The '98 Reader. An Anthology of Song, Prose, and Poetry

410 Pages·1998·1.45 MB·English

by  Padraic O' Farrell

The ’98 Reader
Padraic O’Farrell
THE LILLIPUT PRESS
DUBLIN
Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Preface
EARLY, EARLY, IN THE SPRING 1778-96
THE BIRDS DID WHISTLE AND DID SWEETLY SING 1797
CHANGING THEIR NOTES FROM TREE TO TREE 1797-98
EARLY, EARLY, ALL IN THE NIGHT 1778-96
AS I WAS WALKING UP WEXFORD STREET 1798
THE SONG THEY SANG WAS ‘OLD IRELAND FREE’ 1798
WHO COULD BLAME ME IF I DID CRY MY FILL 1798-
1803
Selected Reading
Chronology
Copyright
To Niamh and John
Acknowledgments
I thank Antony Farrell of Lilliput Press for accepting this idea and going through
with it. Thanks also to his editor, Brendan Barrington, publicist, Siobán, and
Vincent Hurley, who assisted greatly in suggesting material and advising on
sources. I wish to thank the Librarians and staffs of the National Library of
Ireland and county libraries of Westmeath, Wexford, Meath and Kildare for
continuing assistance; the Department of Irish Folklore at University College,
Dublin, Professor Bo Almqvist and Eagarthoir, Béaloideas for permission to
quote the account of the Swearing of Billy Byrne and of The Battle of
Ballinamuck; Gearóid O’Brien and Seán Ó Rioghbardáin for their interest and
help; my daughters, Niamh and Aisling for word-proccessing and my wife,
Maureen, for proof-reading.
Foreword
Simply to read the list of contents could be the best introduction to this
remarkable, and most moving and informative anthology. It treats only of one
year in our Irish history but that was a momentous, and significant year and
Padaic O’Farrell allows it to speak, and to sing and recite for itself. I bow before
the research work he has done, and the wisdom and lucidity with which he
presents his findings.
He sets out from the Church of Dungannon. He gives us the declarations and
resolutions made and signed by Wolfe Tone. It is good to look again on that
vision and, in this year, to brood over all that went wrong. And if you are a
Tyrone man you know that you, or somebody belonging to you, was around for
the Battle of Diamond. Then, aided by Teeling, off we go to Bantry and fail,
sadly, to encounter Hoche.
There are so many people all around us, the Bold Belfast Shoemaker, and
John and Henry Sheares and Napper Tandy. And we pass by the Battle of
Prosperous and may meditate on quiet lovely green places that once were bright
with steel and dark-red with blood. And these pages give us the comments of the
time, much of it wise, much of it fatal.
But the most moving moment in this great boook came, personally, for me
when I came to a series of poems of, or related to, the period. The procession
began with Florence Wilson’s ‘The Man from God Knows Where’, which when
I was a boy I recited, every word of it, at a concert in Omagh Town Hall. Fond
memories. I survived. Then after that, but in this this great book, comes ‘A Song
of the North’ by Brian naBanban, who was Brian O’ Higgins, father of the
Abbey actor, and he and all his family were clear friends of mine. Then comes
James Orr’s, ‘Donegore Hill’, and P.J. McCall’s, ‘Henry Joy’, and Ethna
Carbery’s, ‘Roddy McCorley’. And on to Alice Milligan, that great lady,
meditating on that same fatal year.
And I recall the day, say sixty years ago, when a notable Ulster clergyman, Fr
Paul Mackenna, brought me from Omagh town to an old mansion on the fringe
of Mountfield village. And he stood at the door and called: ‘Alice, where art
thou?’ And the aged poetess came forth. And I, being middling young, felt I was
back in 1798.
Benedict Kiely, April 1998
Preface
Just a few weeks of actual combat. Some of the engagements were mere
skirmishes, others fierce and bloody. Yet the rebellion of 1798 has inspired more
song, prose and poetry than many more significant and strategically conclusive
campaigns.
The songs are most remembered. Rural Irish people now in late-middle or old
age learned them as children. They did not stop to think of their blood-thirsty
lyrics. Fertile young imaginations grasped the imagery of each stanza with
fervour. Young arms plucked ash-plants from hedges and fashioned make-
believe pikes. Every stream was the Slaney, each high rise was Vinegar Hill.
Kelly the Boy from Killane and Father Murphy, each scarcely four feet tall,
fought their way across bracken and heather. That was because Wexford had the
most stirring selection of ballads.
Only in later years, when history had become a school subject, did they learn
about the rising in the North, about Humbert in Killala. Then they remembered
their fathers and mothers singing songs or reading poems about those episodes
too: ‘Henry Joy’ or ‘The Men of the West’.
The Second World War, with Vera Lynn and her White Cliffs of Dover and
Jimmy going asleep in his own little room again, pushed the airs of ‘98 aside.
‘The Shores of Tripoli’ opened the way for American songs. They are still with
us!
The prose and poems included here give a more sober view of strife and
warfare. Some are included with reluctance, even apprehension, because they
tell of sectarian atrocities that are still occurring in part of Ireland, sometimes of
similar nature and in the same locations. Because they are of an era in which
warfare and violence were acceptable methods of securing rights, they incite and
call for continuing strife.
They remind that no account of the rebellion is complete without starting
long before 1798 and ending some years after. A chronology, therefore, supports
this collection. It begins with the formation of the Volunteers in 1778 and ends
with Michael Dwyer’s surrender in 1803.
EARLY, EARLY, ALL IN THE SPRING 1778-96
OF STIRRINGS – OF ORGANIZATIONS – OF PERSONALITIES – OF
BANTRY – OF OATHS OF STIRRINGS
A heady awareness of French-inspired republicanism fomented resentment to
government brutality and opened the path to bloody and dramatic rebellion.
English born American, Thomas Paine (1737-1809) wrote The Age of Reason
(London 1794) and defended the French Revolution in The Rights of Man Being
an Answer to Mr Burke’s Attack on the French Revolution (Dublin 1791). Those
who embraced his ideals (for which he was imprisoned briefly in Paris) were
called Painites. Paine’s doctrine, with its heady rhetoric like ‘My country is the
world and my religion is to do good’, was seized upon by a people deprived of
their rights.
THE RIGHTS OF MAN
Anon.
This song was first printed in Paddy’s Resource, a collection of revolutionary
ballads, written by United Irish members and sympathizers, published in Belfast
in 1795 and re-issued in 1796. An expanded edition was printed in Dublin in
1798 – Drennan’s ‘Wake of William Orr’ and the anonymous song ‘Edward’
come from this later edition. The book was published in Philadelphia in 1796
and New York in 1798. Many United Irish sympathisers emigrated or fled to the
newly established United States during the 1790s.
I speak in candour, one night in slumber
My mind did wander near to Athlone,
The centre station of this Irish nation
Where a congregation unto me was shown.
Beyond my counting upon a mountain
Near to a fountain that clearly ran,
I feel to tremble, I’ll not dissemble
As they assembled for the rights of man.
All clad in green there I thought I seen
A virtuous Queen that was grave and old,
Saying Children dear, now do not fear
But come and hear what I will unfold.
This fertile country, near seven centuries
Since Strongbow’s entry upon our land,
Has been kept under with woes un-numbered
And always plundered of the rights of man.
My cause you chided, you so derided
When divided, alas you know.
All in disorder round Erin’s border
Strife, grief and murder has left you low.
Let each communion detest disunion,