TG: In the acknowledgements to Wolfe Tone: Prophet of Irish Independence (1989) you state that your interest in Tone goes back to childhood and traditions transmitted by your parents. Could you explain? ME: I grew up with the United Irishmen. My childhood was spent in the shadow of McArt’s Fort. My father was steeped in … Read more
Launching the Irish government’s 1798 commemorations earlier this year, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, declared: ‘we are commemorating the most sustained effort in Irish history to reconcile and unite what were the three communities with different religious beliefs and ethnic backgrounds—Protestants, Catholics and Dissenters’. He spoke on behalf of ‘a sovereign Irish government’, that, he claimed, … Read more
Public memorials are often more about the politics of the time of commemoration than of the events or people commemorated. This is true of Oliver Sheppard’s celebrated bronze figures in Wexford and Enniscorthy commemorating the 1798 Rebellion. The centenary celebrations of 1898 marked a new departure in Irish political life, since the 1890s had been … Read more
On 26 May 1798, the very day on which rebellion erupted in Wexford, a despondent Wolfe Tone offered to serve Bonaparte in India. He had just heard the rumour that the Toulon fleet was bound for the East and not for England. Learning some days later that Lord Edward Fitzgerald had been arrested, he recorded … Read more
On 7 June 1798, Father James Coigly, a shadowy United Irishman from County Armagh, was hanged on Pennington Heath. On hearing this news in Paris, Theobald Wolfe Tone, no friend of priests and of this one in particular, wrote ‘if ever I reach Ireland and…we establish our liberty, I will be the first to propose … Read more