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Thomas MacDonagh

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Thomas MacDonagh

Thomas MacDonagh (1878-1916). From The Poetical Works of Thomas McDonagh, 1916. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Thomas MacDonagh
1 February 1878 – 3 May 1916 (aged 38)
Place of birth Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary, Ireland
Place of death Kilmainham Jail, Dublin, Ireland
Allegiance Irish Volunteers
Years of service 1913 - 1916
Rank Commandant
Commands held 2nd Battalion
Battles/wars Easter Rising

Thomas Stanislaus MacDonagh (1 February 1878 - 3 May 1916) was a nationalist Irish poet and playwright, and a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising.

Life[]

Youth and education[]

MacDonagh was born 1 February 1878 in Cloughjordan, co. Tipperary, 3rd child and eldest son among 6 surviving children (4 sons and 2 daughters; 3 elder children had died in infancy) of Joseph MacDonagh (1834–94), native of co. Roscommon, and Mary (Parker), Dublin native of English parentage (her father had moved to Dublin to become compositor in Greek for Trinity College Press); both were national school teachers. His father (who claimed descent from the medieval Mac Donnchadha clan of Ballymote castle, co. Sligo), the son of a small farmer, received through the efforts of his widowed mother and her brother, a parish priest, teacher training in Dublin. He met and married MacDonagh's mother while both were teaching in Cloghan, co. Offaly; they were transferred to Cloughjordan the year before MacDonagh's birth. Both parents were averse to political partisanship (‘great cry and little wool, like the goats of Connacht’ in his father's estimate (Parks, 1)).[1]

MacDonagh received his primary education under his father in Cloughjordan. While his father's was a jovial, kindly, indulgent personality, MacDonagh received from his mother (a convert before marriage from unitarianism to Roman catholicism) deep interests in music and literature, and a grave sense of high moral purpose.[1]

MacDonagh studied under the Holy Ghost fathers at Rockwell College, Cashel, co. Tipperary (1892-1896), where in 1894 he entered the order's junior scholasticate to prepare for the catholic priesthood.[1]

Early career[]

MacDonagh joined the Rockwell College faculty as teacher of English, French, and Latin literature (1896–1901), but after experiencing a profound crisis of faith he abandoned his vocation for the priesthood for a career as teacher and writer.[1]

While senior master of English, French, and history at St Kieran's College, Kilkenny (1901-1903), he attended a Gaelic League meeting for a lark, intending to scoff at the proceedings, but instead was moved to a conversion of Pauline peremptoriness, his self-described ‘baptism in nationalism’ (Norstedt, 26).[1]

Immersed in the league's social and cultural activities, elected to the Kilkenny branch executive committee, he attended summer language classes on Inishmaan, co. Galway (1902), becoming in time a fluent Irish speaker and writer.[1]

Estranged from St Kieran's ethos by the latter enthusiasm, MacDonagh moved to a teaching post in the more religiously liberal and Gaelic setting of St Colman's College, Fermoy, co. Cork (1903-1908). After 1905 he drifted away from the language movement, disillusioned by the humourless and blinkered zealotry of the more ardent activists.[1]

In Dublin[]

Seeking wider intellectual contact and literary opportunities, MacDonagh moved to Dublin to become resident assistant headmaster and instructor of language and literature (1908-1910) in St Enda's college, Cullenswood House, Ranelagh, the progressive, Irish-language school newly opened by Patrick Pearse (qv), to whom he had become known through the Gaelic League.[1]

Well known in Dublin literary and theatrical circles, MacDonagh formed a particularly close friendship with Joseph Plunkett, whom he tutored in Irish and encouraged in poetical efforts, extending a determining hand toward production of the younger man's debut collection of verse, The Circle and the Sword (1911).[1]

During his 2nd year at St Enda's, MacDonagh read English, French, and Irish at University College, Dublin, earning a B.A. in 1910.[1]

Shaken by an unhappy love affair with writer and teacher Mary Maguire (Mary Colum), he resigned from St Enda's at the time of the school's move to Rathfarnham, co. Dublin. After a restorative 6 weeks in Paris, he assumed a semi-reclusive residence in the lodge of Grange House, Rathfarnham (whose owner, Professor David Houston of the College of Science, became an intimate friend), engaged in writing, post-graduate research, and part-time teaching at St Enda's (1910-1912).[1]

