1945) was an Irish scholar, Irish language enthusiast, Gaelic revivalist, nationalist, and politician who served as Minister for Education from 1922 to 1925, Ceann Comhairle of D ...
,
Bulmer Hobson
John Bulmer Hobson (14 January 1883 – 8 August 1969) was an Irish republican. He was a leading member of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) before the Easter Rising in 1916.D.J. Hickey & J. E. Doherty, ''A New D ...
, and O'Rahilly. When Hobson discovered that an insurrection was planned, he was kidnapped by the Military Council leadership.
Learning this, O'Rahilly went to
Patrick Pearse
Patrick Henry Pearse (also known as Pádraig or Pádraic Pearse; ; 10 November 1879 – 3 May 1916) was an Irish teacher, barrister, Irish poetry, poet, writer, Irish nationalism, nationalist, Irish republicanism, republican political activist a ...
's school,
Scoil Éanna, on
Good Friday
Good Friday, also known as Holy Friday, Great Friday, Great and Holy Friday, or Friday of the Passion of the Lord, is a solemn Christian holy day commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus and his death at Calvary (Golgotha). It is observed during ...
. He barged into Pearse's study, brandishing his revolver as he announced "Whoever kidnaps me will have to be a quicker shot!" Pearse calmed O'Rahilly, assuring him that Hobson was unharmed, and would be released after the Rising began. O'Rahilly took instructions from MacNeill and spent the night driving throughout the country, informing Volunteer leaders in
Cork,
Kerry,
Tipperary, and
Limerick
Limerick ( ; ) is a city in western Ireland, in County Limerick. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster and is in the Mid-West Region, Ireland, Mid-West which comprises part of the Southern Region, Ireland, Southern Region. W ...
that they were not to mobilise their forces for planned manoeuvres on Sunday.
Easter Rising
Arriving home, he learned that the Rising was about to begin in Dublin on the next day,
Easter Monday
Easter Monday is the second day of Eastertide and a public holiday in more than 50 predominantly Christian countries. In Western Christianity it marks the second day of the Octave of Easter; in Eastern Christianity it marks the second day of Br ...
, 24 April 1916. Despite his efforts to prevent such action (which he felt could only lead to defeat), he set out to
Liberty Hall to join Pearse,
James Connolly
James Connolly (; 5 June 1868 – 12 May 1916) was a Scottish people, Scottish-born Irish republicanism, Irish republican, socialist, and trade union leader, executed for his part in the Easter Rising, 1916 Easter Rising against British rule i ...
,
Thomas MacDonagh
Thomas Stanislaus MacDonagh (; 1 February 1878 – 3 May 1916) was an Irish political activist, poet, playwright, educationalist and revolutionary leader. He was one of the seven leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916, a signatory of the Proclama ...
,
Tom Clarke,
Joseph Plunkett,
Countess Markievicz,
Seán Mac Diarmada,
Éamonn Ceannt and their Irish Volunteers and
Irish Citizen Army
The Irish Citizen Army (), or ICA, was a paramilitary group first formed in Dublin to defend the picket lines and street demonstrations of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) against the police during the Great Dublin Lock ...
troops. Arriving in his
De Dion-Bouton
De Dion-Bouton was a French automobile manufacturer and railcar manufacturer, which operated from 1883 to 1953. The company was founded by the Marquis Jules-Albert de Dion, Georges Bouton, and Bouton's brother-in-law Charles Trépardoux.
Ste ...
motorcar, he gave one of the most quoted lines of the rising – "Well, I've helped to wind up the clock -- I might as well hear it strike!" Another famous, if less quoted line, was his comment to Markievicz, "It is madness, but it is glorious madness." His car was used to fetch supplies during the siege, and later as part of a barricade on Prince's Street, where it was burned out.
