3. Famine Warhouse 1848 at Farranrory Upper, Ballingarry, South Tipperary.

Résumé:

Situated on the Tipperary-Kilkenny border, mid-way between the Rock of Cashel and Kilkenny Castle, Famine Warhouse 1848 was the scene of the Young Ireland Famine Rising. The two-storey farmhouse and its courtyard, with scenic views at 1,000 feet from its fields, is now a museum under the Office of Public Works telling the history of the contemporary Great Famine and mass emigration, the Rising at the house in the European context of 1848, the death sentences for High Treason and penal exile of the leaders to Van Diemen’s Land and their escapes to the USA.

Famine Warhouse 1848 at Farranrory Upper, Ballingarry, in South Tipperary, was the scene during the Great Famine of the 1848 Rising. Here William Smith O’Brien, M.P., leader of the Young Irelanders attempted to stage a bloodless revolution to overthrow British rule in Ireland.

The Young Ireland movement was an interdenominational grouping which attracted writers, journalists, poets, historians, and lawyers. It was founded by Thomas Davis and comprised some of the most brilliant names in modern Irish history. Davis with Charles Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon, established The Nation newspaper in 1842 to promote national cultural identity and an independent pluralist Ireland.

The Young Irelanders echoed the non-sectarian ideals of Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen of the 1790’s. In the 1840s they were supporters of Daniel O’Connell’s campaign for Repeal of the Union of Great Britain and Ireland (1801) and for a self-governing Irish parliament in Dublin. They differed from O’Connell in demanding Repeal regardless of which British political party was in power and they did not rule out the use of force in all circumstances. The Young Ireland leader, William Smith O’Brien, Member of Parliament for Co. Limerick, was an Irish Protestant nobleman, born in Dromoland Castle, Co Clare, son of Sir Edward O’Brien, and descended from the High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, who defeated the Danes at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014.

The Young Irelanders were increasingly discontented and radicalised by the horrors of the Great Famine of 1845-1850. The British government was committed to the principle of free trade and its response was disastrous in preventing deaths on a massive scale. As the Famine progressed, the Young Irelanders denounced the government for not doing enough. O’Brien was the most trenchant critic in the House of Commons. Out of a total Irish population of at least eight million, over a million people died during the Famine and another million fled into exile, mainly to the United States of America.

1848 was the ‘Year of Revolutions’ throughout continental Europe. In February 1848, the King of France was overthrown and a Republic proclaimed in Paris. The French Revolution sent political shock waves across the continent. Revolutions broke out in Berlin, Vienna, Rome, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest and many other cities. Absolutist governments were replaced by liberal administrations. Suffrage was extended and elections were held to constituent assemblies to draw up new national constitutions. These events were hailed as the ‘Springtime of the Peoples’. The Young Irelanders were deeply influenced by the seemingly unstoppable success of liberal romantic nationalism across the continent and were similarly inspired to contemplate revolution in Ireland. O’Brien and the orator Thomas Francis Meagher led a delegation to Paris to congratulate the new French Republic. Meagher returned to Ireland with the tricolour flag, a symbol of reconciliation between the Orange and the Green, now the national flag. Tradition states that it was flown during the Rising. See the inscription on the ‘Young Ireland 1848 and National Flag’ monument in the nearby village of The Commons where the flag is flown daily in honour of its origins.

On 16 July 1848, the Young Ireland leaders Michael Doheny and Thomas Francis Meagher held a pre-revolutionary meeting of thousands of supporters on top of Slievenamon. (This mountain is very visible from Ballingarry village.) In his speech Doheny stated you are here because you are determined that ‘this shall be the last year of famine and misrule in this country’. ‘The time is fast approaching when Ireland shall again be free.’ ‘Let us swear to God that this year will not go by till Ireland is a free nation. Raise up your hand.’ The report in The Nation declared: ‘Here every hand of that vast assembly was lifted up and Mr Doheny concluded amidst vehement cheering’.

In his speech Meagher said: ‘The potato was smitten; but your fields waved with golden grain. It was not for you. To your lips it was forbidden fruit. The ships came and bore it away, and when the prices rose, it came back, but not for those victims whose lips grew pale and quivered and opened no more… There were bayonets … between the people and their rightful food’.

The relatively bloodless continental revolutions led O’Brien to believe that he could attain a similar result in Ireland. He sought to manifest the moral force of a united people. He hoped to unite landlord and tenant in Ireland in protest against British rule. The Young Irelanders prepared for a Rising in autumn 1848. The government, however, forced their hand by suspending Habeas Corpus on 22 July 1848 which meant that citizens could be imprisoned without trial. O’Brien decided that rather than let the government arrest the leaders of Young Ireland a stand had to be made.

