Out of Bulmer Hobson's autobiographical book Ireland Yesterday and Tomorrow, published in 1968 by Anvil Books, fell a newspaper cutting. It was from The Irish Times of August 12th, 1969. It showed a gathering of maybe 200 people standing on a rise in the dunes at Goirtin Bay, Roundstone, Connemara. The title was simply "Funeral of Bulmer Hobson". And there had passed a man whose name deserves to be celebrated, for he did great work for this country - all of it.
Born of a Quaker family, he went to the Friends' School Lisburn, but resigned from the Friends when he became engaged in organising the Irish Volunteers. Yet even before that, what energy he had put into so many good causes. In Belfast there was the Gaelic League and then the Dungannon Clubs, organised by himself and Denis McCullough with Sean MacDermott. Then a weekly, The Republic, for which Robert Lynd, the famous essayist, wrote, as well as James Winder Good, a well-known journalist, and P. S. O'Hegarty. Hobson too. He actively promoted Gaelic games and Michael Cusack himself came to the first meeting of the Antrim County Board of which Bulmer was secretary.
He started Na Fianna Eireann, but money was short. Seven years later he was in Dublin and Countess Markievicz suggested that a new start should be made there. She had money and it came about in 1909. Bulmer stressed, he writes, that the control should be "wholly in the hands of the boys themselves". Later still, Bulmer organised the gun-running into Howth and along the Wicklow coast. He was made secretary of the Irish Volunteers with strong views on how they should conduct their military affairs. On the Friday before the Rising he was held at gunpoint in a house in north Dublin and not allowed out until Monday evening. He refused to go back into the movement.
He took a job in Dublin Castle, produced a memorably artistic and effective Saorstat Eireann Official Handbook with the best writers and artists. He retired to Goirtin Bay near Roundstone, where he died some 20 years later. For his funeral he had asked the parish priest to say a few prayers so that his friends in the locality, nearly all Catholics, could come with an easy mind. The oration was by a man from the same Quaker background as Bulmer, Willy Glynn. Bulmer had been comfortable in a house built for him by a man from the locality, Tom McDonagh.
Near him lived the Lesters, old friends from the North. He is not forgotten, but this summary covers only some of his work for a free Ireland. He often said that two men's thinking guided him: Wolfe Tone and James Fintan Lalor. Y