He was awarded a 1st-class honours M.A. by UCD October 1911. His thesis on English Elizabethan prosody was published as Thomas Campion and the Art of English Poetry (1913), He was then appointed full-time assistant lecturer in English at the university (1911-1916). As in his earlier posts, he was a lively and stimulating teacher, sincerely engaged with his students, albeit prone to discursiveness and abstraction; his lectures were remembered as ‘never relevant and invariably interesting’ (McCartney, 65).[1]

With a coterie of close literary friends (Houston, Mary Maguire, James Stephens, and Padraic Colum, MacDonagh was co-founder and associate editor of the Irish Review (March 1911 – November 1914), a literary and topical monthly, initially without political affiliation, and attracting an impressive range of prominent contributors. The Review printed his 2nd play, ‘Metempsychosis’, a satire of theosophy and related esoteric doctrines, with a wickedly accurate caricature of William Butler Yeats; the play was misinterpreted by contemporary audiences as serious comment when performed by the amateur Theatre of Ireland (1912).[1]

From 1914 he managed the Irish Theatre in the Hardwicke Street Hall, Dublin, co-founded with Plunkett and Edward Martyn in reaction to the Abbey's prevailing diet of peasant comedy and Yeats's poetic drama, and producing original plays in Irish, in English by Irish authors, and translations into English from continental drama.[1]

Irish Volunteers[]

MacDonagh's 3rd play, Pagans (produced by the Irish Theatre in April 1915, and published posthumously in 1920), holds interest for an autobiographical subtext. The central conflict between irresponsible bohemian individuality and socially respectable bourgeois domestic convention concludes with the protagonist declaring his newfound devotion to a reborn Irish nation, a resolution neither irresponsible nor conventional.[1]

Enrolling in the Irish Volunteers within a week of their formation (December 1913), and appointed to the armed body's governing provisional committee, he was elected a company captain (July 1914). Initially he regarded the body not as a vehicle for insurrection, but as an armed, militant pressure group, embracing the spectrum of nationalist opinion, in counter-balance to the Ulster Volunteers, to assure British implementation of home rule. His oratorical eloquence, punctuated by melodramatic posturing, contributed to his effectiveness in recruitment efforts countrywide. In association with Plunkett, who had purchased the Irish Review from Houston in June 1913, he turned the journal into a virtual mouthpiece for Volunteer policy until its demise in November 1914.[1]

The outbreak of the first world war radicalised his outlook. He was among the 20 members of the provisional committee who repudiated the Woodenbridge declaration by parliamentary party leader John Redmond pledging Volunteer support for the British war effort. Although he attended the secret meeting of advanced nationalists (9 September 1914) that resolved to prepare for an armed insurrection during the course of the European war, and despite being sworn by March 1915 into the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), he was not privy to the detailed planning for the rising until the last few weeks before Easter 1916.[1]

Serving on both the central executive and the general council after the Volunteers’ first general convention (October 1914), he was appointed to the headquarters staff as director of training (December 1914). Appointed commandant of the 2nd Bn, Dublin Bde (March 1915), he also became brigade commandant with authority over the 4 city and 1 county battalions. He assumed a major role in the organisation of the funeral of IRB veteran Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, and served as Volunteer acting commandant general for the funeral march (1 August 1915).[1]

Easter Rising[]

MacDonagh's vital importance as Dublin brigade commandant was probably the reason for his co-option in early April 1916 to the IRB's secret military council, then finalising preparations for the rising; he was the last of the 7 council members to be added. Another factor may have been his relationship with Volunteer Chief of Staff Eoin MacNeill, a UCD faculty colleague; in the final confused days before Easter Monday, MacDonagh was intermediary between the conspirators and MacNeill, when the latter became belatedly cognisant of the intended insurrection. Pursuant to the military council's decision on Easter Sunday morning to postpone the rising by a day to the Monday, MacDonagh in his capacity as brigade commandant signed an order confirming MacNeill's public announcement cancelling Easter Sunday manoeuvres, but ordering all volunteers to remain in Dublin pending further directives. At a subsequent final meeting with MacNeill he gave a feigned and trusted assurance that the insurrection had indeed been cancelled.[1]

