Ireland elects a scholar as First President
Irish voters head to the polls Friday (Oct. 24) to determine which candidate should be their nation’s Tenth President. There will be three names on the ballot but only two candidates are still running: Catherine Connolly (Independent) is liberal, Heather Humphries (Fine Gael) is conservative. Centrist Jim Gavin (Fianna Fail) dropped out of the race. Long before he became Ireland's first President, an Irish Language scholar touring America thrilled Portlanders.
HIBERNIANISM ALIVE IN PORTLAND IN 1906
JFK called Ireland “the oldest of civilizations and youngest of nations” in 1963. That’s why there have only been nine Presidents so far. Douglas Hyde, Ireland’s first President, was elected in 1938. Here’s the story of how he came to Portland in late March of 1906.
It’s what he was and what he wasn’t that made Douglas Hyde such an interesting choice as the first President of Ireland. He was a Protestant, son of an Anglican clergyman in Roscommon. He wasn’t a politician. But since the role of President is mainly ceremonial, that second fact didn’t matter. Why not a scholar? The fact of his Protestantism did matter. It sent a message to the world that Ireland was not just a Catholic nation. (Though it pretty much was.)
In November 1905, three decades before becoming President, Hyde took on the task of touring America and raising money for The Cause - which was, basically, De-Anglicizing Ireland. Sending a Protestant scholar to America to talk about the Irish language was a huge gamble. But it paid off.
In faraway Portland, Oregon on March 29, 1906, hundreds of sons and daughters of Eire would flock downtown to hear Hyde speak.
“Those who are interested in the Gaelic language are rejoicing over their good fortune in securing an engagement with Dr. Hyde,” wrote the Oregonian more than a month before the big night. “From the manner in which tickets are selling for this lecture it would indicate a crowded house will greet Hyde.” “Go to hear him and you will be convinced that the Gaelic Revival is recreating a new nation on the map of Europe.” (Printed hyperbole planted by an advance man named Tom Concannon didn’t hurt turnout.)
The Portland Hotel in 1906 - current location of Pioneer Courthouse Square. Dr. Douglas Hyde's "advance man" Concannon was a regular tenant leading up to the lecture.
SCHOLAR ON TOUR - SPREADING THE WORD IN AMERICA
Douglas Hyde was tired by the time he got to Portland on March 25. He had been touring America since November of 1905, drawing crowds across the country to hear about the Celtic Revival. His lectures adjacent to Saint Patrick’s Day had been especially taxing. He spoke to students at the University of California, University of San Francisco, St. Mary’s College and Santa Clara University. On St. Patrick’s Day, 1906, he addressed thousands in the most Irish city on the West Coast, San Francisco. (Less than a month later the earth shook and the sky burned on April 18, 1906, devastating the lives of so many Irish emigrants who ended up in The City.)
Organizers of Hyde’s lecture in Portland had been meeting for several weeks to plan the evening and their guest’s activities around town. “The lecturer would require as much quiet as possible while here, owing to the hard campaign he has undergone of late and the prospect of little rest,” Concannon advised the planners.
Their enthusiasm must have been slightly dampened when Hyde rejected any receptions, appearances or events other than the lecture. Instead, he was loaned one organizer’s personal automobile and driven out to see the Columbia Gorge.
For five months Hyde had been listening to long-winded introductions as he sat on stage ready to speak. So, Father Yorke, a legend in the SF Irish community, sent a telegram warning Portland organizers “ to keep introductory remarks as brief as possible in order to permit the lecturer to elaborate as much as possible on his theme.”
That night, after Fr. Yorke’s warning was ignored, Dr. Hyde told the Hibernians on hand “he felt as much at home in Portland as he would in the halls of Dublin – AND FAR MORE AT HOME THAN IF HE WAS IN ENGLAND.” The crowd loved it, one can assume.
His words enthralled the crowd. “We are striving to make Ireland a country of people speaking their own language, playing their own games, conducting their own industries, creating their own literature – in short, standing on their own feet.
“It is a movement founded not on hatred of England, but on love of Ireland. It is a movement against the wholesale Anglicizing of ourselves and thus throwing away all claims to nationality.”
The headline(s) in the Oregonian the next day. The Gaelic Revival – Dr. Douglas Hyde Believes In An Irish Ireland Not Anglicized – Is Liberally Applauded.
Hyde left the next day for Seattle. His tour ended in New York on June 17, 1906. Before leaving he was handed a check for $50,000 ($1.8 million today). He sailed to Queenstown (now Cobh) on the liner Celtic.
WHAT HYDE'S VISIT SAYS ABOUT THE IRISH IN PORTLAND
Hibernian David O'Longaigh is the expert on Irish society in Portland after the turn of the century. I believe he'd agreee that those were the golden days of the Irish diaspora in Oregon. The number of residents born in Ireland would never be higher. Despite discrimination that was as blatant as it was cruel, the Irish communiyt grew along with the rest of Portland. Various Irish organizations flourished. Douglas Hyde went on to an uneven career in Irish politics, opposing physical force republicanism. But Eamon De Valera brought him in from the fringes to be Eire's first President. As for the Irish in Portland, there would be an active community of communities until there wasn't in the mid-1920s. The same issues that split the Irish in Ireland and sent Hyde to the wilderness took their toll on the Irish community in Portland.
To be continued.........