In less than a fortnight we shall be into the bicentenary of 1798, and already I get an uneasy feeling about the simplifications and the glorifications which are on us, as if we have learnt nothing at all about the horrors and the idiot-brutalities of communal violence.
In part the problem is the nature of memory and the requirements of social groups to enjoy a shared and invented past which binds and reassures. This basic need turned the atrocities and the nihilistic insanities of the French revolution into something glorious, a model to be emulated. An entire school of French historiography came into existence to justify what happened during the long dark night into which France descended after the revolution, and which brought flame and war from Moscow to Bantry Bay.
It was the first real world war, and like the later war which enjoyed that name, it had seismic repercussions in Ireland, most of all because of Ireland's deep social instability and its vulnerability to passions and insecurities, which are as closed to us today as those of the poor of Bombay or Calcutta.
We cannot know the minds of the people who took to the pike in Wexford or in Antrim. We cannot know because they probably did not know. All groups are swayed by social forces they do not understand and they are often unaware of.
When we read that in Wexford - of all places - Catholics lived in genuine terror of local Orangemen who, they believed (aided by bogus Orange oaths circulated by Catholic members of the United party) had sworn to wade knee-deep in Catholic gore, we can be sure that this is a society of which we know nothing, nothing whatever.
Incomprehensible Realities
To present the insurrections of 1798 as a simple rising in pursuit of liberty, equality and fraternity is to ignore the complex and probably incomprehensible realities of the time.
When we read about the pitch-cappings, the floggings, the house-burnings and the murders by yeomanry that took place before the rising, we can be sure that we are looking at a hysterical and dysfunctional society which cannot be judged by the standards of today.
Ballitore, Carnew, Kilcullen, Camolin, Ferns: these blameless peaceful communities were the centres of quite atrocious events. What does it take to pike a man to death? How many times do you stick the pike in? Do you break the ribs, and do you hear them break? Does the victim howl as his innards are penetrated by a steeltipped wooden lance wielded by a man he has known all his life? Is the pursuit of liberty, equality and fraternity actually the motive for such a deed? Or are we dealing with other forces, before which mortal humans are almost powerless?
Were liberty, equality and fraternity (a splendidly contradictory trinity of concepts) the reason why the glebe house of Mr Burrowes, the Protestant clergyman at Camolin, was torched; why he was shot down after he had offered to surrender to the United men; and why seven of his parishioners, including his 16-year-old son, were piked to death?
Was it philosophic opposition to liberty, equality and fraternity which caused the yeomanry in reply to burn 170 houses, and kill many peasants who came their way? And was it adherence to contrasting philosophical abstractions which caused some yeomanry to stay loyal, and others to desert to the insurgents?
Less Horror
And is it wrong to wish that less, rather than more, of this kind of horror had occurred? Is it wrong to wish that Ireland had paid no attention to the insurrectionary pleadings of the United men, and had remained at peace? Is it wrong to be grateful that many counties did not respond to the plans for revolution? And is it wrong to speculate on what the revolutionaries would have done if they had been successful?
Would they, for example, have instantly introduced a society of liberty, equality and fraternity, justice, peace and plenty - which, oddly enough, never actually happens after revolutions - or would they instead have opted for The Year Zero option, as the French had done, with genocide of the reluctant, the reactionary, the disbelieving?
Or if Bonaparte had landed sufficient forces to impose his will on the millions who wanted nothing to do with wars or revolutions (and what a bloody affair that would have been), would he then have miraculously introduced to Ireland the very kind of society he very conspicuously failed to introduce to any of the many countries he conquered?
Or would thousands of Irish conscripts within a few years not be perishing of frostbite on the road home from Moscow? And will I, yet again, have to endure those dreary witless accusations of "defending British imperialism" simply for asking such questions?
Probably.
No matter. What is certain is that in the coming year we shall hear Boulavogue a lot. It is an enchanting tune by a musical genius, Patrick Joseph McCall, and it is a lie. It celebrates how the boys of Wexford at Harrow showed "Bookey's regiment" how men could fight.
Lieut Bookey and John Donovan from Camolin were isolated from their yeomanry escort - Camolin-men like themselves - near Harrow, and alone and defenceless were knocked off their horses and piked to death by Father Murphy's men - who then went to Bookey's house and burnt it down. To celebrate such a deed in song is pathetic and demented.