History: Douglas Hyde – the first President of Ireland

By Tom Gillespie

THIS week (Tuesday, July 12) marked the 73rd anniversary of the death of Douglas Ross Hyde, academic, linguist, scholar of the Irish language, politician and diplomat who served as the first President of Ireland from June 1938 to June 1945.

A native of Castlerea, Co. Roscommon, he is buried in Frenchpark, at Portahard Church, where he had spent most of his childhood life, beside his wife Lucy, his daughter Nuala, his sister Annette, mother Elizabeth and father Arthur.

Hyde was a leading figure in the Gaelic revival, and the first President of the Gaelic League, one of the most influential cultural organisations in Ireland at the time.

He was born at Longford House in Castlerea, while his mother, Elizabeth (nee Oldfield, 1834 to 1886), was on a short visit there. His father, Arthur Hyde, whose family were originally from Castlehyde, Fermoy, Co. Cork, was Church of Ireland rector of Kilmactranny, Co. Sligo, from 1852 to 1867, and it was here that Hyde spent his early years.

In 1867, according to Wikipedia, his father was appointed prebendary and rector of Tibohine, and the family moved to neighbouring Frenchpark. He was home schooled by his father and his aunt due to a childhood illness. While a young man, he became fascinated with hearing the old people in the locality speak the Irish language. He was influenced in particular by the gamekeeper Seamus Hart and his friend's wife, Mrs. Connolly.

Aged 14, Hyde was devastated when Hart died and his interest in the Irish language – the first language he began to study in any detail, as his own undertaking – flagged for a while.

However, he visited Dublin a number of times and realised that there were groups of people, just like him, interested in Irish, a language looked down on at the time by many and seen as backward and old-fashioned.

Rejecting family pressure that, like past generations of Hydes, he would follow a career in the Church, Hyde instead became an academic.

He entered Trinity College Dublin, where he became fluent in French, Latin, German, Greek and Hebrew, graduating in 1884 as a moderator in modern literature.

A medallist of the College Historical Society, he was elected its president in 1931. His passion for Irish, already a language in severe decline, led him to help found the Gaelic League – Conradh na Gaeilge – in 1893.

Hyde married German-born but British-raised Lucy Kuryz in 1893. The couple had two daughters, Nuala and Úna.

Initially derided, the Irish language movement gained a mass following. Hyde helped establish the Gaelic Journal in 1892. In November, he wrote a manifesto called 'The necessity for de-anglicising the Irish nation', arguing that Ireland should follow its own traditions in language, literature and dress.

A new generation of Irish republicans – including Pádraig Pearse, Éamon de Valera, Michael Collins and Ernest Blythe – became politicised through their involvement in Conradh na Gaeilge. Hyde filled out the 1911 census form in Irish.

Uncomfortable at the growing politicisation of the movement, Hyde resigned the presidency in 1915. He was succeeded by the League's co-founder Eoin MacNeill.

Hyde had no association with Sinn Féin and the independence movement. He was elected to Seanad Éireann, of the Irish Free State’s Oireachtas, at a by-election on February 4, 1925, replacing Sir Hutcheson Poe.

He returned to academia as Professor of Irish at University College, Dublin, where one of his students was future Attorney General, Chief Justice and President of Ireland, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh.

In April 1938, by now retired from academia, Hyde was plucked from retirement by Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and again appointed to Seanad Éireann. Then Hyde was chosen, after inter-party negotiations – following an initial suggestion by Fine Gael – to be the first President of Ireland, to which office he was elected unopposed. Hyde was inaugurated as the first President of Ireland on June 16, 1938.

Hyde set a precedent by reciting the Presidential Declaration of Office in Irish. His recitation, in Roscommon Irish, is one of a few recordings of a dialect of which Hyde was one of the last speakers. Upon inauguration, he moved into the long vacant Viceregal Lodge in the Phoenix Park, since known as Áras an Uachtaráin.

WORLDWIDE ATTENTION

Hyde's selection and inauguration received worldwide media attention and was covered by newspapers in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina and even Egypt.

Hitler ‘ordered’ the Berlin newspapers ‘to splash’ on the Irish presidential installation ceremony. However, the British government ignored the event. The Northern Ireland Finance Minister, John Miller Andrews, described Hyde's inauguration as a ‘slight on the King’ and ‘a deplorable tragedy'.

Despite being placed in a position to shape the office of the presidency via precedent, Hyde by and large opted for a quiet, conservative interpretation of the office.

His age and health obligated him to schedule periods of rest throughout his days, and his lack of political experience caused him to defer to his advisers on questions of policy and discretionary powers, especially to his Secretary, Michael McDunphy.

On November 13, 1938, just months after Hyde's inauguration, he attended an international soccer match between Ireland and Poland at Dalymount Park in Dublin. This was seen as breaching the GAA’s ban on 'foreign games' and he was subsequently removed as patron of the GAA, an honour he had held since 1902.

After a massive stroke in April 1940, plans were made for his lying-in-state and state funeral. However, Hyde survived, albeit paralysed and having to use a wheelchair.

Although the role of President of Ireland was largely ceremonial, Hyde did make important decisions during his presidency. He was confronted with a crisis in 1944 when de Valera's government unexpectedly collapsed in a vote on the Transport Bill. The president had to decide whether or not to grant a dissolution of the Dáil to de Valera.

Under the Constitution, the President of Ireland may grant or refuse a dissolution of the Dáil to a Taoiseach who has ‘ceased to retain the support of a majority in Dáil Éireann'. If a dissolution is granted, a general election is proclaimed to fill the seats now vacated by the dissolution.

However, this means that for four to six weeks, until the new Dáil assembles, there is no Dáil. Fearing this gap might facilitate an invasion during World War II, during which no parliament could be called upon to deal with the invasion, the Oireachtas enacted emergency legislation, which allowed an election to be called separate from a dissolution, with the Dáil only being dissolved just before new Dáil would assemble, so ensuring the gap between Dála (plural of Dáil) would be too short to facilitate an invasion.

One of Hyde's last presidential acts was a visit to the German Ambassador Eduard Hempel on May 3, 1945, to offer his formal condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler. The visit remained a secret until 2005.

Hyde left office on June 25, 1945, opting not to nominate himself for a second term.

Owing to his ill-health he did not return to his Roscommon home, Ratra, empty since the death of his wife early in his term. He moved into the former residence of the Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, in the grounds of Áras an Uachtaráin, which he renamed Little Ratra, where he lived out the remaining four years of his life.

He died at 10 p.m. on July 12, 1949, aged 89.