'IRELAND, MOTHER IRELAND': AN ESSAY IN ... - Lacan in Ireland

In The Spiritual Nation, Pearse wrote:
My own children that sold their Mother.
When I was a child I believed there was actually a woman called
Erin, and had Mr Yeats' Kathleen Ni Houlihan been then written
and had I seen it I should have taken it not as an allegory but as
a representation of a thing that might happen any day in any
house. 11
Jones in fact picks out Yeats' play as providing 'the most moving description
of all' of mother Ireland as 'maiden, old woman and queen' and we know how
Yeat's tortured himself towards the end of his life with the question of
whether 'that play of mine send out certain men the English shot'.
'A Mother Country'
But it is not simply the mystical nationalists and the poets who speak of
Ireland as Mother. In an article written after Eamonn de Valera had rejected
the treaty that ended the War of Independence and led his 'women and
childers' party out of Dail Eireann, Michael Collins, the ruthless and
pragmatic leader of the guerrilla war against England wrote:
... at a Conference in London with the British representatives I
made it quite clear that Ireland was a MOTHER COUNTRY,
with the duties and responsibilities and feelings and devotions
of a mother country. 12
De Valera on the other hand was telling his followers on Patrick's Day 1922
that they 'will have to march over the dead bodies of their own brothers. They
11 P.H. Pearse. "The Spiritual Nation' (1915) in The Best of Pearse. eds. P. MacAonghusa and L.
O'Reagain. Cork, Merrier Press, 1967. pp. 152-3.
12 M. Collins. 'Alternative to the Treaty: Ireland A Mother Country' (1922) in The Path to Freedom.
Cork, Merrier Press, 1966. p. 37.
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