Thomas Davis (poet)

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Thomas Davis

Thomas Osborne Davis ( Irish Tomás Dáibhis ; born October 14, 1814 in Mallow , † September 16, 1845 in Dublin ) was an Irish poet and one of the leading figures of the Young Ireland movement .

Life

Childhood and studies

Thomas Davis was born in Mallow, Co. Cork , the son of a Welsh military doctor who served in the Royal Artillery and died a month after Thomas Davis was born. His mother was Irish. After his father's death, the family moved to Dublin, where Davis lived on Lower Baggot Street from 1830 until his death. In 1836 Thomas Davis graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a law degree and was admitted to the bar in 1838.

The Nation weekly

Thomas Davis joined the National Repeal Association , founded by Daniel O'Connell in 1840 , with the aim of repealing the Union Act of 1800 that made Ireland part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Instead, Ireland should become an independent kingdom again with its own parliament. In 1841 Davis and his fellow student John Blake Dillon, also a lawyer, made the acquaintance of Charles Gavan Duffy , who shared their burgeoning enthusiasm for the independence of the Irish nation. Davis was a Protestant, Dillon and Duffy were Roman Catholics. With Duffy as editor, they founded The Nation weekly . She appeared on 15 October 1842 for the first time, with the subtitle: Educate did you may be free ( Educate yourself, so that you will be free ). The circulation soon reached 250,000, surpassing every other Dublin newspaper.

Young Ireland and the break with O'Connell

Davis began writing poignant patriotic lyrics, such as the ballads The West's Asleep and A Nation Once Again , which are still popular in Irish folklore today . The newspaper also published the ballad of John Kells Ingram Who fears to speak of '98 in 1843, commemorating the dead in the 1798 uprising . So the Young Irelanders around Thomas Davis also took up the republican ideas of the United Irishmen , who thus distanced themselves more and more from Daniel O'Connell. The main break between O'Connell and Davis was that for O'Connell the emancipation of Catholics was in the foreground, while Thomas Davis advocated an Irish national feeling regardless of religion or origin. Davis invoked the unity between Catholics and Protestants as well as the unity of the Irish with Celtic, Anglo-Saxon or Norman roots. For him, being Irish was not a question of ancestry, but of the will to be part of the Irish nation.

Thomas Davis died of scarlet fever when he was only 30 . He is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery , Dublin.

literature

  • Martin Wallace: Famous Irish Lives. The Appletree Press Ltd., Belfast, 1991, ISBN 0-86281-275-5 .
  • Theodore W. Moody, Francis Xavier Martin (eds.): The Course of Irish History. The Mercier Press, Cork 1991, ISBN 0-85342-715-1 .
  • David Pritchard: Chronology of Irish History. Lagan Books, New Lanark, 2001, ISBN 1-85534-390-8 .

Web links

Commons : Thomas Davis (poet)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ^ John Henry Whyte: The Age of Daniel O'Connell (1800-47). In: Theodore W. Moody, Francis Xavier Martin (eds.): The Course of Irish history . Mercier Press, Cork, 17th ed. 1987, ISBN 0-85342-715-1 , pp. 248-262, here p. 261.
  2. ^ Theodore W. Moody: Fenianism, Home Rule, and the Land War (1850-91) . In: Theodore W. Moody, Francis Xavier Martin (eds.): The Course of Irish history . Mercier Press, Cork, 17th ed. 1987, ISBN 0-85342-715-1 , pp. 275-294, here p. 277.
personal data
SURNAME Davis, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Davis, Thomas Osborne (full name); Dáibhis, Tomás (Irish name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish poet
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1814
PLACE OF BIRTH Mallow
DATE OF DEATH September 16, 1845
Place of death Dublin