ABSTRACT
In his book Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland 1890-1923, the historian Roy Foster quotes from a radio broadcast of 1952 in which a former revolutionary named P.S. O’Hegarty recalls the moment of his conversion to the cause of Irish independence in the opening years of the century. Precisely fifty years earlier, O’Hegarty had found himself transfixed by the sound of Irish music overheard from a concert organised by the recently established Gaelic League:
Something in the songs – though I could understand only a few of the words – something in the music – something in the atmosphere gripped me, and I seemed to be put in touch with something far back in the Race. Unknown depths in me were stirred and across the centuries I seemed to be in touch with the days when Irish speech and Irish manners and traditions were in every valley and on every hill and by every river. Is this mysticism? Oh no. It is actual fact. I understood, accepted, and felt myself to be one with the Gael. For the first time I saw the whole of Ireland. It was a revelation, and one which in the fifty years that have since elapsed, has not faded.
