Speaking of ’98: Young Ireland and Republican Memory (1999)

SPEAKING OF ’98: YOUNG IRELAND AND REPUBLICAN MEMORY SEAN RYDER on 1 April 1843 the Nation published what was to become its most popular and notorious ballad, “The Memory of the Dead,” with its famous opening line, “Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight?” The song defiantly denounces the silence, embarrassment, and denial with which a later generation remembered the United Irishmen: Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight? Who blushes at the name? When cowards mock the patriots’ fate, Who hangs his head for shame?1 The singer laments the fate of the rebels, whose noble cause was rewarded by death, exile, or, even worse, popular disavowal—but whose heroic gesture has nevertheless “kindled here a living blaze / That nothing shall withstand.” The (male) listener is encouraged to become a “true man” by joining the faithful band who continue to admire and remember the United men, who drink to their memory, and hope someday to “act as brave a part.” For several reasons this song seems an apt introduction to the complex meanings of “1798” within the nationalist culture of the 1840s. It illustrates the kinds of ambivalence that arise within the discourse of nineteenth-century nationalism, as well as showing the impact of actual political exigencies upon the interpretation and political significance of such texts. At one level the song argues for the existence of a political continuity between the United Irishmen and the Repeal/Young Ireland movements, even to the point of hinting vaguely at the possible necessity for violent struggle in the future: SPEAKING OF ’98: YOUNG IRELAND AND REPUBLICAN MEMORY 51 1 Nation, 1 April 1843, 393. Through good and ill, be Ireland’s still Though sad as theirs your fate; And true men, be you, men, Like those of Ninety-Eight. Indeed, the very popularity of the song throughout the nineteenth century seems to testify to strong residual sympathies for the republican tradition in post-1798 Ireland, despite the song’s premise that such sympathies had all but disappeared. At the same time certain rhetorical features in the ballad imply an ambivalence toward the United Irish rebellion. The song carefully avoids making a direct call to arms or advocating republican ideals, and in contrast to 1798 ballads from the populist broadside tradition such as “Dunlavin Green” or “The Wearing of the Green,” “The Memory of the Dead” does not detail the gruesome atrocities of the rebellion or demand vengeful “satisfaction” or threaten to plant the Tree of Liberty.2 Rather, its energies are directed toward producing a national heroic memory of a kind that distances the heroes of the past even as it re-presents them. The call to toast the rebel dead that concludes each stanza is indeed a gesture of solidarity, but it is also a sign of distance since it places the “present” of the song at a clear remove from the events of the rebellion itself and makes it easier for John Kells Ingram, the poem’s author, to avoid the expression of outright sedition. Ingram’s poem constructs a political genealogy that links the United Irishmen with a later generation, but this genealogy is highly moral and spiritual, and is therefore vague in nature. The historically specific personalities and events of the rebellion are represented merely as nameless exiles and ghostly dead, shades whose physical and individual existence is less important than their symbolic and sacrificial death. The particular causes for which they fought—be they republican principles or sectarian redress—are not recognized by the ballad. Instead, the rebels’ cause is generalized into a more mythic kind of heroic gesture, disengaged from any ideological program. The all-important discursive shift from the radical Enlightenment republicanism of the 1790s to the romantic nationalism of the early nineteenth century is reflected here. It is a shift from the conception of the state based upon rational, universal principles, to a conception of the state based upon organic tradition, cultural specificity, and heroic lineage. UnitSPEAKING OF ’98: YOUNG IRELAND AND REPUBLICAN MEMORY 52 2 See texts for both songs in Georges-Denis Zimmermann, Songs of Irish Rebellion: Political Street Ballads and Rebel Songs, 1780–1900 (Dublin: Allen Figgis, 1967), 140–41, 167...