Remembering the Year of the French: Irish Folk History and Social Memory

14. Ceremonies, Monuments, and Negotiations of Memory

14 Ceremonies, Monuments, and Negotiations of Memory Sure we give processions in honour of the dead who died for Ireland as freely as Mr. Carnegie gives out libraries. D. P. Moran in the Leader, 3 October 1903 The proprietor of Daly’s Bar in Mulrany in west county Mayo (by the gateway to Achill Island) keeps two treasured souvenirs from the Year of the French: a coin and a bayonet that were found in remarkable circumstances in which his great-grandfather, James Daly, had been involved.1 Back in 1876 Castlebar residents formed a committee to erect a monument on French Hill, a Ninety-Eight place-name outside the town. Folk history recalled that in 1798 a party of Lord Roden’s cavalry killed four French dragoons there, and the precise location where locals had buried the soldiers was identified in oral tradition over several generations. When preparing the ground for the monument’s foundations, the site of the “French Grave” was excavated and the remains of corpses still clothed in fading blue uniform were allegedly discovered, butonce exposed to daylight and fresh air, the cloth crumbled. Several artifacts were found, including brass tunic buttons, a bayonet, and three eighteenth-century silver coins; James Daly, a key member of the committee,2 assumed custody of these items.3 Several months later, the monument was unveiled (July 1876), and the site of memory became a locus for provincial commemorations in 1898, 1948, 1953, and 1998. The commemorative spheres and mediums of historytelling , vernacular landscape, souvenirs, monuments, and ceremonies converged in facilitating public commemoration of Ninety-Eight, which evidently began before the centennial. ( 243 ) Commemorating History ( 244 ) The Centennial of Ninety-Eight In the nineteenth century, a wave of “statuemania” (statuomanie), to use a term coined by Maurice Agulhon,4 engulfed Europe and America.5 Statues were ubiquitously erected to honor iconic representations of nations and patriotic heroes, whose memory was also fêted in countless ceremonies that were steeped in commemorative rituals. The Irish manifestation of a nationalist culture of commemoration emerged in competition with imperial and Ascendancyunionist public sculpture.6 It commenced with the unveiling of monuments for “the Liberator” Daniel O’Connell in Limerick (1857) and Ennis, county Clare (1865).7 Fundraising for an O’Connell monument on Sackville Street (currently O’Connell Street) in Dublin began in 1862. Eighteen years after the foundation stone was laid, the impressive statue was unveiled in 1882 at a ceremony reputedly attended by half a million people, probably the century’s largest gathering in the city.8 Unveiled in 1870 the Dublin statue of William Smith O’Brien, the leader of the failed Young Ireland insurrection in 1848, was the first memorial associated with violent resistance to British rule.9 Other early nationalist monuments honored the patriotic orator Henry Grattan in Dublin (1880), and the Jacobite general Patrick Sarsfield in Limerick (1881), while numerous memorials throughout Ireland paid tribute to the “Manchester Martyrs”—William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O’Brien (three Fenians executed on 23 November 1867).10 Like in other European countries, Figure 22. Bayonet and coin found on French Hill (1876). The French bayonet and coin were discovered in 1876 alongside other French military artifacts in a grave on French Hill and are currently held at Daly’s Bar in Mulrany, county Mayo. The five-franc coin minted in Year 6 of the French Republic (1798) and inscribed “Union et Force” was worn as a medallion by James Daly at an inaugural centennial event on French Hill, outside Castlebar, county Mayo (9 January 1898). Photo by the author. Displayed courtesy of John Daly. rituals of commemorative demonstrations were also formulated in mass funeral processions for distinguished nationalists, whose coffins were paraded through the streets of Dublin to Glasnevin cemetery.11 The most spectacular of these was the meticulously orchestrated funerary procession of Charles Stewart Parnell (11 October 1891), which was attended by over 100,000 spectators, and subsequently the death of “The Chief ” was commemorated annually on “Ivy Day” (6 October).12 Nationalist commemoration reached its apex in the centennial celebrations of the 1798 Rebellion, which were planned as a separatist counterdemonstration to Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee (1897). On the face of it, the centennial of Ninety-Eight appears to show all the trappings of what Hobsbawm labeled mass-produced “invention of tradition.” Yet the impression of topdown manipulation of popular culture “largely undertaken...