Alice Milligan (1866 – 1953)
Suffragette, Gaelic League activist, Irish Republican, Journalist,
Publisher, Playwright, Poet and Human Rights Advocate
Alice Letitia Milligan, the third of thirteen children, was born to Charlotte Burns and Seaton Milligan on September 14, 1866 near the town of Omagh in Co. Tyrone. Of the thirteen children born to the Milligan's, only nine survived their childhood, due to the prevalence of highly contagious diseases including dysentery, smallpox, tuberculosis, influenza and pneumonia that bedeviled Ireland and most, if not all, of Europe at that time.
Although the Milligans were Protestants (Methodists) they were not members of the Protestant Ascendancy. The Ascendancy was comprised only of trusted members of the Anglican Churches. All other religious denominations were excluded because they were considered untrustworthy by the British establishment.
The Ascendency controlled the political, social and economic lifeblood of Ireland on behalf of the British establishment who in turn rewarded them with lordships, large estates and government positions. Despite their perceived untrustworthiness, the Milligans and many members of excluded Protestant denominations remained loyal to the British monarch and supporters of colonial ideology.
Alice’s father, Seaton, started his career as a commercial drapery salesman. In 1879 he was promoted to an executive position at the company's new business establishment in Belfast, thus necessitating moving to Belfast with his family. The remuneration that came with the promotion afforded his family a middle-class lifestyle and, more importantly, access to a first-class education for Alice and her siblings at the Methodist College in Belfast.
The Methodist College from its founding in 1865 was unique in that it was an interdenominational and co-educational college with an outstanding reputation for academic excellence, a reputation nurtured and sustained down through the years to the present time. During the years (1879 -1886) that Alice studied there she was an exceptional student, excelling in a broad range of subjects and winning scholarships in mathematics, science, natural philosophy and music. She also composed poetry that was published in the school magazine. After completing her education there, she spent a year at Kings College in London studying English literature and history.
After returning home from London in 1887, Alice spent time in Derry and Belfast training to be a teacher. In addition to her training regimen she co-authored a travel book with her father titled Glimpses of Erin. The book, written for the English reader, was based on her father’s extensive knowledge of the local history and the lay of the land of the many places he visited during his employment as a commercial salesman. At that juncture in her life her interests, cultural pursuits and social interactions were very much in line with her Methodist and Unionist upbringing. Her first solo novel, A Royal Democrat, published in 1890, reflected her Methodist ethos that embraced colonialism as an altruistically motivated intervention.
By the late 1880s, having come of age, Alice was aware of the political forces and religious beliefs that set her apart from her native Irish Catholic neighbors. That awareness was brought about by the long and sustained quest for Irish self-determination spearheaded by the Irish Home Rule movement, the dominant political force in Ireland at that time. The ongoing debates in the British House of Commons were widely followed by both side of the divide in Ireland, particularly by the Ulster Unionist who opposed any form of self-governance for Ireland. The idea that Irishmen and women were campaigning for self-determination challenged Alice’s Unionist beliefs, giving her more food for thought.
From 1888 to 1890 she taught Latin at the MacKikkip’s Ladies Collegiate School in Derry. It was there that she first became interested in the Irish language. Irish was once the primary language spoken throughout Ireland but, by the late 1800s it was in decline due to the concerted effort of the British government to Anglicize Ireland. While in Derry she took some conversation and pronunciation lessons from a tobacconist who could neither read or write. In return she helped him with spelling and writing, a good arrangement for both parties.
By 1891 Alice had moved to Dublin where she worked as a teacher. Still interested in learning Irish, she could not find any school or group that taught Irish until the Gaelic League came into existence in 1893. Until then she took lessons from private tutors and was able to use the Royal Irish Academy’s library by virtue of her father being a board member.
The Dublin scene and the people she associated with in Dublin exposed Alice to a different political viewpoint to that held by both northern Unionist's and southern Unionist's regarding Ireland's past history and future aspirations. Her metamorphosis from a Unionist to a full-fledged Irish Nationalist was complete by the time she returned to Belfast later in 1891.
Shortly after her return to Belfast she passed her teaching exams in Liverpool. With her credentials in hand she took a post in Belfast and settled down to what she later described as a boring existence having to endure conversations about “trivial subjects” with her peers, quite different from the spirited conversations she had with her contemporaries in Dublin.
