Rare photograph taken at the inaugural meeting of the Irish Volunteers in 1913. Left to right: Professor Eoin MacNeill, Thomas MacDonagh, Michael Davitt, Patrick Pearse and Laurence Kettle.
Patrick Pearse said at the time that “when men come to write the history of the freeing of Ireland, they shall have to record that the boys of Na Fianna Éireann stood in the battle gap until the Volunteers armed…..and if the Fianna had not been founded in 1909, the Volunteers of 1913 would never have arisen“.
Photograph credit: F.X. Martin’s biography of Eoin Macneill ‘The Scholar Revolutionary’
The History of Na Fianna Éireann 
Not seen this picture of my Great Grandfather, Thoma MacDonagh, before. It gives context to his height which persists at 5ft 8in in my lineage.
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