Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Postcard from St Enda's School - Part I #1916 #291

More from the Eileen Ryan Collection. As a fund raiser postcards depicting life and culture at St Enda's School in Rathfarnham were printed - there are six in the Ryan Collection, three are shown below (three more tomorrow).

The first postcard shows Willie Pearse as Pilate in a Passion play featuring students from Saint Enda's and Saint Ita's schools. The play was produced at the Abbey Theatre in Holy Week 1911. We don't know who the other two guys are. The second postcard also shows strong links to Gaelic culture showing Fionn MacCumhaill and Cuchulainn. The boy on the left is Eamon Bulfin who later was one of the men who raised the tricolour over the GPO in 1916. After the Rising he was captured and sentenced to death, but was later deported to Argentina instead. The second boy is Frank Dowling in the lead role. Patrick Pearse picked him to play the lead role because, according to Pearse, Dowling embodied "in face and figure and manner" the ideal Irish boy, and he was undoubtedly "the comeliest of the boys of Eire" (see article in today's Irish Independent). The third boy is Denis Gwynn who joined the British Army during World War I, and later went on to become an academic at UCD. The third postcard simply shows a scene from the lake at St Enda's.



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