Irish writer and politician. Davis was the chief organizer and poet of the Young Ireland Movement. Born in the town of Mallow in the county of Cork, he studied at Trinity College, Dublin. Davis established The Nation newspaper with Charles Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon. He wrote some stirring nationalistic ballads, originally contributed to The Nation, which were afterwards included in The Spirit of the Nation. He himself was a Protestant, but preached peace between Catholics and Protestants. He came to the fore of Irish nationalist thinking, and it has been noted by later nationalist heroes, such as Patrick Henry Pearse (1879-1916), that while Wolfe Tone (1763-98) laid out the basic tenet that Ireland as a nation must be free, Davis was the one who built this idea up promoting Irish identity.

He is the author of the famous Irish rebel song “A Nation Once Again”, first published in The Naion on 13 July 1844. Davis, who believed that “a song is worth a thousand harangues”, hoped that the people would sing the song “to keep alive in their minds the love of the fatherland”.     (M. Y.)