Nally as Maigh Eo

Entitled Nally as Maigh Eo the book is a comprehensive account and assessment of the Catholic and Fenian in honour of whom the Nally Stand in Croke Park is named.

The chairperson of the Balla GAA club, whose grounds were named after PW Nally in 1984, welcomed the large attendance. Seán Ó Finneadha, Rúnaí CLG in Maigh Eo represented the County Board.

Máirtín Ó Maicín, Cathaoirleach Chonradh na Gaeilge agus Ghlór na nGael i mBall Álainn presided at the launch.

The artist Louisa Nally, a relative of PW, told how she spent five days in Mountjoy jail, Dublin in 1997 painting the portrait of Nally, a copy of which is used on the cover of the book. Her path had crossed with Pádraig Ó Baoighill while researching her family history.

She visited the prison hospital where he died, the morgue where he was laid out and the main entrance from which his body was given up to his family to gain inspiration for her work.

Having completed the portrait from an extant photograph of the IRB man and GAA founder, she retraced her steps from hospital to morgue to main gate carrying the portrait. She felt by doing so she had liberated the spirit of Nally from an English prison just as his body had been liberated after his death 100 years earlier.

The original portrait was on view at the launch. A local man, Éamon Keane had made a frame for it from the shutter of a window at Rockstown House, Balla where Nally was born and grew up. Dr Michael Loftus, Patron of Comhairle Chúige Chonnacht, CLG and a past president of the GAA in his contribution mentioned the new museum at Croke Park. He went on to say that Peter Munelly, one of the six sentenced with Nally for the “Crossmolina Conspiracy” was an uncle of the Munnelly brothers who played on the 1936 Mayo team.

Proinsias Ó Maol-mhuaidh, cigire scoil as Clár Chloinne Mhuiris agus údar leabhar ar an Athair Uileag de Búrca, a rinne an seoladh.

Dúirt sé gur le h-uncail le PW Nally an teach ina raibh an slua bailithe. Feirmeoir mór aba athair PW agus cónai air i Rockstown House.

Bhí PW féin ar Scoil i gColáiste Iarfhlaithe, Tuaim agus Uileag de Búrca in a Uachtarán air. Bhí beirt mhac le h-Ó Donnabháin Rosa agus mac le Mícheál Ó Lorcaín a crocadh i Manachain, Shasana i 1867 ar Scoil ansin leis.

Nally became an IRB member and later was Head Centre for Connacht and a member of the Supreme Council. He helped to organise the meeting at Irishtown Co Mayo in 1879 which launched the Land League.

Dr Mark Ryan, the Fenian leader administered the IRB oath to him and later in 1900 unveiled the present Nally memorial cross in the street in Balla to his memory. Nally was an “outstanding and talented athlete” and Parnell praised him as such. In 1984 on the occasion of the centenary of the GAA a torch was carried from his memorial in Balla to the Connacht Final in Pearse Stadium, Galway.

The GAA Central Council decided unanimously to re-name the Corner Stand in honour of PW Nally. In spite of renovations to Croke Park at present under way, the name of Nally would be retained. The author Pádraig Ó Baoighill pointed out Nally’s importance (1) as “Champion of the West” in athletics. He formed the “National Sports of Mayo” from which the GAA evolved.

Further (2) he was very active in the Land League in opposing evictions and was associated with John O’Kane of Claremorris and P Daly of Castlebar.

In addition (3) he figured in the IRB influence on the founding of the GAA in Thurles although he was in prison by 1884.

Paddy Mc Namee, GAA President for five years agreed that Nally influenced Michael Cusack, Maurice Davis and the IRB in this direction. Others point to Nally’s famous conversation with Cusack during a walk in the Phoenix Park as pushing him towards founding the GAA.

Nally refused to give evidence against Parnell in the Times Commission in 1888 although promised release and a large sum of money. He spent four months in Millbank Prison, England at that time and from his treatment there his health began to deteriorate.

Patrick Willban Nally died in Mountjoy Prison on November 9, 1891. His release date was December of that year. 20,000 people followed his coffin to the Fenian Plot in Glasnevin Cemetery where he lies with the IRB leaders, Terence Bellow McManus and Col John O’Mahony.

The inscription on his memorial at Balla states that he “was done to death by the brutal jailers of England” at the age of 36.

Nally’s influence is still with us and his memory will endure. The attendance included Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, Dr Seán Maguire and Dan Hoban. The latter was one of the organisers of the Fenian Centenary commemoration at the Nally memorial in Balla in 1967.
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United Irishmen commemorated at Croppies’ Acre in Dublin

A Republican Colour Party fell in and led a parade of pikemen and women down Bridge Street and towards the Croppies’ Acre on Wolfe Tone Quay on the northside of the River Liffey where hundreds of United Irishmen were executed and thrown into unmarked graves.

