Of Statues and Bullet Holes

Even though we've went to just about every museum about the Easter Rising that the city has to offer, it's still hard for me to imagine that a full-scale battle actually took place on the streets of Dublin only 100 years ago (and of course other battles even more recently, with the war of independence and the civil war). When walking around today, there seems to be no visual evidence of this fight. Buildings were leveled with cannon fire from the British, but now people can bustle around without even knowing the devastation that took place. Or maybe, if they're a bit more observant than the average busy city walker, they can't.

The monuments of humanity have no relevance to the life of this seagull

On O'Connell Street, in front of the O'Connell Bridge, stands a an impressive statue of a man named, unsurprisingly, Daniel O'Connell. This guy is so important to Irish history I can't even start to get into it, but I think we all know the gist. The statue has been there since 1882, and it seems like a miracle that it's survived all the craziness that has happened in Dublin since that time. Aside from the pigeon or seagull that always seems to be on his head (the bird not caring less about the 13+ decades of
human history it's doing it's business on), the old Liberator and his angels seems to have escaped unscathed. But look closely, and you can see that that the statue as sustained a few battle scars. Three of the four angels, O'Connell himself, and perhaps most symbolically, the Maid of Erin who represents Ireland, have a respectable amount of bullet holes that are directly from the Rising.

The angel representing Courage has a hole in her chest

The angel representing Eloquence has a hole in her elbow

The Maid of Eire has multiple bullet holes

And O'Connell, perhaps the way he would want it to be, has the most damage

The damage to this statue from the Easter Rising surprisingly wasn't mentioned by any of our various tour guides, I only saw it because Dr. Morgan pointed it out one day as we passed. Ever since then the images of the holes in this piece of history have stayed in my mind as the most powerful reminder of what happened here 100 years ago. We can read books and see museum exhibits and hear stories, but just like in Belfast, the visual reminders of the past set within the peaceful modern day tend to be the most revelatory.