Thomas Davis, a Protestant Irish revolutionary, was born in Mallow in County Cork, on October 14, 1814.
His father was a Welsh-born surgeon, who died one month after his birth, and his mother was descended from the famous Irish chieftain O’Sullivan Beare.
The family moved to Dublin where Davis became a lawyer in 1838.
He established the Nation newspaper and dedicated his life to Irish nationalism.
He was among the first to ever pledge to unite Protestant and Catholic and was inspired by Wolfe Tone.
His patriotic ballad “A Nation Once Again” inspired generations of Irish and is still very popular today.
Its chorus line “Ireland once a province be/a nation once again” is widely known among the Irish Diaspora.
He also wrote the famous song “The West’s Awake,” considered the Galway anthem and the “Lament for Owen Roe O’Neill” quoted many years later by John Fitzgerald Kennedy as his favorite poem at an Irish Fellowship dinner in Chicago.
Davis died at the young age of 30 in 1848 from scarlet fever, but his legacy was remembered in 1966 when a statue of Davis by renowned sculptor Edward Delaney was unveiled in Dublin in College Green near Trinity College.
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