Andy Connolly, Chairperson of Comhairle Átha Cliath (Dublin Executive) of Republican Sinn Féin, chaired the proceedings. Tomás Ó Cléirigh, also of Comhairle Átha Cliath, laid a wreath with ribbons containing the colours of the French and Irish flags at the burial site. The following fitting oration was delivered by Seán Ó Brádaigh, editor of the Songs of 1798 and Cathaoirleach of the 1798 Commemoration Committee:

TÁIMID in ár seasamh ar thalamh bheannaithe anseo. Faoin ár gcosa, nó faoin gcréafóg díreach in aice linn tá taisí na mairtíreach a cuireadh anseo 200 bliain ó shin.

D’éiligh na hÉireannaigh Aontaithe cearta an duine agus saoirse a dtíre. Nuair a dhiúltaigh Rialtas Shasana dóibh chuaigh siad i muinín na láimhe láidre agus d’iarr siad cabhair ar Phoblacht na Fraince. Bhí gach ceart acu é sin a dhéanamh. Throid siad go cróga agus d’íoc siad go daor as a ndiongbháilteacht agus a gcrógacht. Cuireadh na mílte acu chun báis go fuilteach, go barbartha agus beag beann ar chearta saighdiúirí.

Ní dhearna Gaeil dearmad ar mhairtírigh na hÉireann agus ní dhéanfaidh choíche.

The 1790s was a unique decade in Irish history. Two hundred years later we can see that time with clarity and the advantage of hindsight. That decade ushered in the modern era in Irish history. It was significant because in the age of the Enlightenment, Theobald Wolfe Tone and his comrades brought their considerable intellectual skills and their organisational abilities to bear on the condition of the Irish people.

Irish Separatism did not begin 200 years ago. No, it began on the very day of the Anglo-Norman invasion in 1169 and it has never failed since. The Irish identity and the Irish will to be free has endured and has survived the onslaughts and the tyrannies of more than eight centuries.

Tone and the United Irish Movement breathed new life into the flame of Irish Separatism by fusing it with the cause of the Rights of Man and Republicanism, which were the most progressive ideas of their time. These ideas still, in our own time, retain the capacity to liberate mankind, men and women, and secured their welfare. They are enlightened, dynamic and modern ideas of universal application.

We are fortunate that we have from the hand of Tone himself, and other United Irish leaders, clear, articulate and coherent expressions of their analysis of the condition of the Irish people and of their aims and objectives. They affirmed, in words and deeds, and in many cases with their lives, the doctrine of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity and above all, the need to “break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils”.

Thanks to this civilised and informed leadership, Ireland entered the modern era of European and World history with her historic claim to nationhood clearly asserted before the world. The names of those great leaders are well-known, some of them Protestants, some of them Catholics and some of them Dissenters, all united in one common purpose. When they raised the standard of liberty the Irish people were not found wanting, they rallied, men and women, in their tens of thousands.

In a four-month period over the summer of 1798 the brutality and savagery of the English forces, including Irishmen in the service of the Crown, had cut down almost 30,000 people, more than died in all the years of the French Revolution.

Here, between the Royal Barracks and the River Liffey large holes were excavated and into them were thrown the bodies of the insurgents of Dublin city and county and the neighbouring counties of Kildare, Meath and Wicklow.

Robert Emmet wrote of this Croppies’ Acre: ‘No rising column marks the spot
Where many a victim lies
But oh! The blood which here has streamed
To heaven for justice cries.

Unconsecrated in this ground
Unblest by holy hands
No bell tolls its solemn sound
No monument here stands.

But here the patriot’s tears are shed
The poor man’s blessing given
These consecrate the virtuous dead
These waft their fame to heaven.’

Five years after these mass graves were opened and closed, Robert Emmet himself was hanged in Thomas Street, where our parade assembled today. We do not know where Emmet’s body lies but his memory is safe in the minds of the Irish people.

We do not know how many croppies are buried here. It was certainly hundreds, and possibly a thousand or more. Matthew Tone, Theobald’s younger brother and Bartholomew Teeling of Lisburn, Co Antrim are probably among them.

There are other Croppies’ Acres in several Irish counties where the bodies of the soldiers of freedom were unceremoniously thrown down. After the Battle of Antrim a mass grave was opened in the sandy ground near where the River Sixmilewater enters Lough Neagh. The history books record one incident from that burial.

The bodies of the Antrim Republicans, mostly Presbyterians, were brought by horse cart and dumped into this grave. When one cart-load arrived the English officer in charge asked a rhetorical question out loud. “I wonder where these miscreants came from?” he asked. And he got an answer. From among the corpses a feeble voice spoke and replied: “I come from Ballaboley”. This man was not yet dead, yet they tipped up the cart and heaved the entire load into the pit.