From 23-29 July 1848, O’Brien, Meagher and Dillon raised the standard of revolt but took no offensive action as they travelled from Co. Wexford through Co. Kilkenny and into Co. Tipperary to Ballingarry. See Mural and Liberty Tree in Ballingarry.  On 29th July O’Brien was in The Commons where barricades were erected to prevent his arrest. His local supporters, miners, tradesmen, small tenant farmers, artisans and the poor awaited the arrival of the military and police. As the police from Callan approached the cross roads before The Commons from Ballingarry, they became concerned that they might be outnumbered and thinking discretion the better part of valour, they veered right up the road towards Co. Kilkenny. The rebels followed them across the fields. Sub-inspector Trant and his forty-six heavily armed policemen took refuge in a newly-built large two-storey farmhouse, taking hostage the five young children who were in the house. The police barricaded themselves in, pointing their guns from the windows. The house was surrounded and an uneasy stand-off ensued. Mrs Margaret Mc Cormack, the mother of the children, demanded access to her house but the police refused and would not release the children. She found O’Brien reconnoitring the house from the outbuildings, and asked him what was to become of her children and her house.

As a result, O’Brien and Mrs Mc Cormack went up to the parlour window of the house to speak to the police. O’Brien wanted to avoid bloodshed. Through the window O’Brien stated: “We are all Irishmen-give up your guns and you are free to go”. O’Brien had just shaken hands with some of the police through the window and stepped down from it when a general order to the police to fire was issued by Trant. O’Brien had a price of 500 pounds on his head. General firing was then exchanged between the police and the rebels. O’Brien was pushed away from the line of fire by James Stephens and Terence Bellew MacManus, who was wounded. The rebels were incensed that they had been fired upon. During the first exchange of fire the rebels at the front of the house, men, women and children, crouched behind the front wall. So great was the pressure of the crowd that one man, Thomas Walsh, was forced to cross from left side of the front gate to the right side. As he crossed between the gate piers, he was shot dead by the police. During lulls in the shooting the rebels retreated out of the range of fire. Another man, Patrick McBride, had been standing at the right gable-end of the house when the firing began and was safe where he was. He now found that his companions had retreated. Jumping up on the wall to run to join them, he was fatally wounded by the police.

It was now evident that the position of the police was akin to a police barracks and almost impregnable. Fr Fitzgerald, a priest of Ballingarry parish endeavoured to intervene in the interests of peace. When the Cashel police under Sub-Inspector Cox were seen arriving over Boulea Hill and through The Commons an attempt was made to stop them by shouting at them by rebels who were out of ammunition but the police advanced, firing as they marched. They rescued the police in the house. The rebels then faded away but the consequences of their actions would follow them for many years.

After the failure of the Rising, O’Brien, Meagher, Terence Bellew MacManus and Patrick O’Donohoe were captured and tried for High Treason in a State trial in Clonmel. They were found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging, drawing and quartering. They refused to appeal for clemency. The sentences were commuted by a special of Parliament to penal imprisonment in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) in Australia. There they were joined by Young Ireland colleagues John Martin, and Kevin Izod O’Doherty. John Mitchel had already been convicted of treason-felony and sentenced to 14 years transportation.

Other Young Irelanders escaped to France and the USA. Among these were James Stephens, John O’Mahony and Michael Doheny who co-founded the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) or Fenian movement in 1858. The IRB organized the 1867 Rising and the 1916 Rising which led to Irish freedom. Of those transported to Van Diemen’s a number escaped to America where they became leaders of the Irish diaspora which included Margaret Mc Cormack and her children who emigrated in 1851. Mrs Mc Cormack died from a fall in 1855. Thomas Francis Meagher became a Union General leading the Fighting 69th in several great and bloody battle of the American Civil War. He died as Acting Governor of Montana. On the other hand, John Mitchel supported the South in the same war. He was elected Member of Parliament for Co. Tipperary in 1875, the year of his death. John Kavanagh from Dublin, a leader of the rebels at the front wall of the house was killed as a captain in the Union army under Meagher’s leadership in the battle of Antietam. Terence Bellew MacManus died in San Francisco in 1861 and was accorded a famous Fenian funeral in Ireland.

Kevin Izod O’Doherty on his release became a member of the Queensland legislature. Charles Gavan Duffy who was in jail at the time of the Rising was elected M.P. He emigrated to Australia where he became Premier of the State of Victoria in 1871. He became the leading historian of the Young Ireland movement. John Blake Dillon who had escaped to the USA disguised as a priest became MP for Co Tipperary in 1865. John Martin, following his release, became a Home Rule MP for Co. Meath in 1871.

O’Brien was incarcerated on Maria Island, off the coast of Tasmania, and later in the notorious Port Arthur penal colony. He often regretted that he was not shot dead at Ballingarry or hanged in Clonmel. In 1856 he was allowed to return to Ireland where he received but refused, many offers to be re-elected by Irish constituencies to the House of Commons. He travelled and made speeches internationally and has been seen as a Mandela-type figure. He died in 1864 and is buried in the O’Brien mausoleum at Rathronan, Co. Limerick.

In the middle of the mass deaths of the Great Famine, once confronted by the physical force of the British State the limits of moral force and bloodless revolution were quickly reached. Throughout Europe the 1848 revolutions had all failed by the end of 1849 but what they stood for lived on. The same was true of Ireland. The political and cultural, and literary legacy of Young Ireland had a huge influence on Pearse and the leaders of the 1916 Rising and the founders of the independent Irish State.  

The state’s National Famine Commemoration has been held at Famine Warhouse 1848. An annual Famine 1848 Walk takes place on the last Saturday in July from the National Flag monument in the village of The Commons to Famine Warhouse 1848.

By Dr Thomas Mc Grath, Historian.