Who were "The Men of the West"? Folk historiographies and the reconstruction of Democratic histories

Folklore, August, 2004 by Guy Beiner

I give you the gallant old West, boys, Where rallied our bravest and best When Ireland lay broken and bleeding; Hurrah for the men of the West! (Griffith 1901, 146-8). [1]

Abstract

In 1798, a French expeditionary force under General Humbert landed in County Mayo to support the United Irishmen's rebellion. Both the French and their local allies were eventually defeated by British and Yeomanry troops, but the memory of the events and personalities of "the Year of the French" was still strong when the Irish Folklore Commission started its collecting mission in the 1930s. This article suggests that the folk narratives of these events can be collated into an alternative, and more democratic, version of the rebellion. Popular interest rested not with the French general (except as a scapegoat for defeat) but with local men (and women) of less elevated status. The common people of Ireland were, in their own narratives, less directed from above and more agents in their own right. These are less a corrective to the supposedly "authoritative" histories written by professionals and diffused through the media and education system, than a coherent, alternative historiography.

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On 22 August 1798, a small French expeditionary force of one thousand men under General Jean Joseph Amable Humbert arrived in Killala Bay in north-west county Mayo and landed in the village of Kilcummin. They were part of a larger French invasion fleet assembled to invade Ireland and their brief was to support a rebellion organised by the secret society of The United Irishmen. Yet, they landed in an area where United Irish organisation was particularly weak and underdeveloped. Furthermore, it appeared that they had arrived too late, as a series of large-scale uprisings that had broken out in Ireland in the early summer of 1798 had by then, despite initial achievements, already been forcefully suppressed. Nevertheless, the French troops proceeded to the small town of Killala and secured the neighbouring town of Ballina. They were joined by several thousand Irish recruits. At the celebrated "Races of Castlebar," The Franco-Irish army succeeded in defeating a much larger British force stationed in the principal town of Mayo. Following the victory, the "Republic of Connaught" was proclaimed in Castlebar, and Citizen John Moore of Moore Hall was appointed president.

With the failure of expected reinforcements to arrive from France, Humbert decided to try and link up with additional United Irish forces, which were reported to be assembled in the Midlands, and perhaps continue on to Dublin. The insurgent army embarked on a campaign through north county Mayo, into south county Sligo, headed eastwards through county Leitrim, only to be ultimately defeated on 8 September 1798 by the village of Ballinamuck in north county Longford. Shortly after, on 23 September, the remaining rebel contingent in Killala was defeated, putting an end to the French attempted invasion and the local uprising, although small-scale guerrilla resistance continued, mainly in the hills of Erris and Tyrawly (north-west county Mayo) and Connemara (northwest county Galway).

Irish historiography has dedicated considerable attention to what is currently known as the "Great Irish Rebellion of 1798," and the recent bicentenary year promoted an extensive body of publications presuming to cover this historical topic exhaustively. Most studies have focused on the main rebellion arenas in the eastern province of Leinster (and, particularly, county Wexford) and the north-east counties of Ulster (specifically, Antrim and Down). The French invasion and the Rebellion in the province of Connacht, in the West of Ireland, have largely been regarded as peripheral and relatively insignificant. They have been described as a clear-cut case of "too few who arrived too late," a chronicle of a military failure known in advance (Murtagh 2003). The experience of the locals has been curtly summed up by a prominent authority: "[T]heir month of 'liberty' was a futile tragedy, destructive and divisive" (Murtagh 1998, 124). However, the standard archival sources of historical research shed little light on the experiences of the Irish that participated or witnessed the Rebellion, nor do they reflect the ways in which these events have since been recalled in social memory. Local folklore accounts reveal that communities throughout the West of Ireland and the Midlands recalled and commemorated Bliain na bhFrancach (as it was remembered in Irish-speaking communities), or "The Year of the French," as a central episode in the region's historical identity and a major landmark event in the chronology of the relatively recent past.

Fortunately, numerous folklore sources have been documented. The Irish Folklore Commission (1935-70) sent field-workers throughout the island of Ireland to record and write down folklore. Approximately one hundred folklore sources relating to this historical episode can be found in the Commission's Main Manuscript Collection. A joint initiative of the Irish Folklore Commission (IFC), the Irish Department of Education (An Roinn Oideachais) and the Irish National Teachers' Organisation co-ordinated the Schools' Scheme project of 1937-8, through which folklore was collected by pupils in primary schools in the twenty-six counties of the Irish Free State. Subsequently, the Schools' Manuscripts Collection hosts another two hundred relevant accounts gathered in communities that had been involved in the Rebellion. In 1937, historian Richard Hayes wrote the Last Invasion of Ireland. When Connacht Rose, which is to date the most comprehensive study of the events of 1798 in the West of Ireland. Untypical of the historians of his time, Hayes spent the summers of 1935 and 1936 travelling in the footsteps of the Franco-Irish army and interviewing people along the way. His book facilitated the publication of some one hundred and forty traditional accounts, and further folklore material can be found in his field notes (Hayes 1979; NLI MSS 13799-13801; see also Beiner 2000b). In addition to these three major collections, which were compiled mainly in the mid-1930s, numerous references to relevant folklore traditions can also be found in miscellaneous sources such as publications of popular print, newspapers, personal memoirs, travel books, private collections, commemoration booklets and local histories.