In giving these few poems of Roger Casement to the Irish people I do not claim for them any special value as Irish literature. Roger Casement was not a poet, he would have been the last to lay claim to any such title, but, like the greater part of his fellow-countrymen, he felt from time to time the impulse to express some particular thought in verse, and he used to jot down, sometimes in a letter to a friend, sometimes on an odd half sheet of paper, the thought clothed in a poetic form just as it came into his mind. His was a nature of peculiar delicacy and refinement and of singular simplicity; he had but one passion, Ireland, but one deep sympathy—compassion for the helpless and oppressed. Even as a little boy he turned with horror and revulsion from cruelty of every description: he would tenderly nurse a wounded bird to life, and stop to pity an overloaded horse. This gentleness and tender-heartedness The act which brought him to his death was the result of long years of brooding over Ireland and her destiny; it was not a sudden and new impulse as some have endeavoured to prove. To say that his interest in Ireland began with his retirement from the service of the British Foreign Office is to misrepresent the facts entirely. Roger Casement from his earliest days was before everything else a lover of Ireland. In his school An incident is told of his life in South Africa, about the time of the Boer War. He was one day, with two companions on the verandah of a hotel, when a lady who had been observing them from a distance for some time approached them. She excused herself for addressing strangers and explained that she had felt compelled to do so as they had interested her profoundly. Explaining that she had the gift of second-sight, she asked permission to tell their fortunes, to which they consented, looking upon the matter as a joke. Having told the fortunes of the lady and of the second companion, she turned at last to Roger Casement, and stated that his was the most interesting fate. She described his adventurous life in broad outline, and then said, "You must take care: at the age of 52 you will come to a violent end." Roger Casement was within a month of his fifty-second birthday when he died. There was a curious remoteness about him at times. He used to sit for long periods silent in a reverie, and would awaken from it with a sudden start. In his habits he was always simple and frugal; he rose very early in the morning and was always at work before breakfast; he cared nothing for society in the worldly sense, but he loved his friends and was always and invariably happy in the company of children of all ages and classes. Once the writer was walking with him through the streets of an old country town when a tired woman after a shopping expedition was vainly urging an equally tired, and, I am bound to say, naughty little boy to "come on." When at last in exasperation she called out, "Very well, I'll go home without you," the culprit set up an ear-piercing yell and flung himself down on the ground. Roger turned round at once, to hasten back. "Ah! poor soul," he said, "his heart is broken, God help him; I'll pick him up." Small children always adored him. The tiny three-year-old child of a charwoman working in the house where he was staying used to creep in from the kitchen, Many a little beggar child in Dublin knew the smile in those kind eyes, and they used to greet him with smiles in return and always get their copper or two. We used to tease him, and say he walked through the streets of Dublin "buying smiles at a penny each." I do not think any Irish man, woman, or child ever appealed to him for sympathy and help that he did not give. On a motor tour through Donegal with some friends he met an old woman whose son and his wife had died and left to her care a family of small children. They looked poor and hungry, and the old woman found it hard to make her little farm support them all. "Wouldn't they be better for some milk?" asked Roger, seeing them make a scanty meal, with water to drink. "Indeed It was in Ireland he always felt at home; he hated big cities, noise, music-halls, and restaurants. He wrote from London on one visit, "I feel more and more of a foreigner here"; but in the Irish country, with the simple country folk, he was always content. One of the happiest experiences of his life in later years was a short visit he paid to Tory Island in 1912, when he organised a Ceilidh, to which everyone on the island was invited. He sat in the crowded schoolroom, watching the boys and girls dancing their reels and jigs, and listening to the Gaelic songs till far on into the night, when the Ceilidh broke up. He loved the Tory people and used to plan many times to go back and visit them. Tory has a sort of fascination about it, it looks so remote and unreal, "like an opal jewel in a pale blue sea," he described it once in a letter. During all the time of his varied experiences abroad Although not a rich man (he had no private means) he contributed generously to all Irish schemes for furthering the National life. He helped several of the Gaelic Colleges, gave prizes in schools for the study of Irish, and did his best to help along many of those newspapers and periodicals which were founded by young and hopeful Irishmen to expound their views and which alas! so often came to an untimely end. With his singularly generous nature money mattered nothing at all to him save for the use he could make of it to help the work he had at heart. He spent little upon himself, in fact he denied himself all luxuries, and even comforts, that he might have to give to Irish causes He wrote much on the Irish question. Letters from his pen appeared in many Irish newspapers, and not a few English ones, and his essays, which will, it is hoped, be published later, show not only a deep insight but much literary skill. His speech from the dock was described by a leading English literary man as an effort "worthy of the finest examples of antiquity." At the age of 52 he came to a violent end.... So have many others who died for Ireland; he stands among his peers, the Irish martyrs. He would not have The men of 1916 are not dead in any real sense, for "They shall be remembered for ever, They shall be alive for ever, They shall be speaking for ever, The people shall hear them for ever." Gertrude Parry. |