Plunkett, Joseph Mary

(1887-1916)

   Leader of the 1916 Irish Easter Rising, he was educated at the English Jesuit School at Stonyhurst, Lancashire, and was a member of the Gaelic League, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). During World War I he recruited his father-curator of the National Museum-who allowed his property in Kimmage, south Dublin, to be used as a training camp for young men wishing to escape conscription in England. He was sent to Germany to meet with Sir Roger Casement (see entry) who was negotiating with the Germans to support an Irish uprising. His tuberculosis, from which he had suffered all his life, flared up, and he attended the uprising with his neck swathed in bandages, having undergone surgery on his glands. Hours before his execution by firing squad, he was married in the prison chapel to his sweetheart, Grace Gifford. Some of his poems: "I Saw the Sun at Midnight, Rising Red," "I See His Blood upon the Rose," "Saint Augustine," "The Claim That Has the Canker on the Rose," "The Stars Sang in God's Garden," "White Dove of the Wild Dark Eyes."

   Sources: 1000 Years of Irish Poetry: The Gaelic and Anglo-Irish Poets from Pagan Times to the Present. Kathleen Hoagland, ed. Devin-Adair, 1975. Selection of poems by Joseph Mary Plunkett, A Taste of Ireland's Poets (http://www.rc.net/wcc/ireland/plunkett.htm). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Book of Irish Verse: XVIIth Century-XXth Century. Donagh MacDonagh and Leenox Robinson, eds. Oxford University Press, 1958. The Poems of Joseph Mary Plunkett (http://poetry.elcore.net/ CatholicPoets/Plunkett/). Treasury of Irish Religious Verse. Patrick Murray, ed. Crossroad, 1986. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).