Mise Éire is a 1912 Irish-language poem by the Irish poet and Republican revolutionary leader Patrick Pearse.
In the poem, Pearse personifies Ireland as an old woman whose glory is past and who has been sold by her children.
[1] Described as both a literary and historical text, it was regularly used by Republican prisoners in Long Kesh as a means of learning and teaching Irish.
[6] Pearse had already written optimistically on the fate of Ireland's strong sons' martyrdom in his poem "The Mother"; Is Mise takes the opposite, more pessimistic view of the sacrifice.
[7] In the words of Boss, Nordin and Orlinder, Boland "opposes and corrects Pearse's view on Ireland...No longer, as in the earlier poem, is the personification of the country 'older than the Old Woman of Beare' but 'a sloven’s mix'.
[8] In 2016, the poem was set to music composed by Patrick Cassidy and performed by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra for the score of the PBS documentary series 1916: An Irish Rebellion, curated by the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame.