Does everyone know about countess Markiewicz? Polish connection.

Maybe it's all old news to many Poles but haven't noticed it mentioned on this site anyway. It's more of an Anglo-Irish story than a Polish one of course - but with the obvious Polish connection.

Interesting and unusual chapter in history.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constance_Markiewicz

I see that she converted to Catholicism but she'd been an Irish republican nationalist for years before that. I know W.B. Yeats was a Protestant and an Irish nationalist too. Were these two quite anomalous at the time? Are there many Protestants in Irish nationalist parties today?

She's a very interesting lady - I remember reading about her years ago, well before even thinking about Poland.

Any idea if it's true about the Irish Citizen Army's anthem being based on a Polish song?

She married a Pole so had little connection really, may never have visited the country.

She was the first woman to be elected as an MP though.

The street was named after her in Sligo.

A remarkable person. Her sister too.


Not at all. Quite common in fact.


In the south, there are protestants in all walks of life and at the moment quite a high rate of conversions to Anglicanism. The North is somewhat polarised.

Her life was an amazing story. On a side note (a Russia rather than a Poland thing), am I right in thinking that the most important part of the Russian crown jewels, the Cap of Monomakh, spent a few years in a cardboard box in someone's attic in Dublin?

Is the Anglican Church in Ireland still called the "Church of Ireland"? Here in the USA Anglicans are called Episcopalians.

Yes. They use the term Episcopalian in Scotland. The Church of Ireland tends to have huge, locked and largely empty buildings but apparently is having something of a revival, especially among young families.

Especially during that period. Quite a few important figures in Irish nationalism were protestants e.g. Parnell, Wolfe Tone, Isaac Butt, Robert Emmett.

In the republic today, a few protestant nationalists but not at all common. Then again, relatively few protestants in the republic anyway.

Mansergh is a prominent and influential figure in the Fianna Fáil party for example, and a COI member.

yep,the whole Catholic Protestant divide is a fairly new phase of nationalism, I keep meaning to read up on the 1790s United Irishmen(?) group and attempted uprising,but,TBH Irish,like Scots history tends to depress me as I cant fully shake off the blood tied emotions....and get to wound up for someone happily living in England :)

Wow - hadn't heard about that.

If it's true, might make for more of a Polish link than the existing tenuous one!


Easily done ; )

It says that about the anthem in the link you posted at the thread's start.

Aye,doesnt help when one of the local pubs is named after this tw*t...:)

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Ooops!

Didn't even read the link myself - just found it and posted it.

There is a poem called Ode to Con Markiewicz written by Yeats While in college I found it in my English Lit book. She was an Irish beauty who married a Polish Duke in Paris and was arrested by the British since she stood for Irish independence.

Kazimierz Dunin Markiewicz. He wasn't a Duke. He was supposedly a Count but that's disputed. His family's estates were in what is present day Ukraine and he and Con Markiewicz lived there for a short time after they were first married. He lived in Dublin until about 1913 when he returned to his family home and then moved to Warsaw where he died in 1932 but he stayed friends with Constance and came back to Ireland to be with her when she was dying. They had one daughter, Maeve who never married and had no children. He was an accomplished artist, a writer and quite a character by all accounts. He is aruguably a more interesting person than his more famous wife. There is a book about him, The Polish Irishman: The Life and Times of Count Casmir Markievicz by Patrick Quigley.

One of his paintings below, Portrait of an army officer in the King's Own Scottish Borderers uniform. Oil on canvas.

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