In 1893 she joined a newly formed Irish language class in Belfast,a decision she later described as the moment of her “entrance into the living Gaelic movement”. She also met W. B. Yeats for the first time that year. In their ensuing conversation Yeats emphasized the importance of having a knowledge of Irish history for one to engage in any meaningful way in the Gaelic Revival movement. She heeded his opinion and boned up on Irish history by reading Nationalist newspapers including the Freeman Journal and United Ireland. By 1894 Alice had enough confidence in her understanding of Irish culture and Nationalism that she began submitting articles for publication to Nationalist newspapers.
In the latter months of 1894 she co-founded together with other progressive women, three branches of the Irish Women's Association in Belfast, Portadown and Moneyrea. The association promoted a feminist and Nationalist agenda to counter the lack of career opportunities and the social and political restraints placed on women in a chauvinistic male-dominated society. The aim of the Association was in lockstep with that of the suffrage movement, pushed aside at that time by the Home Rule movement.
Early in 1895 Alice joined the Henry Joy McCracken Literary Society. Later that year the Society launched the Northern Patriot a monthly magazine. Alice and her associate Anna Johnson (better known as Ethna Carbery) were its editors. Anna Johnson was fired when sponsors of the magazine discovered that her father was a Fenian activist. Alice resigned in solidarity with Anna.
In January of 1896, a few months after Anna firing, Alice and Anna launched their own monthly magazine the Shan Van Vocht (The Poor Old Woman). The magazine contained literature, poetry, historical articles and political commentary. It was widely distributed through Ireland, England, Argentina and the United States. In 1896, an office was opened in New York to help market the magazine to the Irish diaspora. Alice and Anna contributed articles and poems to its pages. Other distinguished contributors included Alice Furlong, James Connolly, Douglas Hyde, Arthur Griffith, Katharine Tynan and Nora Hopper. In the lead-up to the 1798 Rising Centenary Commemoration the magazine included articles, poetry and historic accounts relating to the United Irishmen and the Rising. The last edition was published in April of 1899. By then, both Alice and Anna believed that the Shan Van Vocht had run its course having filled a crucial gap in the history of Ireland’s reawakening. The Shan Van Vocht subscription list was transferred to Arthur Griffith’s United Irishman.
As a member of the 1798 Rising Commemoration Committee’s Central Executive Alice took a leading part in all aspects of the Commemoration’s planning and implementation. She also filled leadership positions in several of its Ulster branches. Together with Anna Johnson, Maud Gonne and other activists she toured the country delivering lectures on the Rising, its leaders and battles. They also organized theatre productions, street parades, feiseanna, tableau vivant, and other related activities to ensure maximum exposure to and participation by the people. Alice also made sure that the United Irishmen’s Ulster Protestants descendants participated in all aspects of the Commemoration.
By the turn of the century the Gaelic Revival and Irish Nationalism was entering a new phase. The launching of the weekly newspaper the United Irishman by Arthur Griffith and William Rooney in 1899 and the founding of Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland) by Maud Gonne in 1900 heralded a new phase in the separatist movement that the Shan Van Vocht had advocated for during its tenure. Shortly after its founding Alice joined Inghinidhe na hÉireann and later in 1905 joined Arthur Griffith’s Sinn Fein political party.
After the Shan Van Vocht ceased publication Alice turned her attention and energy to the emerging national theatre movement and the Gaelic League. She believed that the work of these movements would contribute enormously to the restoration of Ireland’s subverted cultural identity, engender self-reliance and help unite the Irish people in their ongoing quest for freedom and independence. To that end she worked with the Gaelic League, the Belfast College of Art, the Irish Literary Theatre, village schools and Inghinidhe na hÉireann to produce a variety of plays, pageants, exhibitions, music and dance shows and Irish language classes. In 1900 she wrote a play, The Last Feast of the Fianna, for the Irish Literary Theatre, and The Daughter of Donagh for the Abbey Theatre.
