Michael Joseph O’Rahilly, who was born 150 years ago on April 22nd, gave himself the title “The O’Rahilly” from the Gaelic Irish tradition of calling the head of the clan “The”, as Hugh O’Neill was known as The O’Neill. WB Yeats retrospectively defended O’Rahilly’s right to so style himself and who, indeed, would deny him that right as he was a noble, brave and idealistic man?
He was born in Ballylongford, Co Kerry, to Richard Rahilly, an entrepreneur and justice of the peace, and Ellen Mangan. After attending national school in Ballylongford (where he learned Irish after hours) and Clongowes Wood College, Co Kildare, he studied medicine at University College Dublin for a time but, following an illness, he abandoned his studies to take over the family business on his father’s death. The business was sold and he spent some time in America, where he married Nancy Browne in April 1899; they went on to have six children.
They returned to Ireland and settled in Bray in 1900, where he continued his interest in the Irish language and history and contributed to Arthur Griffith’s United Irishman newspaper. In 1905, he and Nancy moved to Philadelphia in an attempt to save the Browne family business. Returning to Ireland four years later, they settled in Ballsbridge.
“Thereafter, nationalism provided this gifted but slightly aimless man with his central purpose in life,” according to Patrick Maume, who wrote the entry on him in the Dictionary of Irish Biography. He wrote for, financially supported and raised funds for Griffith’s Sinn Féin newspaper, joined that organisation’s executive and undertook campaigns that made him Sinn Féin’s best-known activist after Griffith.
The definite article – Brian Maye on Michael Joseph O’Rahilly, The O’Rahilly
Into the light — Paul Clements on photographer Alexander Hogg
Friends in high places – John Mulqueen on Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington’s American tour
Art Attack – Frank McNally on the dangers of passive exposure to art and culture
Also very active in the Gaelic League, he was elected to its executive in 1912 and did much to raise its profile, such as organising fundraising days, getting Dublin street names translated into Irish and getting the post office to accept mail addressed in Irish. He also overhauled the league’s newspaper, An Claidheamh Soluis, and improved its circulation.
O’Rahilly strongly advocated the setting up of a nationalist volunteer body, similar to the Ulster Volunteers, and became treasurer and director of arms for the Irish Volunteers on their formation in November 1913. He played a central role in getting arms for the organisation over the next two years and published A History of the Irish Volunteers in 1915. There he accused John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, of wrecking the organisation as Redmond’s insistence on nominating a majority of members of its provisional committee in June 1914 split the volunteers.
However, he was at one with Eoin MacNeill, president of the Irish Volunteers, in favouring a defensive strategy for the movement and was opposed to its use in a pre-emptive Rising. This put him on a collision course with Patrick Pearse and other members of the secret Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, who were planning to use the volunteers to stage just such a Rising. When their secret planning was discovered in April 1916 and when O’Rahilly learned of the British capture of the arms shipment from Germany, he actively persuaded MacNeill to call off the Rising planned for Easter Monday and travelled to Munster to spread MacNeill’s countermanding order.
When the Rising went ahead anyway, he felt a moral duty to join the men he’d help recruit and train and made his way to the GPO; as Yeats put it in his poem The O’Rahilly, “Because I helped to wind the clock/I come to hear it strike.” In the GPO, he was in charge of food supplies and prisoners, whom he treated humanely. “Desmond FitzGerald, his aide-de-camp, recalled him as cheerful though he was convinced that the Rising was doomed; he resisted entreaties to return home (his wife was pregnant),” according to Patrick Maume.
Tragically, he was shot while leading a charge up Moore Street to protect the evacuation of the GPO; he bled to death over a long period in a doorway in Moore Lane, now O’Rahilly Parade. Before he died he wrote a note to his wife and wrote his name in his own blood over the doorway.
The note to his wife read: “Written after I was shot. Darling Nancy I was shot leading a rush up Moore Street and took refuge in a doorway. While I was there I heard the men pointing out where I was and made a bolt for the laneway I am in now. I got more [than] one bullet I think. Tons and tons of love dearie to you and the boys and to Nell and Anna. It was a good fight anyhow. Please deliver this to Nannie O’Rahilly, 40 Herbert Park, Dublin. Goodbye Darling.”
The words were etched into a memorial plaque by Shane Cullen that was unveiled on the spot that he died in 2005, 89 years to the day of his death on April 28th, 1916.
