Michael O'Hanrahan by Conor Kostick

Michael O'Hanrahan by Conor Kostick

Author:Conor Kostick [Kostick, Conor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Historical, Military, Political, History, Europe, Great Britain, General, Ireland
ISBN: 9781847178053
Google: HRW6CgAAQBAJ
Publisher: The O'Brien Press
Published: 2015-10-12T00:36:53+00:00


As we shall see, Miceál faced his own court-martial and execution with as equal a stoicism as the Irish warrior characters he had created on the page.

When the Norman Came was a great success among young Irish readers and – along with the works of Charles Joseph Kickham (1828–1882), Patrick Augustine Sheehan (1852–1913) and others – in time helped replace Dickens, the Brontes and Jane Austen in the Irish school system with novels written by Irish authors.27 The overall strength of the story, despite its minor weaknesses, means that Francis P Jones’s judgment seems to be a fair one, that ‘in losing O’Hanrahan, Ireland lost an author who would have given her youth many volumes of inspired romance if he had lived’.28

A third substantial literary publication by Miceál Ua hAnnracáin was the lecture ‘Irish Heroines’, which was composed for the Ard Craobh of Cumann na mBan in the winter of 1915. It was published by Miceál’s family in 1917, that is, from their shop at 384 North Circular Road, Dublin, where it was for sale as a pamphlet. The printers were also family members, from Wexford.

In his introductory remarks on the subject of Ireland’s heroines, Miceál wrote that true heroism was manifest in a person for whom heroic deeds were but duties well performed and not of particular merit, and this thought certainly resonates with his own activites.29 The structure of the lecture was that of a chronological journey through Ireland’s history, highlighting extraordinary deeds by Irish women. An early example was that of the women of New Ross who in 1643 assisted Captain Arthur Fox and 1,500 soldiers who resisted the Duke of Ormond, Lord Lisle and three parliamentary ships that attacked the town. Miceál’s presentation was almost entirely literary in its appeal to his listeners to visualise the scene: ‘We can imagine those daughters of Ireland standing amidst those hurtling shells and whizzing bullets undauntedly hurling back the attackers. We may imagine them seizing pike or musket, or sgian at the sound of the alarm bell and rushing from their homes to take their places where duty called. Poor they may have been, unlettered, but of whatever rank in life, they were heroines.’30

A similar example given in the talk was that of the women of the siege of Limerick (‘Luimneach’) on 27 August 1690, when William’s army was cleverly trapped in a narrow breach by the defenders and suffered about 3,000 casualties. Again Miceál offered his listeners a dramatic reconstruction:

A loud vengeful yell swells out above the din of clashing arms, the spiteful snap of pistols, the clang of steel on steel. Across the air it floats, drowning out the oaths, the cries, the shrieks of contending men. Mingling with the deeper notes of men are heard the shriller voices of women. Like a torrent comes sweeping along those men and women fresh from their daily labours. From Mungret Street and Palmerston Street, from the lanes and alleys lying round St John’s Church they rush. Croabhach Lane, Fish Lane and many another sends forth its denizens to join in that headlong charge to the breach.



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