A picture of Pauric Pearse (back row wearing a bowler hat) and his brother Willie taken at the Strand Hotel in Omeath. Pauric Pearse, Eoin Mac Neill and other like-minded native speakers established the first Irish speaking Gaeltacht in Omeath in August 1912, where teachers came to learn Irish until the Gaeltacht moved to Ranafast in Co Donegal in 1926, It was said that Omeath is where Pearse came for his inspiration…and indeed this was true, as it was in the Park Hotel in Omeath that he wrote his famous oration for the funeral of O’Donovan Rossa and the Proclamation of the Irish Republic that he read on the steps of the GPO on Sackvill Street (now O’Connell Street) Dublin on the 24th April 1916, the start of the Easter Rising.
The original photograph can still be seen in its original place.
