Collected Works of Padraic H. Pearse

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. Padraic H. Pearse's plays, stories, and poems form a fierce and tender portrait of Ireland as homeland, inheritance, and sacrifice. Framed by an introduction that presents Pearse as poet, educator, patriot, and martyr, the collection traces his growth from Gaelic revivalist to writer whose art became inseparable from national struggle, Christian faith, and the fear of cultural loss. His work moves from the quiet intimacy of children's stories and folk life to dramas and poems charged with political urgency, suffering, and redemption. In The Singer, a mountain household waits in anxious hope for MacDara, the gifted exile whose songs have stirred love for Ireland and earned him banishment. Around him gather mothers, lovers, schoolmasters, and comrades as private feeling yields to the larger pressure of uprising. Other tales deepen the emotional range: The Dearg-Daol turns from kindness to tragedy, while The Roads captures a community feast shadowed by exclusion and unrest. Nora's rebellion against confinement becomes a vivid act of self-liberation as she cuts her hair, dresses as a boy, and sets out alone. Throughout, Pearse blends beauty, sorrow, and resolve into a vision of Ireland both wounded and beloved.