Abstract

What was meant to be a direct and serious threat to British rule in Ireland in 1916 became a small-scale skirmish on the streets of Dublin that had little impact beyond the capital city. But the actions of the men and women who were behind the Easter Rising have an important claim on Irish collective memory. That the nationalist rhetoric of the now famous 1916 martyrs was wrapped in a religious idiom, and appealed to this-worldly as well as otherworldly sentiment, helped to ensure its place in posterity. For all the importance of this event in our collective memory though, it has not always been remembered as it was on Easter Sunday 2006, when the Irish state organised an elaborate official commemoration of the tragic and ill-fated rising, the first such event since 1966.