Hi, it is the
boy from Barrystown, settling into his added role as the second historian of
Ballymackessy—the much older spelling was Ballymacassy (as in Cloughbawn Parish
registers as they relate to the earlier years) with another variant of
Ballymackey. There is no need for me to recite the details of my greatness,
with an intelligence far in excess of Einstein, blah, blah, and a historian
supreme. If it is true, it ain’t bragging. See my blog on Bannow Historical
Society website for a full recital of my greatness, blah, blah….wwwbannowhistory.ie
The
conventional interpretation of Patrick Kennedy who wrote “The Banks of the
Boro”, “Legends of Mount Leinster” etc is that he was a folklorist, and
absolutely objective. Some of his most ardent admirers and advocates are of a
convinced nationalist disposition. There is an incongruity in there somewhere;
a paradox, perhaps that may be resolved with the reflection that many of his
readers—if connected with the Clonroche/Castleboro district—regard his work as
about their own area and ostensibly and apparently in praise of it. So
therefore anyone who criticises Kennedy is necessarily wrong—that is how some
people write and read history.
The simple
truth is that Pat Kennedy (as Tom O’Gorman called him in one of his poems)
wrote not as a folklorist but as advocate or, in modern parlance, as a
spin-doctor of the House of Carew of Castleboro and their Whig or Liberal
politics. In my writings, I have stressed the comparative benign character of
the Carews over several generations, their lenient disposition to their tenants
and strong support of Catholic Emancipation and opposition to the odious
Tithes. Fr Tom Furlong Pastor of the old parish of Killegney was a close friend
and confidant of the first Lord Carew.
The other
reason to quote Kennedy is that his works “are easily accessible whereas the
other sources are not. A man from Enniscorthy in a letter, written on November
21st 1867, intensely laudatory of “my friend Mr Kennedy” succinctly
outlines the difficulty in treating such writings as properly objective
historical material:--
“It is the
instinctive kindness and gentleness of nature with which he manages to bring
out all that is noblest and best in the different classes of society with which
he deals and to tone down, till they almost disappear, the harshness and
bitterness springing from antagonism of creed, party or interest.”
That is true
enough but Kennedy toned down antagonisms for another reason: he wished to spin
the theory that in the Co. Wexford of his childhood there was no sharp
conflicts of class or of religious forces: that intention was incompatible with
writing objective accounts of north west Co. Wexford circa 1817. I have closely
followed the extant, albeit scanty sources, for those times and a converse
picture of a much uglier, violent, anarchic and impoverished society emerges—as
one would expect. It is clear, also, that some people succeeded in getting
evicted on the Carew estates, despite the Carews leniency and procrastination
in doing dreadful things : eviction was a horrendous act and a later Liberal
Prime Minister Mr Gladstone considered eviction as “death”, a lethal risk to
health and life, and utterly inhumane.
In my article
for the Journal of the Wexford Historical Society entitled “The Uncultivated
and Wild Mountainers on the White Mountain; Criminality, two Decades after the
1798 Rebellion, in the Templeleudigan Area” I outlined the fantastical,
disingenuous, untrue and spin-doctored aspects of Kennedy’s account of the
murder of Frizelle of Ballindoney in 1817. I will take the liberty of quoting a
piece of my own article—
“In Kennedy’s
narrative, Frizelle is an ordinary farmer resting after a day’s work, well
loved by those that he employed but some people “owed him a spite for the
taking of the land and Moll Doyle and her daughters were hired to pay him a
visit.” Only one of the four attackers wanted to kill him and after a
struggle—described in minute detail as if on a film—Frizelle is killed. In
Kennedy’s narrative the cause of the murder is pushed back into a remote,
nebulous past and—bizarrely—is a trifle irrelevant. On points of fact, Frizelle
was a landlord, not a mere farmer; he was murdered on the evening of the
Sabbath when he would not be at work for religious reasons; he had recently
acquired rent money in his house and—he had signalled his intention to evict
some of his tenants.”
Kennedy’s
implication in another of his tales that the ordinary people around Castleboro
had an abiding respect for the rudimentary police force, a couple of whom were
stationed at Clonroche is risible: on the contrary, there was a sneaking
sympathy and indeed admiration for the atrocious White Feet agrarian
terrorists. One would best find out about those unsavoury realties by reading
my article in the Journal of the Wexford Historical Society; surely nobody is
so hard up that they would not have the few cents required to do that! Go to
the Book Centre in Wexford town and you will know why I am so sceptical about
Pat Kennedy’s idyll.
The images of
the Clonroche district circa 1814 as depicted in the account of his parish of
Killegney by the Rev. James Gordon of Boro Lodge, Ballymackessy are an utter
contradiction of everything written by Pat Kennedy but I have to enter the
caveat that Rev. Gordon is not an objective observer, either. Another cleric,
the Rev. Atkinson, an English tourist, proved that Rev. Gordon, prompted by his
vehement dislike of the Carews over their buying up of his parish tithes, had
simply included blatant un-truths in his account.
The catch 22
for Kennedy was that objective recording of the actual details of the local
society would reflect on the Carews, a thing he could not enter on. That is Pat
Kennedy for ye!
The first Lord
Robert Carew wrote to the Wexford Independent to refute the story that his
father kicked Lord Castlereagh off the steps of the mansion at Castleboro when
the latter came to solicit his vote to help pass the Act of Union. He asserted
that Castlereagh knew his father too well to attempt to bribe him! Therefore
Lord Carew favoured the Act of Union and was wary of Repeal of it. It is hard
on that basis to see how the writings of Pat Kennedy fit into the canon of
Irish nationalism, separatism or republicanism but I am charged with
denigrating a great exponent of Irish nationalism. People believe all kinds of
things and maybe I do so myself, as well. Lord Castlereagh, like Lord
Cornwallis, favoured the Catholic community and he (rightly) anticipated that
the Act of Union would by granting the Catholics in Ireland the same rights as
the people in Britain, greatly improve their situation; a Dublin Parliament
would inevitably, in the circumstances of that time, with a restricted
franchise, allow Orange and extreme Protestant bullying of the Catholic
community. The obvious parallel is that of Ted Heath proroguing Stormont to end
Orange control in Northern Ireland and substituting direct rule from London to
enable the Catholic community to acquire basic rights as British citizens.
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