A Nation of Politicians: Gender, Patriotism, and Political Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century Ireland

2 “Paddy Shall Rise”: Celebration, Commemoration, and National Identity

2 “Paddy Shall Rise” Celebration, Commemoration, and National Identity In July and August 1780, fresh from their successful agitation for free trade the previous year, Volunteer companies across the country gathered to honor the “dense cluster” of significant moments in the Irish Protestant commemorative calendar. On the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, newspapers reported the unlikely sight of Catholic “gentlemen” of the Drogheda Association parading to the tune of “King William over the Water” while wearing orange cockades in their hats in celebration of the day.1 King’s County Volunteer companies— from Eglish, Leap, Birr and Shinrone, and Durrow—assembled near Birr to commemorate the battle of Aughrim with an elaborate mock battle.2 In Derry, the lifting of the siege was commemorated by the Derry Battalion, which marched to the cathedral to hear a sermon by Rev. Harrison Balfour—the chaplain of the Londonderry Fusiliers— before engaging in a review and returning to the Diamond, where they fired three volleys in honor of the day.3 In the midst of these commemorations , the Dublin Evening Post noted that traditionally “certain anniversaries frequently fomented divisions and hatred, or opened old sores which had been healing.” However, in recent years the “spirit of party and of bitterness is no longer seen even in our anniversary celebrations ,” so that “persons of every denomination may now cheerfully join in doing honour to such days as recall events that have been favorable to liberty and property, or the establishment of a free and legal constitution .”4 With varying degrees of intensity and enthusiasm, the battle 56
of the Boyne (1 July 1690 OS), the battle of Aughrim (12 July 1691 OS), and the lifting of the siege of Derry (1 August 1689 OS) were celebrated as part of a plebian Protestant culture.5 Yet, as the participation of Catholics in the Boyne events and the comments of the Post suggest, by 1780 such commemorations were not regarded as purely sectarian triumphalist occasions. Rather they could serve as expressions of a united “national” interest, particularly in the wake of the victorious campaign for free trade. As with the memory of William, the key events of the Williamite revolution were increasingly commemorated as part of the tradition of liberty and toleration rather than one of domination and sectarianism.6 State-sponsored commemorations and celebrations, such as the commemoration of the rising of 1641 (23 October OS), were opportunities to promote traditional understandings of deference and authority through hierarchical processions, spectacular display, and the benevolent distribution of food and alcohol. As research on social memory and commemoration in Ireland by Guy Beiner and others suggests, popular plebian forms of commemoration offered alternative ways of remembering and challenged the historical narratives of the past proposed in the rituals and ceremonies of the state.7 This popular social memory was manifested not only through the Jacobite counternarrative to the anxiety-tinged triumphalism of Williamite festivities but also in disputes over the meaning of the past among Protestants based on differences in both social class and religious denomination. Public rituals of commemoration and celebration could also be created or appropriated by the opposition, or even by “the people,” as forms of protest through which ideas of “the nation” were mobilized to express alternative understandings of government authority, history, or the limits of the Irish polity. The streets of the capital were sites of intense political conflict in the late 1770s and early 1780s, where the staging of dramatic rituals allowed patriots to oppose the government and to articulate different notions of the political nation and the public interest. Parades, illuminations , bonfires, effigies, toasts, and the elaborate transparencies and other symbols that decorated buildings—all communicated political meanings just as surely as the patriotic press.8 This chapter examines the general features of Protestant public festivities in eighteenth-century Ireland. It does so first by focusing on the act of toasting as a means of expressing political sentiment through the ritualized consumption of alcohol. It then examines in detail two national celebrations and a protest during the annual commemoration of “Paddy Shall Rise” 57 King William III. The first celebration marked the acquittal of Admiral Augustus Keppel in February 1779 in his court-martial for misconduct and neglect in a famous engagement with the French fleet at Ushant off the French port of Brest in July of the previous year. The month of November 1779 saw...