Rathfarnham in south Dublin has many memories of the past: Robert Emmet and Sarah Curran, of course. He had his famous house in Butterfield Lane, as it then was; she lived above in the Priory with her father John Philpot Curran. And next to their house, a century later, Patrick Pearse and his brother came to what had been known as the Hermitage, henceforth to be St Enda's, the renowned school. Not far off was Woodtown House which knew Eoin Mac Neill and his brother James, later, for four years, Governor-General of the Free State.
As you walk the paths of St Enda's you cannot but think of the clandestine meetings of Emmet and Sarah, safe in the neighbouring Hermitage grounds, where they are said often to have walked, away from the doubtful looks of John Philpot. Curran's house is gone. Yet only a few short decades ago there still remained a pile of rubble among which children from the village would rummage for blackberries. Now an estate of modern houses covers the spot.
But St Enda's Park is the centre of attention. The house is splendidly maintained as a museum in memory of the great experiment. Behind it, for the weary walker, a cosy square or yard with a teahouse; in the middle, a tinkling fountain. Outside, you read the words of his poem The Wayfarer: "The beauty of the world hath made me sad,/This beauty that will pass;/ Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy/ To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,/ Or a red ladybird on a stalk,/ Or little rabbits in a field at evening.. ." And not long after settling in the Hermitage he wrote of the value in education of contact with wildlife and woodlands and the very large part it ought to play in the life of a boy.
The Office of Public Works, which issues a useful booklet on St Enda's and its founder, looks after the estate well. Its rushing stream and pond are a refuge for various ducks; dippers may be seen; at the rear of the house a young plantation of oaks is thriving. And the garden is well worth visiting. There is a playing field and many paths. Pearse wrote about "the associations that cling about these old stones and trees."
His reputation has had its ups and downs. Desmond Ryan, pupil and fellow insurgent on 1916 has written in his book The Man Called Pearse: "I have endeavoured to deal with some aspects of his life and ideals as I knew them from daily intimacy, from conversations, from a study of his writings. What Dr Mahaffy condensed in a phrase, I have amplified into a book, in the hope of shaking the gentle dreamer legend and the sombre, implacable nonsense alike. . ." Pearse never was a legend, he was a man. Y