Easter Rising Stories

ON THIS DAY

9 October

1916. A memorial to Patrick Pearse

Arnold Bax, photographed about 1922. On 9 October 1916 he finished a score in memory of Patrick Pearse.

On 9 October 1916 the English composer Arnold Bax finished the short score of In Memoriam. On it he wrote, in Irish, “I gcuimhne ar Phádraig Mac Piarais”: in memory of Patrick Pearse. Pearse had been executed in May. Bax had lived in Ireland, learned Irish, and written under the name Dermot O’Byrne. He had met Pearse through the poet AE. He later remembered Pearse saying that the English composer might be sympathetic, and that he would like to see him again. They did not meet again. The memory was written years later, so it is not a word-for-word record. The score is.

The music was not played in Bax’s lifetime. In 1955, two years after his death, the pianist Harriet Cohen gave the short score to Éamon de Valera, who placed it in University College Dublin. The full orchestral score was found in a publisher’s basement in 1993. The BBC Philharmonic under Vernon Handley played it for the first time on 17 June 1998. Bax was knighted in 1937 and in 1942 became Master of the King’s Music. The same man had written an orchestral memorial to a leader of the Rising.

1920. The ambush at Newcestown

On the night of 9 October 1920, near Newcestown, about eight miles from Bandon, IRA Volunteers ambushed a party of the Essex Regiment in two Crossley cars. Major Arthur Percival was with them. Flight Lieutenant Gurth Alwyn Richardson, aged thirty, of the Royal Air Force and attached to the Essex, was killed. A lieutenant and three other ranks were wounded, one of them in the face. Lieutenant Robert Douglas Finch Robertson, aged twenty-five, who had a Military Cross from the Great War, was hit in the abdomen. He died in Cork Military Hospital on 12 October. He left a wife and a child. The British account said the attackers lost at least ten killed. The Cork Fatality Register does not accept that. The IRA column had no casualties, and it was not driven off.

1919. The GAA president is sentenced

James Nowlan, president of the GAA from 1901 to 1921.

The papers of 9 October 1919 reported a court martial at Cork Barracks. It had opened the day before. James Nowlan, president of the GAA, was charged with having a revolver and seven cartridges. His side said he carried gate money when the banks were shut, and that the gun was meant to frighten rather than to wound. He was given twenty-eight days, without hard labour. Edward Keane, editor of the Kilkenny People, got the same sentence for two revolvers and twenty-five rounds found at his house. Joseph Martin refused to recognise the court. He was given five months with hard labour for having a republican paper which said a state of war existed. On this same date in 1921, Michael Collins followed the Treaty delegation to London.