Women Of 'Ninety-Eight - free ebook by Thomas Concannon

WOMEN OF ’NINETY-EIGHT

PAMELA The Wife of Lord Edward Fitzgerald Author of “ The Life of St. Columba ,” “ A Garden of Girls ,” “ The Sorrow of Lycadoon ,” Etc. ...

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INTRODUCTION

“THEY tell a beautiful and poetical story about the croppies’ graves in Wexford. Many of them carried in their coat pockets wheat seed gathered in the fields to satisfy their hunger. When they were buried in their shallow graves the seed sprouted and pushed its way up to the light, and the peasants, seeing the patches of waving grain here and there by field or wayside, knew that there a poor croppy slumbered. Was not the waving grain an emblem that the blood they shed for Ireland would yet nurtu

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THEMOTHERS OF ’NINETY-EIGHT

TRULY it was of the Mothers of Ireland that Mary’s Son was thinking, when from the Tree of His Passion He comforted His own Mother with prophecy of the “keeners” yet unborn who, through the centuries, were to bear her company in her anguish, and weep with her for her sorrow and His most bitter death. That knowledge—with so much else—we owe to the teaching of Padraic Mac Piarais. He gave us the first part of the lesson when he gathered us with him into the cottage of Mary Clancy, in Iar Chonnacht

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The Mother of the Emmets

2 . Authorities: Madden’s “United Irishmen,” Third Series, Second Ed. (London and Dublin, 1860); Dr. Thos. Addis Emmet’s “The Emmet Family” (New York, 1898); J. J. Reynolds’s “Footprints of Emmet” (Dublin, 1903); Smith’s “County and City of Cork,” edited by Day and Copinger (Cork, 1893). “ON Tuesday, September 20th (1803), the day of the execution of Robert Emmet, he was visited at ten o’clock in the morning, by Mr. Leonard McNally, the barrister, who, on entering the room where Emmet had the

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The Mother of Lord Edward Fitzgerald

14 . Authorities : Moore’s “Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald”; Campbell’s “Edward and Pamela Fitzgerald,” “Letters of Horace Walpole,” works of Mrs. Delaney, etc. “GREATER love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”—( John xv. 13). Ever since that June dawn, when its first sweet rays, stealing through the bars of the prison window in Newgate, fell on the form that lay rigid and still on the prison bed, we know what was “the greatest love” in Lord Edward’s life. For

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The Mother of the Sheareses

27 . Authorities : Madden’s “United Irishmen,” Fourth Series, Second Edition. ON Saturday, May 19th, 1798, Lord Edward, desperately wounded in the gallant fight he had put up—one man against the multitude of his assailants—was taken prisoner and lodged in Newgate. Wounded and alone he lay in his gloomy cell, and on his hard prison bed through the long hours of the hot May Sunday that followed, and none of those who loved him was near at hand to bring healing to his fevered body, or comfort to

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The Mother of the Teelings

30 . Authorities : “Memoir of Bartholomew Teeling,” by (his nephew) Bartholomew Teeling, Jun., B.L. in Madden’s “United Irishmen,” Third Series, Vol. I. (Dublin, 1846); Charles Hamilton Teeling’s “History of the Irish Rebellion of 1798,” “A Personal Narrative,” and Sequel to same; Unpublished Correspondence of the Teeling Family; “The Teelings,” by Albi Norman (article in Gentleman’s Magazine for October, 1905). “I MUST now say a word or two of the excellent mother of Bartholomew Teeling—not s

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Second Letter

“Dearest Love,—I write just one line to acquaint you that I have received assurance from your brother Edward of his determination to render every assistance and protection in his power; for which I have written to thank him most sincerely. Your sister has likewise sent me assurances of the same nature, and expressed a desire to see me, which I have refused, having determined to speak to no one of my friends, not even my father, from motives of humanity to them and myself. It is a very great cons

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The Wife of Thomas Addis Emmet

70 . Authorities : Madden’s “United Irishmen” (Third Series, Second Edition); Dr. T. A. Emmet’s “Emmet Family.” SO exquisitely has the story of “the Broken Heart” been told, to such haunting strains of melodious sorrow has it been sung, that the whole world has wept over the tragic loves of Robert Emmet and Sarah Curran, But even in Ireland, it is rare to find anyone familiar with the romance of Thomas Addis Emmet; and—to our shame be it told!—the heroic devotion and self-sacrifice of his wife

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The Wife of Samuel Neilson

76 . Authorities : Madden’s “United Irishmen,” Fourth Series, Second Edition. NO woman, of all those whose stories we are recalling to the memory of a people in danger of forgetting them, has suffered so much as Mrs. Neilson. Not alone had she to see her happy home broken up, the ease and comfort to which she had been accustomed both in her father’s and her husband’s house, taken from her, her children deprived of their father and herself of a helpmate, the turning away from her necessities of

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The Wife of Lord Edward Fitzgerald

79 . Authorities : Madden’s “United Irishmen” (Second Series, Second Edition;) Moore’s “Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald”; Gerald Campbell’s “Edward and Pamela Fitzgerald”; Harmand’s “Madame de Genlis”; various works of Madame de Genlis, including “Mèmoires,” “Adèle et Théodore,” “Leçons d’une Gouvernante à ses Élèves,” etc. IT is not Romney, ravishing as his portrait of her is, nor Giroust, who in his Leçon de Harpe has painted her for us in all the virginal charm, and sweet, and fresh, and inn

