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Thursday, May 13, 2010
Who are they commemorating now?
WE LOOKED forward to the bicentenary commemorations of 1798 for a decade, now it is hard to believe that it is twelve years since a new breed of commemorative pikers, men and women, took to the highways and byways to mark a year of battles on Wexford soil two centuries earlier.
Some of the pikemen are still going strong and attending ceremonies around the country and recently they marched to Island Road, Enniscorthy, where a plaque was unveiled to the memory of two Wexford men, George Keegan and Paddy Parle, who with three others perished in an explosion at Edentubber, Co. Louth, on November 11th 1957.
There had been some controversy about the erection of the Enniscorthy memorial after Enniscorthy Town Council gave planning permission and both the national media and the local media used up countless column inches on the subject.
However, the memorial is now in place. It occupies a prominent position at the junction of Irish Street and Island Road and there is a seat or two making it peaceful to spend some time there and to reflect on the surroundings.
Dr. Ruán O’Donnell, one of the country’s best known historians, gave an account of the circumstances in which the men lost their lives and a brief biography. He was the right man for the job having published a book on the subject.
It is called "From Vinegar Hill to Edentubber – The Wexford IRA and The Border Campaign" and its publication included a Wexford launch in the Spring of 2007 in Whitford House Hotel.
But as the Enniscorthy memorial becomes familiar with the townspeople, those of a younger generation are asking, and will continue to ask, who were these men?
So let’s place the Wexfordians on the record.
George Keegan, then 29 years old, lived at Weafer Street, Enniscorthy, with a sister and brother.
He was a member of an old Enniscorthy Republican family – a United Irishman ancestor of his mother’s side was hanged in Carnew during the 1798 Rebellion; his grandfather, George Keegan was a leading light in the Wexford Fenians, and his father, Patrick Keegan was a Volunteer during the 1916 Easter Rising at Enniscorthy.
Patrick Keegan was in the Athenaeum when it was the headquarters of the Volunteers and he served time as an internee at Frongoch in North Wales.
He had served as the Commander of the North Wexford Brigade of the IRA during the War of Independence.
George Keegan was born in Brooklyn, New York, where the family lived for most of the 1920’s. They returned to Weafer Street in 1938. George was a baker by trade, and actually, his father, Patrick Keegan, was a Labour Party member of Enniscorthy Urban District Council at the time of his death in 1953.
Before his departure on the Edentubber expedition, Paddy Parle bought a new pair of boots at Johnny Hore’s Stores on Wexford’s Main Street for forty five shillings (€2.05 approx).
Parle was 27 years old and on his return from Britain got a job as a printer in the printing firm of John English & Co., in Wexford town.
As news of their deaths spread throughout Co. Wexford, preparations were being made to bring the bodies home for burial. After Requiem Mass in Dundalk, the cortege was escorted out of the northern town by contingents of Fianna Éireann, Sinn Féin and Cumann na mBan.
The first ‘major stop’ after Dublin was at the Gorey monument, while there was a large crowd on the outskirts of Enniscorthy to meet the remains of George Keegan, while those of Paddy Parle were received at Wexford town.
In the aftermath several Wexford members of the IRA were arrested and jailed under the Offences Against the State Act for failing to account for their movements.
This episode in Irish history is now part of the Enniscorthy landscape, an addition to the Republican tradition in the town and within sight of famed Vinegar Hill where the pikemen fought with heart and hand more than two centuries earlier.
Folklorist and the House of Carew
Patrick Kennedy is a famous Wexfordborn folklorist and author whose contemporaries included the powerful and influential landed gentry and while the well-worn phrase says "never the twain shall meet" it appears that this was not the case in 18th century rural Co. Wexford.
A large crowd from a wide radius attended the meeting of Clonroche Historical Society held in The Cloch Ban, Clonroche, on Tuesday, April 20th, where Tom McDonald gave a talk on Patrick Kennedy, the author of "The Banks of the Boro" and other famous works.
Mr. McDonald reiterated in his thesis that Kennedy sought in his writings to prove the greatness of the House of Carew, a reference to Lord Carew, landlord of Castleboro, one of the largest mansions in the country at that time.
He said that Kennedy depicted the Carew estate as a paradigm of perfect social and economic order.
The speaker cited a range of documentary sources to show that society in that era was much more fractious and violent than Kennedy indicated: he had, in particular, generally omitted any significant account of the White feet terrorism.
He then quoted from a letter written by an admirer of Patrick Kennedy at that time of the publication of "The Banks of the Boro" in which it was stated that Kennedy had almost totally exercised any antagonism of class, creed and interest in his writings.
His powerful literary abilities and novelist’s craft enabled Kennedy to seduce the reader into an alternative wonder world.
The speaker described the Carews as comparatively humane, the first Lord Robert Carew anticipated modern democracy, campaigned (as did his father) for Catholic Emancipation and favoured the advent of the Poor law system to succour the sick and destitute, despite the financial burden that it placed on him and other landed magnates.
Kennedy and others of his generation were of the Gallican religious disposition and believed that the Catholic and Protestant faiths were interchangeable and of a metaphysical symmetry.
Hence Kennedy’s use of the alias ‘Harry Whitney’, a member of the Moneytucker Established church family who were associated with law enforcement.
The first and second Lord Carews stated publicly that the Catholic and Protestant faiths were in parallel descent; both sprung from a common source.
The talk touched on the accounts of hurling and ballads given in Kennedy’s work and the speaker read passages from the famous author’s work.
He concluded by reciting one of the ballads referred to, "The Bantry Girls’ Lament for Johnny."
After a short session in which the members of the audience put questions to Mr. McDonald, the Chairperson of the Society, Lorcan Dunne, announced the other big event of the evening – the celebration of the speaker’s birthday!
However, the issue of his actual age remains an enigma – perhaps, some pedant could research it!
The night was intended as a tribute to the long and arduous endeavour by Tom McDonald to research the history of the County Wexford generally, and the Clonroche district, in particular, in minute detail – one thinks of the loneliness of the long distance runner!
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