Exciting new bus tour gives a voice to 1916 heroes

A NEW bus tour that brings to life some of the key moments of the Easter Rising was launched in Dublin recently. 

Dublin People joined the ‘1916 Rise of the Rebels’ Tour staged by Hidden Dublin Walks to sample what goes on in the customised vehicle that transports visitors back 100 years in time.

Ably voiced by actors Colm Lennon and Amy Flood of Trinity College, the tour gives a voice to some of those who took part in the momentous events of Easter 1916 while the bus takes passengers to the locations where they fought.

Departing from College Green the bus, with an interior fashioned to look like a battle-scarred Dublin, navigated the city’s streets as Colm and Amy told their individual stories.

Colm plays the part of a member of the ICA (Irish Citizen Army) who describes the horrific background to the 1913 Lockout such as seeing children dying of starvation in the tenements.

“The lives of ordinary  people living in Ireland before and after 1916 were often brutal,” he narrates. “People were living in run down tenements.

“There were people who said the slums of Henrietta Street were worse that those in Calcutta.

“People were working long hours in factories and on sites for very little pay under appalling conditions.

“Malnutrition was rife and people were dying of preventable diseases or crippled in accidents because they couldn’t afford doctors or medicines.”

Amy is a member of the Cumann na mBan (the women’s faction of the Irish Volunteers) who was so moved by Padraig Pearse’s graveside speech at the funeral of the famous Fenian Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa in 1915 that she signed up the following day.

Numbering nearly a quarter of those who rose that week, Amy tells the story of the role the women played in the battles that followed.

“I had a regular arsenal under the floor in my sitting room,” she says. “I also delivered messages all over the country and I was told to always have a nighty and a toothbrush ready as you’d never know when you may be sent with a dispatch.

“One of our great hopes was that when Ireland got its independence so would we, the women, and that we would be considered free and equal with the same rights and opportunities as the men. It was written into the Proclamation.”

The first stop is Dublin Castle  where the first shots of the Rising were fired as one of the Abbey Theatre’s leading actors, Sean Connolly, led a group of rebels in a charge.

“Before the Rising he was offered a contract in Hollywood but turned it down to take part in the rebellion,” Amy relates.

“A regiment of fusiliers arrived and the bullets fell like rain,” Colm adds. “There was no electric light. There was nothing to be seen except where the moonlight fell.

“After a long night an entry was made by British soldiers through a window at the back. A voice in the darkness shouted out ‘put up your arms’.”

All those captured here were marched through the city to Richmond Barracks, the next stop on the tour.

In between these sites the tour shows where some the fiercest battles were fought.

One of the final and most poignant stops is at the GPO, which acted as the headquarters for the rebels during the week of the 1916 Easter Rising.

It was outside here that Padraig Pearse read the Proclamation of Independence and decreed a free and equal Ireland for all.

The tour lasts for two hours and has three interesting stops – Dublin Castle, the GPO (from where the tour walks to Moore Street) and Richmond Barracks.

The 1916 Rise of the Rebels Bus Tour runs every day from College Green at 11am, 2pm and 7.30pm.

Bookings are on www.hiddendublinwalks.com/1916-bus-tour-dublin.php