"Summertime, and the living is easy. Fish are jumpin', and the cotton is high." Thus begins one of George Gershwin's most memorable songs, composed in 1935 for his opera Porgy and Bess, writes Frank Bouchier-Hayes.
Ninety-two summers ago, the living was far from easy in many parts of Ireland.
One area in particular caught the attention of the national press at the time. A typhus outbreak in Connemara in May 1913 prompted the Irish Independent to launch a press campaign and relief fund to alleviate the desperate plight of the local inhabitants. Augustine Birrell, Chief Secretary for Ireland, visited the affected region that same month and described one house he had encountered as "the worst dwelling I have ever visited". The West of Ireland had been the victim of a lack of care for several decades before the brought the area to national attention. Indeed, as far back as 1882, Michael Davitt's visit to the area caused him to wonder how "any scoundrel in human shape could possess the power to inflict such misery".
Among the first to subscribe to the Independent's relief fund was William Cadbury, A Quaker philanthropist who was also a member of the famous chocolate-making dynasty. Roger Casement, then better known for his pioneering role in highlighting barbaric colonial practices in Africa and South America, felt compelled to lend his support to the relief campaign in Connemara. He was at pains to stress that "whatever of good I have been the means of doing in other countries was due, in the first place to the guiding light I carried from my own country, Ireland, and to the very intimate knowledge I possessed not only of her present day condition, but of historic causes that had led up to them".
Casement visited the affected area in June 1913 and promised the schoolteacher in Lettermullen and the parish priest of Carraroe that he would "collect money for the purpose of giving one daily meal in school to the children attending". (This promise persisted in his thoughts until his execution in August 1916. Shortly before his death, he confided to his solicitor, George Gavan Duffy, that money hidden at the old fort near Banna Strand, Co Kerry, where he had been discovered by police in April 1916, should be given to Douglas Hyde "for the school fund at Carraroe".)
Several weeks after his visit to this particular school, Casement was able to declare that "through the generosity of an Englishman and his family (and some friends here) I am assured of sufficient means to provide the infant children of Carraroe National School with a meal a day, for the next year". The generous Englishman praised by Casement was William Cadbury, who had also silently backed him on other humanitarian ventures. Casement also thanked the Royal Irish Constabulary, the Gaelic League and Irish shopkeepers for contributing to the Irish Independent relief fund, writing that the paper's appeal "has reached the hearts of the Irish people, and that those hearts still beat true for the poor, and true for the old language of this country".
Casement's reference to the Irish language was significant, as he attached conditions to his own fund, such as that "there shall be grace in Irish said before and a song in Irish after the meal, and that, as far as possible, the children shall have their native language employed in the general conduct of the business of the school". Jane Tubridy, Carraroe schoolmistress, wrote to him in December 1913, saying he "would have enjoyed the little ones at their daily feast so generously provided by you and your good friends" and that the attached conditions were being "faithfully carried out, viz. prayers for the donors, grace, a hymn and conversation in Irish".
Casement's devotion to the language manifested itself in other ways such as regular subscriptions and contributions to Irish education projects. More specifically, he supported the Gaelic League, the Irish Texts Society, the School of Advanced Studies in Irish, the Irish language colleges in Ulster, Munster College in Ballingeary, and the Tawin Island school, where he first encountered Eamon de Valera, then a summer teacher, in 1912. Carraroe also remained dear to his heart for other reasons, as a letter to William Cadbury's wife, sent from Pentonville Prison shortly before his death, reveals. Casement wrote: Emmeline, if only they had landed me at Carraroe, things might have gone differently! They were waiting for me at Carraroe - armed men who have protected me and hidden me. But the Germans chose instead to land me on an open beach at Tralee."
By November 1913, Casement's fundraising efforts on behalf of Carraroe National School had extended as far as Argentina; money collected there ensured that the school children would be fed for another five years. After Casement's execution, Douglas Hyde wrote that "the fund is generous enough to provide a meal for 200 children every day for the next ten years at least". Hyde added that no one would know "until the Judgment Day what Roger Casement did for the desolate parts of Ireland".
The great man's work on behalf of Connemara people prior to the outbreak of the first World War is the subject of an informative and thought-provoking article by Angus Mitchell in the current issue of Irish Economic and Social History. Mitchell notes that amid "the extensive historiography and literature on famine and social relief work in the West of Ireland carried out in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this particular episode has received almost no analysis".
It would be wrong to think, however, that Casement's involvement in the Connemara relief campaign is of merely historical interest, as the author concludes that "many people still alive today received the free daily cocoa and bread thanks to Roger Casement's work and vision for Ireland".