1. Famine Rising 1848 Mural – Ballingarry, South Tipperary.
By Dr Thomas Mc Grath
The ‘Young Ireland Famine Rising 1848’ historical mural in Ballingarry enjoys an unbeatable and unmissable location. The mural wall is at the entrance to the church grounds in the centre of the village. The mural faces out from Ballingarry looking directly onto Slievenamon.
The mural commemorates the Young Ireland movement whose Famine Rising of 1848 took place in Ballingarry. The Young Irelanders were a brilliant group of cultural nationalists who were goaded into a Rising by the British government’s disastrous handling of the Famine. They believed in national self-determination and that an Irish government would save lives in the Famine. They were also influenced by the great initial success of the 1848 Revolutions across the European continent.
There are eleven named individuals framed in oval portraits on the mural. Each of these was present in Ballingarry and The Commons in 1848. These are important figures in the cause of Irish freedom. Between them they encapsulate much of the history of Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century.
At the top is William Smith O’Brien, the leader of Young Ireland who was born in Dromoland Castle in Co Clare and who was MP for County Limerick. He sought to stage a bloodless revolution but the police opened fire on him at Famine Warhouse 1848. For his part in the Rising, O’Brien, along with Thomas Francis Meagher (from Waterford), Patrick O’Donohoe (Carlow) and Terence Bellew Mac Manus (Fermanagh) were tried for High Treason in Clonmel and sentenced to death. The sentences were commuted to penal transportation to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania).
After the Rising, John Blake Dillon (Mayo) escaped to the United States. He later became M.P. for Co Tipperary and was the father of John Dillon (also an MP for Co Tipperary), the last leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, and grandfather of James Dillon who as Minister for Agriculture participated in Ballingarry in the centenary celebrations in 1948. He was subsequently leader of Fine Gael. The Mural looks down on steps from where O’Brien and Dillon made speeches in 1848.
The tricolour has pride of place at the very top of the mural. Thomas Francis Meagher brought it home from Paris in 1848 and it is commemorated at the National Flag Monument in the village of The Commons where it has been raised daily by Anthony Ivors Snr, John Webster and now Jimmy Byrne.
The European Union flag on the mural references the fact that all the leading countries in Europe were affected by the Revolutions of 1848 which swept across the continent from Paris to Berlin, Rome, Vienna, Budapest and Bucharest.
The USA flag recalls that eight of the eleven Young Irelanders on the mural died in the United States and it also stands for the Irish who fled from the Famine into exile in North America. Brigadier General Thomas Francis Meagher died as acting governor of Montana. The writer, historian and novelist David Power Conyngham from Crohane (near Ballingarry) drilled men on Ballingarry Fair Green during the Rising. He became Meagher’s aide-de camp in the United States. John Kavanagh (Dublin) who was seriously wounded at the Famine Warhouse died at the age of thirty-four in 1862 as a captain fighting under Meagher in the great US Civil War battle of Antietam. Terence Bellew Mac Manus who was also wounded in Ballingarry died in San Francisco in 1861. His funeral to Glasnevin Cemetery is one of the most famous funerals in Irish history.
On the lower line of oval portraits is Thomas Devin Reilly from Co Monaghan, a journalist and committed colleague of John Mitchel, who died in New York at the early age of twenty-nine. Beside him are the barrister Michael Doheny who was born near Fethard and lived in Cashel, John O’Mahony of Carrick-on-Suir and James Stephens of Kilkenny who escaped dramatically after the Rising. These three founded the I.R.B or Fenian movement which was responsible for the Risings of 1867 and 1916.
The 1848 Rising took place in the middle of the Great Famine – a fact which determined its timing and course – but one that is often overlooked as if 1848 can be divorced from its context. A million people were dying in Ireland at this time as another million were fleeing the country. To one side of the Mural is the graveyard in Ballingarry where a great number of local famine victims were buried. As a Ballingarry priest wrote: there was no grass to be seen in the parish graveyards because they had been completely dug up for burials.
Another smaller mural on the front of the buildings gives images, directions and details of distances to the connected historic sites to visit: the National Flag monument in The Commons Village, and Famine Warhouse 1848, the national heritage museum and visitor attraction. The state’s national Famine commemoration was held at this location in 2017.
The mural was organised by the Ballingarry 1848 Committee comprising Martin Maher (Chairman), Marie Barry (Secretary), Jimmy Meagher, John Webster, Anthony Ivors Jnr, and Thomas Mc Grath. Councillor (now Senator) Imelda Goldsboro secured funding for the project from Tipperary County Council and the parish community provided strong support. Michael Mc Grath suggested the location in the Ballingarry Tidy Towns committee. The mural was skilfully painted by accomplished artist Neil O’Dwyer to a plan by the present writer. Anne and the late Michael Tobin kindly gave the site.