We do not know who that man was. We do know however where he came from, and we know that he and his comrades died for Ireland. Ballaboley Hill near Antrim Town was where the insurgent leaders had met to plan the Co Antrim Rising.

Those four words, his last in this world, “I come from Ballaboley”, ring down the two hundred years and we can repeat them here today. And in another 200 years they will still ring and resonate and cause people like you and me to stop and ponder and wonder on the greatness of the epic Irish fight for freedom/ God rest you Croppies all!

There were considerable forces ranged against the Republicans of 1798. The Government of England had an armed garrison of 100,000 men in Ireland, compared with 35,000 in England, Scotland and Wales. That garrison comprised regular British regiments and thousands of Irishmen in the Yeomanry and Militias who were in the service of England. There was the Orange Order, given to fomenting sectarian hatred. And then there were the informers in the ranks of the United Irishmen, mean, selfish, contemptible and degenerate individuals, many of whom amassed great wealth by betraying those who were so full of humanity, generosity, nobleness and honour.

Yet, the Rising of 1798 was never completely suppressed nor was its inspiration ever extinguished. Five years later Robert Emmet asserted Ireland’s right to independence in arms once again. For five-and-a-half years after 1798 Michael Dwyer and his mountain men survived in the Wicklow Mountains and harassed and harried the Crown Forces. They were safe among their own people in the Glen of Imaal and Glenmalure.

On one day Michael Dwyer marched his men 20 miles down into the village of Rathdrum where they attacked and routed the English garrison. He then marched his men back the 20 miles to the safety of their mountain retreat. That same evening Michael Dwyer married his childhood sweetheart and they celebrated their nuptials. There was a man! There was a man in the mould of a Cú Chulainn or a Ferdia or a Fionn Mac Cumhaill.

In the Ireland of today we still have an English army of Occupation; we still have thousands of Irishmen in the armed service of the Crown; we still have the loyal Orange lodges fomenting sectarian bitterness; and, we still have those who earn money from aiding and abetting and informing against Irish Republicans.

In the last few weeks the Orange and loyalist demonstrators at Drumcree in Portadown displayed a banner reading ‘croppies lie down’. This slogan is incorporated in an Orange song of the 1798 period from which I quote:

‘Derry down down, Derry down down
Derry down, Derry down, Croppies lie down.

O Croppies, ye’d better be quiet and still,
Ye shan’t have your liberty, do what ye will,
As long as salt water is found in the deep
Our foot on the neck of the Croppy we’ll keep.

Down, down, Croppies lie down . . .’

In the light of recent events, I must ask how the Croppies of the Garvaghy Road, Ormeau Road and other areas may feel about Mrs Mary McAleese’s reception for representatives of the Orange Order held in Áras an Uachtaráin, not far from here, last Saturday evening.

Last Saturday evening-Sunday morning was a black day, a day of shame. Mrs McAleese’s Orange guests would not have fully digested their wine and appetising savouries when an onslaught of Orange venom claimed the lives of the Quinn family in Ballymoney, Co Antrim at 4.30 on Sunday morning. If there was a parade of shame on the Ormeau Road last Monday morning there was also a reception of shame in the Áras last Saturday evening.

This is the same Mrs McAleese who last year was reported as expressing a view that the Pope has woodworm. Whatever about her academic qualifications, she can hardly be distinguished for her sensitivity. She cannot possibly be unaware that the Orange foot is still on the neck of the Croppy.

In the recent referendum on the Stormont Agreement Sinn Féin Poblachtach declared, and I quote: “Every advance made by nationalists in the Six Counties has been met with loyalist and English violence. We have had enough Drumcrees, Harryvilles, Bloody Sundays and cold-blooded assassinations. The Stormont Agreement, rather than ushering in a permanent peace, will bring continuing instability and strife, as the loyalists and Orange Order will oppose all nationalist advances for equality and power. Remember what happened in 1969 when basic civil rights were the issue!

It is time for England to go, just as she left Hong Kong last year and almost all her other colonies in recent times.”

This scenario of continuing instability and strife is now unfolding. The ‘peace’ is not a real peace. It is rather an imposed peace, to bolster and enforce English rule in the Six Counties. Sinn Féin Poblachtach has the historic and onerous task of identifying once more, as Tone did, the role of England and the English connection as the source of unrest and violence in our country. Tone sought to unite the Irish people of all persuasions. Partition divided them. The four-province federal Ireland outlined in the ÉIRE NUA programme is the blueprint for an Irish Republic which would guarantee and ensure the rights of all. It is a sobering thought that 200 years after 1798 we have not yet ended English rule in our country. It will not be done without much dedication and hard work.
“And true men be you men
Like those of ninety-eight.”
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