"The inborn hate of things English": Ernie O'Malley and the Irish Revolution 1916-1923

Past & Present, May, 1996 by Richard English

Moreover, the republicans' conception of the nation was a deeply Romantic one, dependent as it was on the questionable notion of an innate rational consciousness. Whether the metaphor was one of awakening the sleeper or of restoring the dying to life, nationalist imagery drew upon this powerful idea of an inborn national sense. Writing of the Anglo-Irish War, O'Malley epitomized the tendency in typically quotable terms:

In general, the local I.R.A. companies made or marred the morale of the

people. If the officers were keen and daring, if organization was good, if

the flying columns had been established, and if the people had

become accustomed to seeing our men bearing arms openly, the

resistance was stiffened. When the fighting took place, the people

entered into the spirit of the fight even if they were not republican,

their emotions were stirred, and the little spark of nationality which is

borne by everyone who lives in Ireland was fanned and given

expression to in one of many ways.(40)

O'Malley's Romanticism also involved idealized visions of the peasantry. In 1938 he advised a couple hoping to adopt an Irish child "to adopt peasant stock from Ireland as it has more good blood in it than either middle or upper middle class".(41) Such arguments coexisted, as one might expect, with a rather less enthusiastic attitude towards the actual peasants among whom he spent his-Revolutionary (and, indeed, many of his postRevolutionary) years. But Romantic zealotry, like Romantic sources, prevailed in O'Malley's mind. He offered lyrical depictions of the countryside against which his Revolutionary adventures were often set. "I looked forward to Spring: broken land, brown, umber,upturned, earth smells awakened by the rain. The wild daffodil quivering on pliant stem, purple-frittered wild iris, the delicate cream of the primrose backed by its crimpled leaf and the rich golden glory of the sedate crocus" -- such passages as this should be read in the light of O'Malley's view that there existed a direct connection between knowledge of the land, intimacy with the country and nationalist commitment. Similarly, his passion for geography and topography was part of what he referred to as his desire to achieve "an intimate knowledge of the country from every point of view".(42)

O'Malley was plainly not alone in such sentiments. I have argued elsewhere that O'Malley's republicanism should be appreciated within the setting of a broader British framework, and in particular that an examination of John Buchan's writings helpfuly illuminates our reading of Ernie O'Malley's Revolution.(43) O'Malley (the Catholic, Irish anti-imperialist) loved Buchan (`the Presbyterian, Scottish imperialist). He made many approving references to Buchan's work and his library contained many of Buchan's books. O'Malley read Buchan's 1916 adventure Greenmantle while republican prisoner in Mountjoy Prison. The novel, the second in Buchan's Richard Hannay series, had been written in part to entertain the troops, and there was therefore a certain irony in its having entertained this particular soldier of the Irish Republican Army. But it remains true not only that the culture depicted in Buchan's Hannay novels, set in the First World War and its aftermath, resembles that portrayed in O'Malley's writings on the Irish Revolution, but also that these O'Malley/Buchan resonances are in fact less surprising than they might at first appear, given that the two men actually shared many intellectual and cultural influences. The romance of adventure characteristic of Buchan's writings is echoed in O'Malley's prose, and the essentially apolitical hero-narrator in each case relates a similar tale. The fictional Hannay and the historical O'Malley both provide accounts which celebrate militarism, duty, discipline and patriotism; which depict an overwhelmingly male culture, characterized by forms of rather patronizing chivalry towards (often boyish) women; which glorify courage, adventure and the countryside against which their own adventures are repeatedly set; which present loyal and chosen (indeed selfselecting, self-appointing) comrades appearing and reappearing in a series of patriotic struggles, each set firmly in the world of spies and disguise; and which demand that the reader accept the unquestionable righteousness of their hero's struggle. In reading Greenmantle O'Malley escaped into a culture and a world which were deeply and favourably familiar to him.