Let Ye All Be Irish Tonight

“Since the English occupation, we have had little or no national art in Ireland at all, and there is not the slightest chance of our ever having it until we get that right of legisla- tive independence, so unjustly robbed from us, until we are really an Irish Nation - a na- tion for whose constitutional liberty Henry Grattan lived and died. There is, however, one art which no tyranny can kill and no penal laws can stifle - the art of poetry. An art which is one of the supreme triumphs of the race to which we belong .The poetry and music of Ireland have been not merely the luxury of the rich, but the very bulwark of patriotism, the very seed and flower of liberty”. Oscar Wilde 1882