On Easter Monday morning (24 April), MacDonagh issued the order deploying the Dublin Brigade for muster, and as a member of the provisional government signed the declaration of the republic. His battalion divided between two mobilisation centres – a modification of plans to allow for the effects of MacNeill's countermand upon the number of available men – MacDonagh commanded a force of 150 volunteers that occupied Jacob's biscuit factory, Bishop St., a strong position surrounded by a warren of narrow lanes. In the early afternoon an outpost of his command disregarded his orders by firing prematurely on an advance party of British troops advancing from Portobello barracks down Camden St. to relieve Dublin Castle, thereby forgoing the opportunity to enfilade the main party and inflict heavy casualties. Although snipers in the factory's immense towers harassed enemy patrols throughout the week, no further attempt was made to assault the garrison. MacDonagh's leadership through the week was erratic: hearty but indecisive, he tended inexplicably to amend or rescind orders.[1]

On Sunday 30 April, MacDonagh, the senior Volunteer officer remaining in the field and occupying such an impregnable (if strategically ineffectual) position, initially declined to accept the surrender order issued the previous day, on the grounds that Patrick Pearse, being in enemy custody, had issued the directive under duress. After parleying with the British commander, Gen. Lowe, he was conveyed by motorcar to the South Dublin Union. There, after conferring with 4th Bn commandant Éamonn Ceannt, he agreed to surrender. MacDonagh thereupon countersigned Pearse's order, which, dispatched to the other garrisons still in the field, effectively ended the rising.[1]

Convicted and sentenced to death, MacDonagh was shot by firing squad in Kilmainham gaol on 3 May 1916, with Pearse and Thomas Clarke the earliest 3 of the insurrection leaders to face execution. The authenticity of a document widely circulated after the rising, purporting to be an ardent statement made by MacDonagh at his court-martial, has been heatedly debated; transcripts of the proceedings made public in 1999 do not indicate that such a statement was made.[1]

Private life[]

On 3 January 1912 MacDonagh married Muriel Gifford, sister of Grace Gifford (who married MacDonagh's intimate friend and revolutionary comrade Joseph Plunkett on the eve of his execution). They had a son, author and barrister Donagh MacDonagh, and a daughter, Barbara MacDonagh Redmond (born. 1915). Initially residing at 32 Baggot St., at the time of the rising the family lived at 29 Oakley Rd, Ranelagh.[1]

Named by MacDonagh with David Houston as his joint literary executors, Muriel MacDonagh helped prepare for publication a compilation, The poetical works of Thomas MacDonagh (October 1916), which included some previously unpublished material. Prone to illness and nervous disorder, and emotionally devastated by her husband's death, she drowned while swimming in the sea off Skerries, co. Dublin, 9 July 1917.[1]

Writing[]

Poetry[]

Each of MacDonagh's earliest 2 volumes of poetry – Through the Ivory Gate (1902) and April and May (1903) – is redolent of the 2 successive obsessions of his early adulthood: the spiritual anguish suffered at Rockwell (charted from simple, naïve faith, through a brooding pessimism culminating in nightmarish despair, to restored emotional and spiritual balance in a devout but heterodox catholic mysticism), and his conversion to Irish-Ireland nationalism.[1]

The poems of Songs of Myself (1910), notwithstanding the transparent allusion of the title, largely retain the intensely subjective poetic voice characteristic of MacDonagh's oeuvre, in preference to a Whitmanesque identification of the self with the representative man.[1]

The volume Lyrical Poems (1913) collected the works from MacDonagh's earlier 3 books that he wished preserved alongside new material, including mystical poems, nationalist ballads, and translations from the Irish, the latter comprising some of his sturdiest poetic achievement.[1]

Plays[]

