A century after the ‘Duck Truce’, blood sports still shame our nation

There has been a tendency over the years to poke fun at the unofficial truce observed by both sides in the 1916 Rising to allow for the feeding of the ducks in St Stephen’s Green, with at least one recent newspaper article alluding to is as “a descent into farce.”

I would see it rather as a commendable example of simple human decency in the midst of bloody conflict.

The park keeper, James Kearney, deserves enormous credit for ensuring that his feathered friends were looked after despite the dangers that surrounded him on that fateful week. I only wish that this compassionate attitude to the welfare of non-human creatures was more prevalent among today’s politicians, who claim to honour the men and women who struck for freedom 100 years ago.

The unofficial ‘truce’ was certainly consistent with Pádraic Pearse’s love of nature. In his poem ‘The Wayfarer’ he spoke of the joy he felt “… to see a leaping squirrel in a tree, Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk, Or little rabbits in a field at evening, Lit by a slanting sun…”

In a letter written by his sister, Senator Margaret Pearse, to actor John Cowley in 1967, she recalled that her brothers Pádraic and Willie were completely opposed to animal cruelty. Then 89, she stated: “I am certain that were they alive today, they would be foremost in condemning coursing for the sadistic spectacle it is.”

A century after the Duck Truce, blood sports continue to shame our nation, their legal status a testament to man’s perennial inhumanity.

John Fitzgerald

Lower Coyne St,

Callan, Co Kilkenny