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The Sister of Henry Joy McCracken

84 . Authorities : Madden’s “United Irishmen” (Vol. II., Second Series, First Edition, 1843); Robert M. Young, “Historical Notices of Old Belfast,” 1896. “I THINK of all human loves that of a Sister is the most abiding and unselfish. In a mother’s love there is a kind of identification with her child, his triumphs, his defeats, which by the reflection on herself takes away the absolute disinterestedness. Conjugal love is more intense, but for that reason more intermittent. But there’s not a tr

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Mary Anne Emmet

Mary Anne Emmet, sister of Thomas Addis and Robert, was worthy, both in character and brains, of her family. Born in 1773 she showed herself from her earliest years dowered with her full share of the remarkable Emmet intellect. She was carefully educated, mostly by her father, and acquired a knowledge of Classics of which many a University Don might well be vain. She was a vigorous writer; and her grand-nephew, Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, tells us that he has in his possession several political pamp

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Mary Tone

Of Mary Tone, the sister of Theobald Wolfe Tone, we have already spoken at some length in the Memoir of her sister-in-law. Her brother has described her for us in his Autobiography : “My sister, whose name is Mary, is a fine young woman; she has all the peculiarity of our disposition with all the delicacy of her own sex. If she were a man, she would be exactly like one of us [ i.e. her brothers, whose ‘portraits’ he has just sketched], and, as it is, being brought up amongst boys, for we never h

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Lady Lucy Fitzgerald

One of Lord Edward’s sisters, Lady Lucy Fitzgerald, was deep in the plans of the United Irishmen. Mr. Gerald Campbell describes her as “just Lord Edward dressed in woman’s clothes. She was to the full as patriotic as her brother, perhaps even more so—for she loved the cause because he loved it, whom she loved above all things: she was possessed like him of a strong sense of humour, so that she shared with him the family epithet ‘comical,’ she had a warm, loving susceptible Irish heart, and, in s

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Julia Sheares

Julia Sheares was another devoted “Sister of ’Ninety-Eight.” All that she was to her brothers is best told by the letter which John addressed to her from his prison cell on the eve of his trial: “The troublesome scene of life, my ever dear Julia, is nearly closed, and the hand that now traces these lines will, in a day or two, be no longer capable of communicating, to a beloved and affectionate family, the sentiments of his heart. A painful task yet awaits me—I do not allude to my trial, nor to

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Miss Byrne

Miles Byrne in his Memoirs makes frequent mention of a brave sister of his, and incidentally throws much light on the way the women of Wexford helped their men during these soul-testing times. When the atrocities of the Orange magistrates and the Ancient Britons had forced the men to the hills, the women undertook to act as intelligence officers and keep them informed of the progress of the preparations for the Rising. Miss Byrne was one of the most active of these fearless girls. On one occasio

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Miss Teeling

Charles Teeling in his “Personal Narrative” pays tribute to “the heroic courage” of one of his own sisters. “She was my junior”—he was only in his eighteenth year himself—“and with the gentlest possessed the noblest soul; she has been the solace of her family in all subsequent afflictions, and seemed to have been given as a blessing by Heaven, to counterpoise the ills we were doomed to suffer.” When the first letters “from home” were delivered to the poor prisoners in Kilmainham he records the s

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Miss Hazlett

Another sister commemorated by Teeling is Miss Hazlett, the sister of Henry Hazlett, of Belfast. She had come to Dublin, with Henry’s little son, to comfort their brother by their visits to his prison. “It was impossible to exclude her visits from the prison, for, from the surly turnkey to the cold and impenetrable man of office, her voice acted as a talisman on the most obdurate heart. Her presence dispelled every gloom, as the cheering messenger of Heaven.” The little boy caught a contagious d

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Sarah Curran

In thinking of Sarah Curran we paraphrase unconsciously the pitiful lines of one of our Irish poets and say of her: From her earliest years sorrow had walked with her as friend with friend; and the sadness of her death was but in keeping with the sadness of her birth, of her disposition, of her home-life, of her love story. We know from the confidences of John Philpot Curran’s most intimate friends that the brilliant gaiety of his convivial hours alternated with fits of the blackest depression.

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Anne Devlin

In 1842 when Dr. Madden was engaged in his researches for his memoir of Robert Emmet, he was directed to a certain old washerwoman, called Campbell, then living in great poverty and obscurity in a stable-yard off John’s Lane. This old woman, he was told, was the only one then living, in all probability, who could give an authentic account of what happened on the night of July the 23rd, 1803, after the flight of the leaders and the rout of their followers. How did she come to have this informatio

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Some Other Romances of ’Ninety-Eight

“LOVE and pain and death”—these, in the final analysis, are the substructure of life, and when some great force tears apart the concealing surface, the revelation which makes plain one of them, discovers the inevitable comradeship of the others. So when the mighty cataclysm of ’Ninety-Eight revealed the Pain and Death which are two of the foundations of life, there was revealed also, with a clearness which ordinary times know not, the third foundation, Love. When we think of Betsy Grey, it is as

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The Rose-Bud

In the Shan Van Vocht of March, 1896, à propos of a letter of James Hope’s therein first published, we find an interesting editorial note: “James Hope brought his wife and younger children up from Belfast to Dublin as soon as he undertook the work of organising under Emmet, this not without a reason. Rose Hope was a valuable and courageous ally in her patriot husband’s work, and before the northern rising had helped to provide the United Men with arms and ammunition, carrying them backwards and

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