A true oasis in the busy city – it is always populated with cheery locals out for a stroll. This nice little spot makes it hard to imagine we’re in the middle of a city of half-a-million people. And Dublin is the capital and largest city of a nation of five million Irish. With reminders of Ireland’s heritage everywhere, Dublin is also the de facto capital of Irish culture.
This park we’re walking through – lush, flat, and watery, with 50 shades of green – looks much like the rest of the Emerald Isle, with its green, pastoral landscape. The park was once a marshy bog for grazing animals – just as so much of Ireland still is today.
We entered the park thru the Fusiliers Arch. It commemorates Irishmen who died fighting in the British Army in the Boer War (against Dutch settlers in South Africa from 1899-1902). Under the curve of the arch, we see the names of those who lost their lives. In Dublin’s crushingly impoverished tenements of the time, one of the few ways for a young man without means to improve his lot would be to join the army (regular meals, proper clothing, and a chance to “see the world”). You can read a little of the Irish struggle into the names: Captains were Protestant elites with English names, and grunts were Catholic with Catholic names. Many more grunts died.
Two decades later, Ireland was embroiled in is own battles against Britain, and sentiments had evolved. With Irishmen fighting to end centuries of English domination, locals considered the Fusiliers Arch to be a memorial to those who fought for Britain – and began referring to it as “Traitors Arch.” A key Dublin battleground during the 1916 Easter Rising was in and around this park. If one looks carefully, one can still see bullet marks scarring the memorial.
One comes upon a statue that honors the great 20th-century Irish poet W.B. Yeats. In the early 1900s, Yeats fought to keep Ireland’s rich history alive in modern times. He and his circle revived old poems, songs, and folk tales, and championed the Gaelic language. They helped forge a distinct Irish national identity. They were part of a larger movement that was standing up boldly against the dominant English culture.