C’mere Til I Tell Ye. ..

‘Tis the season to celebrate my Irishness and tell the story of a famous Irishman. Last year, I wrote about St. Paddy himself. This year it will be the story of Theobald Wolfe Tone. This tale is quintessentially Irish with strands of bellicosity, heroism and rebellion woven tight for the myth making that the Irish are so good at. The Tone story is -in miniature- the story of modern Ireland.

Tone was a founding member of a group called the United Irishmen, a group dedicated to the expulsion of the English from Ireland’s “four green fields.” Stoked by the revolutions in France and America, Tone and his mates began long negotiations with France to begin an armed rebellion that would help establish an Irish Republic. For these efforts Tone would be forever known as the father of Irish Republicanism.

With typical Irishness a series of mistakes and doomed sorties led to the complete failure of Tone’s mission and his eventual apprehension. Condemned to death Tone made reference to the fact that he was arrested in the uniform of a French Adjutant General and thus he deserved an officer’s death before a firing squad. The English Judge would have none of this and he sentenced Tone to a humiliating public hanging, a death reserved for thieves and the brigands.

Tone was jailed and tortured. One morning he was found barely conscious with his throat cut. In an effort to save him for the scaffold, the judge ordered medical assistance for Tone. The examining physician is reported to have advised the prisoner that if he spoke it would kill him. It is at this moment that Irish myth making plays a hand. Tone -it was reported- looked directly at the doctor and said, ” I can’t find the words to thank you sir …it is the most welcome news you could give me. What should I wish to live for.” In moments, Tone was dead.

Whether or not Tone took his own life to preserve his dignity and the righteousness of his cause or he was slashed by a frustrated English torturer is not important. It was and is one of Ireland’s core stories. In 1916, during the Irish Revolution Tone’s name was invoked repeatedly…he inspired generations of Irishmen.

Here in 92128 I can not outrun my Irishness. My friends know that I have a tendency to embellish, that I can be bellicose, pedantic and melodramatic. Yet, in their generosity they make a space for my Irishness. My Irish mother is perhaps at fault for passing pure Irishness to me. The strange thing is that I am adamantly proud of the qualities that are Irish…an insistence regarding pride and dignity and a willingness to take on a lost cause now and then.

So I am about to sink a corned beef, some Murphys and some cabbage into a broth, and due to mandated social distancing, later in the day I’ll delver the Irish boil to my mates in 92128. I’ll wish all a Happy Saint Patricks Day.

God save Ireland.