In 1904 she was hired by the Gaelic League as a travelling lecturer for the English-speaking districts of Ireland. Padraic Pearse objected to her hiring on the basis that she was not a fluent Irish speaker. She countered by informing Pearse that her job was to raise money --- not to teach Irish and that everyone in the Gaelic League were workers. Alice wasted no time in tackling her new job, establishing new branches throughout Ireland and raising funds along the way. She worked with Thomas MacDonagh to organize branches in Co. Cork. Because of her Ulster origin she devoted a good deal of time in Ulster recruiting Protestants with Nationalist leanings into the Gaelic League. In support of that objective she collaborated with other activists included Ada McNeill, Roger Casement, Stephen Gwynn, Francis J. Bigger and Seamus McManus to set-up the Ulster delegates of the Gaelic League.
After returning from the Congress of Celtic Union in Edinburgh in November of 1907 where she represented the Gaelic League she called for a protectionist policy for Irish-made goods after listening to delegates from other Celtic regions discuss economic issues that impacted their regions. She believed that economic development should be part and parcel of the Celtic Revival movement in Ireland as it was in the other Celtic countries.
In 1908 George William Russell a close friend of Alice published the first volume of her poetry Hero Lays believing that it was “the best patriotic poetry written in Ireland in his time”. One poem that Alice did not want included was When I was a little girl because it revealed her desire, as a child, to join the Fenians, thus believing that it would upset Unionists. After some gentle persuasion from Russell she yielded, and the poem was included. It turns out that it was well received and was taught to young schoolgirls in Ireland for decades up until the 1960s.
From 1910 through 1916 Alice collaborated with family members on several cultural-related projects despite the dichotomy posed by their opposing political beliefs. She toured Antrim with two of her sister to record and transcribe Irish songs for publication in the Journal of Irish Folk Song founded by her two sisters. She also worked with her father to commemorate the centenary anniversary of the death of Samuel Ferguson. Ferguson was a poet, barrister, antiquarian and an early Irish history scholar, acknowledged by Alice and her literary contemporaries to have had a major influence on the poets, writers and historians of the Irish Literary Revival.
In 1914 Alice was commissioned by two professors of the American Catholic University to write an essay about the history of Irish women. In the conclusion to the essay she posed the question “and what of the women of Ireland today. Shall they come short of the high ideal of the past, falter and fail, if devotion and sacrifice is required of them". Her friend and contemporary, Thomas McDonagh, a signatory to the 1916 Proclamation and one of the executed leaders of the ensuing Rising, responded to her question, arguing that, Alice herself, was the prime example of contemporary women defining and shaping Irish history. He further elaborated by stating that,
“she was the most significant poet of her generation precisely because her life and work encompassed a radically inclusive Irishness. Hers was an identity and politics that grew out of the marginal positions she inhabited as a northern Protestant woman who had denounced the unionist Anglo-centric doctrine of her upbringing. Hers was a cultural practice that gave voice to those (like herself) who were so often consigned to the footnotes of colonial history”
From January through April 1916 Alice was preoccupied caring for her elderly parents and her younger sister Charlotte. All three of them, died in a span of four months, her father, two weeks before the Easter Rising.
The Easter Rising had a profound effect on Alice. Many of her friends and fellow travelers had died during the fighting or afterwards by firing squads. Her writings protested their fate, mourned their loss and reflected on their courage and sacrifice, placing them squarely in the realm of Ireland’s heroes. Her close friend Roger Casement was arrested on April 21 two days before the Rising on Banna Strand in Kerry. Alice visited Casement in prison, petitioned for clemency and wrote articles on his behalf to no avail. She held vigil outside the gate of Pentonville prison in London where Roger Casement was hanged on the 3rd. of August, 1916.
She also worked tirelessly on behalf of the thousands of prisoners interned after the Rising, visiting with as many as she could, raising funds for their dependents, publishing their plight and the hardship endured by their families.
Towards the end of 1916 Alice relocated to Dublin where she took ownership of the Irish Bookshop located in Dawson Street to help support herself and her brother William who was discharged from the British army suffering from what would be presently described as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Through the War of Independence, she continued to write plays and poems in support of prisoners and their dependents for publication in Irish Nationalist newspapers. However, in 1921, despite her lifelong work on behalf of Irish freedom she was forced to flee Dublin with her brother who was given 24 hours to leave by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) or be shot. Who sanctioned that order is not known. It’s doubtful that some lowly foot soldier took it on himself to do so. Why one demobbed British soldier suffering from PTSD was a problem when, within a year or so later, tens of thousands of other demobbed soldiers were recruited into the Irish Free State army begs an explanation.