He fought with the
GPO garrison during Easter Week. One of the first British prisoners taken in the GPO was Second Lieutenant AD Chalmers, who was bound with telephone wire and lodged in a telephone box by the young Volunteer Captain and IRB activist
Michael Collins. Chalmers later recalled O'Rahilly's kindness to him. In a statement to a newspaper reporter, he said that he was taken from the phone box after three hours and brought up to O'Rahilly, who ordered: "I want this officer to watch the safe to see that nothing is touched. You will see that no harm comes to him".
On Friday 28 April, with the GPO on fire, O'Rahilly volunteered to lead a party of men along a route to
Williams and Woods, a factory on Great Britain Street (now
Parnell Street). A British machine-gun at the intersection of Great Britain and Moore streets cut him and several of the others down. O'Rahilly slumped into a doorway on Moore Street, wounded and bleeding badly but, hearing the British marking his position, made a dash across the road to find shelter in Sackville Lane (now O'Rahilly Parade). He was wounded diagonally from shoulder to hip by sustained fire from the machine-gunner. He bled to death slowly in a doorway in Moore Lane (latterly O'Rahilly Place) overnight alone. He managed to scribble off a farewell note to his wife and that night was heard crying for water.
According to ambulance driver Albert Mitchell (in a witness statement more than 30 years later), O'Rahilly still clung to life 19 hours after being severely wounded, long after the surrender had taken place on Saturday afternoon. The following is an extract:
Desmond Ryan's ''The Rising'' maintains that it "was 2.30pm when Miss O'Farrell reached Moore Street, and as she passed Sackville Lane again, she saw O'Rahilly's corpse lying a few yards up the laneway, his feet against a stone stairway in front of a house, his head towards the street".
Memorial
O'Rahilly wrote a message to his wife on the back of a letter he had received in the GPO from his son. Shane Cullen etched this last message to
Nannie O'Rahilly into his limestone and bronze memorial sculpture to The O'Rahilly. The text reads:
The O'Rahilly House
O'Rahilly's home between 1910 and 1916,
at 40 Herbert Park, was contentiously demolished in September 2020. Permission for the
Edwardian era
In the United Kingdom, the Edwardian era was a period in the early 20th century that spanned the reign of King Edward VII from 1901 to 1910. It is commonly extended to the start of the First World War in 1914, during the early reign of King Ge ...
building's demolition was given by
An Bord Pleanála, despite calls from various political parties for its preservation on grounds of its connection to The O'Rahilly. The
Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht had also earlier voiced its support for the retention of the three adjoining properties for architectural reasons.
The council's own conservation section had been assessing the building for listing on the
Record of Protected Structures
Conservation in the Republic of Ireland is overseen by a number of statutory and non-governmental agencies, including those with responsibility for Historic preservation, conservation of the built environment and Environmental protection, conservat ...
, having earlier passed over the building for protection on a number of occasions.
Source of name
In Gaelic tradition, chiefs of clan were called by their clan name preceded by the definite article, for example
Robert the Bruce
Robert I (11 July 1274 – 7 June 1329), popularly known as Robert the Bruce (), was King of Scots from 1306 until his death in 1329. Robert led Kingdom of Scotland, Scotland during the First War of Scottish Independence against Kingdom of Eng ...
. O'Rahilly's calling himself "The O'Rahilly" was purely his own idea. In 1938, the poet
W. B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats (, 13 June 186528 January 1939), popularly known as W. B. Yeats, was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer, and literary critic who was one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the ...
defended O'Rahilly on this point in his poem "The O'Rahilly", which begins:
See also
*
Ronan O'Rahilly
Further reading
*Caulfield, Max; ''The Easter Rebellion, Dublin 1916'', Roberts Reinhart, 1963
Notes
External links
Michael O'Rahilly (MÃcheál Ua Rathghaille)in the 1911 Census of Ireland
{{DEFAULTSORT:Orahilly, The
1875 births
1916 deaths
Irish republicans
People from Ballylongford
People of the Easter Rising
People educated at Clongowes Wood College