His earliest play, When the dawn is come (published concurrently with the Abbey Theatre production of November 1908), takes as protagonist an idealistic poet turned nationalist revolutionary in an Ireland 50 years in the future; flawed by windy dialogue and unresolved elements of plot, the play deals with the poet's internal conflicts, and his external differences with fundamentalist, fanatical comrades.[1]

The theme of MacDonagh's 3rd play, Pagansreflects his own gradual progress from cultural nationalist to physical-force political separatist, initiated by his witnessing the police baton charge down Sackville St. on ‘Bloody Sunday’ during the 1913 Dublin lockout; thereafter he was active in the Dublin Industrial Peace Committee, whose efforts at independent mediation were frustrated by the employers’ intransigence.[1]

Other[]

Discovering a new obsession in concentrated pursuit of his career in literature, he wrote the lyric of a sacred cantata, ‘The Exodus’ (1904), with music by Bendetto Palmieri, performed at the Royal University of Ireland and awarded 1st prize at the 1904 feis ceoil. The exclamatory rhetoric and emotional excess of the piece – tolerable in the context of chorale composition – intruded upon the contemporaneous verse of ‘The praises of beauty’, published as the opening sequence of The golden joy (1906), a volume expressing MacDonagh's spiritual movement from Christian mysticism to neo-platonism in its assertion of devotion to ideal, spiritual beauty, not Christian faith, as the means to redemption, and its concept of the poet as divinely inspired mediator between the spiritual world and the physical. In subsequent years MacDonagh moved further toward a free-thinking, non-dogmatic spirituality.[1]

Recognition[]

Lament_For_Thomas_MacDonagh_-_Caoineadh_Thomáis_Mhic_Dhonnchadh

Lament For Thomas MacDonagh - Caoineadh Thomáis Mhic Dhonnchadh

Thomas MacDonagh Tower in Ballymun, Dublin, which was built in the 1960s and demolished in June 2005, was named after him, as wer the train station (MacDonagh Station) and shopping centre (MacDonagh Junction) in Kilkenny (as MacDonagh had taught in St Kierans College, Kilkenny City during the early years of his career). Like most of the 1916 leaders, he has no street named after him in the capital city of Ireland.

In popular culture[]

A prominent figure in the Dublin literary world, he was commemorated in several poems by W.B. Yeats – who wrote of his poems, "how daring and sweet in his thought" – and in his friend Francis Ledwidge's "Lament for Thomas MacDonagh".

Publications[]

Poetry[]

  • Through the Ivory Gate. Dublin: Sealy, Bryers, & Walker, 1902.
  • April and May, with other verses. Dublin: Sealy, Bryers, & Walker, 1903.
  • Songs of Myself. Dublin: Hodges Figgis, 1910.
  • Lyrical Poems. Dublin: Irish Review, 1913.
  • Poetical Works (edited by James Stephens). Dublin: Talbot / London: Unwin, 1916.
  • Poems (selected by his sister). Dublin: Talbot, 1925.

Plays[]

  • When the Dawn Is Come: A tragedy in three acts. Dublin: Maunsel, 1908
    • (with introduction by C. Garrison & commentary by J. Norstedt). Chicago: De Paul University (Irish Drama Series, IX), 1973.
  • "Metempyschosis; or, A mad world", in Irish Review (February 1912), 585-99.
  • Pagans: A modern play in two conversations. London: Talbot / Unwin, 1920.
    • also published in Lost Plays of the Irish Renaissance, Vol II: Edward Martyn’s Irish theatre (edited by William Feeney). Dixon, CA: Proscenium Press, 1980, 53ff.

Non-fiction[]


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy Ricorso.net.[2]

See also[]

References[]

  • Gillan, Patrick. “MacDonagh, Thomas Stanislaus (1878-1916).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
  • White, Laurence William. "MacDonagh, Thomas," Dictionary of National Biography," October 2009. Web, Sep. 5, 2022.

Notes[]

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 1.25 1.26 1.27 1.28 1.29 White (2009).
  2. ↑ Thomas MacDonagh (1878-1916), Ricorso.net. Web, Nov. 22, 2014.

External links[]

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This article incorporates text from the Dictionary of Irish Biography, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license. Original article is at: MacDonagh, Thomas

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