With no time to dispose of her business or possessions Alice left Dublin for England where she spent the following ten years. After that she relocated to a village near Omagh where she spent the following two decades. The rebuke by the IRA did not cause her to question or reconsider her support of Ireland’s struggle for freedom or its right to the reestablishment of its own unique cultural identity.
She opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and supported the Republican side in the Treaty War (Civil War). The partition of Ireland was not what Alice worked for. She was deeply saddened by the ensuing carnage that she so poignantly expressed in the following poem,
“And in these days of blood and tears
The words re-echo in my ears
As many a comrade yields his life
To former friend in desperate strife.”
The men who took control after the Treaty War did not subscribe to the same ideals as Alice did or the men and women of 1916 or those of 1919 through 1921 who fought and died for an Irish Republic. Those who took over in 1923 were misogynistic, ruthless and beholding to their former masters. The Ireland that Alice and so many of her contemporaries worked so hard to establish was consigned to the ashes of history. Ireland became a foreboding place ruled by an unholy alliance of Church and State in accordance with the dictates set forth in the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The Proclamation of 1916 was an anathema to that ruling syndicate.
In this new reality, life for Alice and for many of her former colleagues in the Cultural and Nationalism movements was difficult as they were marginalized or forced into exile. Being shunned in the south by the guardians of the new order and resented in the partitioned north by the newly empowered Unionists made it even more difficult for her to eke out a living. To complicate things even more, she was continuously burdened with the task of looking after ailing family members and their spouses. Yet, despite all of these obstacles she continued to labor on, promoting the Irish language, culture and arts through plays, poems, articles in newspapers and journals and radio broadcasts. Many of her poems and plays reflected the trauma, resentment and division caused by the Treaty War and afterwards by the vindictiveness of the victors.
After the death of her sister-in-law in 1941Alice went to live on a farm in Co. Antrim with her lifelong friend, Eleanor Boyd. Relieved of the burden of caring for sick family members and relatives she enjoyed her new-found freedom. She had more free time to write poems and articles for the Nationalist newspapers as well as for Joseph McGarrity's Irish Press newspaper in the United States. She also had time to become involved with various organizations including the Irish Writers Society, the Anti-Partition League and the Indian Famine Relief organization. In her seventies she campaigned for Nationalist candidates running for office.
For the first 50 years after the emergence of the Irish Free State, successive Irish governments have engaged in a policy of obscuring the role of women in society and purging all accounts of their contributions to the broad-based Gaelic Revival movement as well as their role in the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence and the Treaty War. They have sought to subvert their ill-treatment of Republican women prisoner during the Treaty War. They were successful in their efforts for many decades using censorship, special powers, corruption and a willing partner in the Catholic Church who used hell and damnation to further intimidate the people.
Despite their best efforts, time, progress and myriad evolutionary factors stymied their ill-begotten misogynistic charade. Incapable of critical thinking they did not understand that unvarnished accounts of historic events were archived and safeguarded in universities, in newspaper archives, in enemy vaults and in many other places beyond the control or reach of revisionists. More-enlightened researchers and historians are now poring through these archives in search of the truth that has been subverted for almost a century. More books are being published with factual accounts of women activists and their enormous contributions to all aspects of Irish life, past and present.
Alice was awarded an honorary doctorate by the National University of Ireland in 1941. She was also honored during the last decade of her life by the Literary Department of Queens University in Belfast for her poetry.
A comprehensive accounting of Alice’s life and work is spelled out in great detail in Catherine Morris’s book Alice Milligan and the Irish Cultural Revival.
Alice Letitia Milligan died in April 1953 and was buried in Blackford Municipal Cemetery, Co. Tyrone.
On her headstone is inscribed, She loved no other place than Ireland.
Contributed by Tomás Ó Coısdealbha
cemetery
Name: Blackford Municipal Cemetery
ADDRESS: Omagh, Co Tyrone, Ireland
HEADSTONE
