Madam, - Elaine Sisson ("Pearse as educational pioneer", Opinion Analysis, September 25th) falls into the commonplace traps of relying largely on Patrick Pearse's own descriptions of his educational work and taking them very much at face value in her eulogistic analysis.
Furthermore, as is so often the case with those who study Pearse, she is guilty of seeking what she wants to find rather than telling truly what the facts show. She makes the same mistakes in her book Pearse's Patriots, where she contends that it is intellectually lazy to describe him as a proto-fascist. But St Enda's was inspired by the Edwardian militarism and masculinism in which fascism had its roots.
A militaristic, single-sex, ultra-conservative, de facto mono-lingual and de jure mono-denominational school could not be said to be progressive or pioneering in any reasonable sense of either word. Bertrand Russell once said of D.H. Lawrence that he had invented fascism before politicians ever thought of it and much the same can be said, with justice, of Pearse - as St Enda's amply shows. - Yours, etc,
DAVID LIMOND, School of Education, Trinity College, Dublin 2.
Madam, - Your edition of September 25th reports that An Post launched two new stamps to mark the centenary of the opening of St Enda's school for boys by Padraic Pearse in 1908. In 1909 Pearse published his poem "Little Lad of the Tricks", in which he reveals himself to be a paederastic paedophile.
He wrote: "Child of the soft red mouth. . .Raise your comely head till I kiss your mouth. . .There is a fragrance in your kiss that I have not found in the kisses of women. . .Lad of the grey eyes, That flush in thy cheek/ Would be white with dread of me/ Could you read my secrets."
In the light of what we now know about the horrors of child sexual abuse it is incredible that we continue to venerate this deeply disturbed and dangerous man as a national icon. - Yours, etc,
DICK KEANE, Silchester Park, Glenageary, Co Dublin.