John O'Leary

John O'Leary ( July 23, 1830 - March 16, 1907 ) was an Irish Republican and a leading Fenian . He studied law and medicine without graduating. Because of his participation in the Irish Republican Brotherhood , he was imprisoned in England.

Life

The Catholic O'Leary was born in Tipperary. There he first attended the Abbey School, the local Protestant high school. He later moved to Carlow Catholic College. O'Leary came into contact with representatives of the Young Ireland movement early on and identified with their goals. From 1847 he studied law at Trinity College Dublin , where he met other Irish nationalists. In 1848 O'Leary was involved in the Tipperary uprising and was imprisoned for a week in September 1849. In the same month he took part in the uprising in Cashel, which also failed.

Because O'Leary did not want to give the oath of allegiance required by lawyers, he gave up his law studies at Trinity College and in 1850 moved to Queen's College in Cork to study medicine. With the newly formed Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), he became the treasurer and co-editor of the IRB newspaper The Irish People.

In 1865, O'Leary was arrested, charged with treason, and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment. After five years in English prisons, he was released and exiled in 1871. He lived mainly in Paris but remained active in the IRB. In 1885 O'Leary returned to Ireland. He and his sister, the poet Ellen O'Leary , became important figures in Dublin's cultural and nationalist circles, including William Butler Yeats .

After O'Leary's death, Yeats wrote in his poem September 1913 the repetitive line dedicated to O'Leary: “Romantic Ireland's dead and gone; it's with O'Leary in the grave ”(“ Romance is dead in Ireland, buried in O'Leary's grave. ”)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Translation by Norbert Hummelt in: William Butler Yeats, Die Gedichte, Munich 2005, p. 122