Portal:Ireland

Selected article

The executions during the Irish Civil War took place during the guerrilla phase of the Irish Civil War (October 1922 – May 1923) This phase of the war was bitter and both sides, the Government forces of the Irish Free State and the Anti-Treaty IRA insurgents, used executions and terror in what developed into a cycle of atrocities. From November 1922, the Free State government embarked on a concerted policy of executing Republican prisoners in order to bring the war to an end. Many of those killed had previously been allies and in some cases close friends (during the Irish War of Independence 1919–1921), of those who ordered their deaths in the civil war. In addition, government troops summarily killed prisoners in the field on several occasions. The executions of prisoners left a lasting legacy of bitterness in Irish politics.

The use of execution by the Irish Free State in the civil war was relatively harsh. By contrast with their 77 official executions, the British had executed only 14 IRA volunteers during the War of Independence. One of the reasons for the draconian Free State policy from October 1922 was the death of Michael Collins, the commander of Free State forces in an ambush on 22 August. Whereas Collins had hoped for a speedy reconciliation of the warring Irish nationalist factions, after his death the Free State government, led by W. T. Cosgrave, Richard Mulcahy and Kevin O'Higgins, took the position that the anti-Treaty IRA were conducting an unlawful rebellion against the legitimate Irish government and should be treated as criminals rather than as combatants. O'Higgins in particular voiced the opinion that the use of terror was the only way to bring the war to an end. Read more...

Selected biography

William Butler Yeats (pronounced /ˈjeɪts/; 13 June 1865 - 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and English literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and together with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, and served as its chief during its early years. In 1923, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation;" and he was the first Irishman so honoured. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers whose greatest works were completed after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).

Yeats was born and educated in Dublin, but spent his childhood in Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slowly paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the lyricism of the Pre-Raphaelite poets.

From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. Over the years Yeats adopted many different ideological positions, including, in the words of the critic Michael Valdez Moses, "those of radical nationalist, classical liberal, reactionary conservative and millenarian nihilist". Read more...

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