The End of Outrage: Post-Famine Adjustment in Rural Ireland

Description

From the time that the blight first came on the potatoes in Ireland in 1845, armed and masked men dubbed Molly Maguires had been raiding the houses of people deemed to be taking advantage of the rural poor. On some occasions, they represented themselves as "Molly's Sons," sent by their mother, to carry out justice; on others, a man attired as a woman, introducing "herself" as Molly Maguire, demanding redress for wrongs inflicted on her children. The raiders might stipulate the maximum price at which provisions were to be sold, warn against the eviction of tenants, or demand that an evicted family be reinstated to their holding. People who refused to meet their demands were often viciously beaten and, in some instances, killed-offences that the Constabulary classified as "outrages." Catholic clergymen regularly denounced the Mollies and in 1853, the district was proclaimed under the Crime and Outrage (Ireland) Act. Yet the "outrages" continued. Then, in 1856, Patrick McGlynn, a young schoolmaster, suddenly turned informer on the Mollies, precipitating dozens of arrests. Here, a history of McGlynn's informing, backlit by episodes over the previous two decades, sheds light on that wave of outrage, its origins and outcomes, the meaning and the memory of it. More specifically, it illuminates the end of "outrage"--the shifting objectives of those who engaged in it, and also how, after hunger faded and disease abated, tensions emerged in the Molly Maguires, when one element sought to curtail such activity, while another sought, unsuccessfully, to expand it. And in that contention, when the opportunities of post-Famine society were coming into view, one glimpses the end, or at least an ebbing, of outrage--in the everyday sense of moral indignation--at the fate of the rural poor. But, at heart, The End of Outrage is about contention among neighbours--a family that rose from the ashes of a mode of living, those consumed in the conflagration, and those who lost much but not all. Ultimately, the concern is how the poor themselves came to terms with their loss: how their own outrage at what had been done unto them and their forbears lost malignancy, and eventually ended. The author being a native of the small community that is the focus of The End of Outrage makes it an extraordinarily intimate and absorbing history. Cover......Page 1 The End of Outrage: Post-Famine Adjustment in Rural Ireland......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Dedication......Page 6 Acknowledgements......Page 8 Contents......Page 10 List of Figures......Page 12 List of Maps......Page 14 List of Tables......Page 16 Abbreviations......Page 18 Prologue: The Era of Infidelity......Page 20 The Politics of Post-Famine Adjustment......Page 34 Names that Ring Familiar......Page 37 Part I......Page 40 1: A Letter from Beagh......Page 42 2: Bastard Ribbonism......Page 72 An American Package?......Page 83 Post-Famine Adjustment......Page 86 Part II......Page 98 3: The Last Places Man Created......Page 100 Divided Land......Page 104 4: James Gallagher......Page 126 Part III......Page 146 5: The Name of Informer......Page 148 The Politics of the Ardara Mollies......Page 150 Madge Craig......Page 157 Digging for Evidence......Page 161 A Dying Declaration......Page 164 Exhumation......Page 168 6: Judges and Appearances......Page 172 Another Day in Court, March 1857......Page 182 Príosún Dubh Leifir......Page 194 7: The Judge between God and Man......Page 198 A Political Priest......Page 202 The Bishop and the Curate......Page 212 An Sagart Mór Ó Gallachóir......Page 214 Acts of Contrition......Page 223 8: Departures and Returns......Page 234 Order Restored......Page 239 Molly in the Mine Patch......Page 248 Marching to Respectability......Page 252 Part IV......Page 258 9: The End of Outrage......Page 260 To Exchange Themselves for the Future......Page 264 James Táilliúr and the Bog Road Gate......Page 269 Those Who Saw it All......Page 272 A House......Page 278 A Pretty Wedding......Page 281 10: Dangerous Memories......Page 290 The Living and the Dead......Page 294 Epilogue......Page 304 Appendix: Digital Resources......Page 312 Manuscript Material......Page 314 Official Publications......Page 315 Newspapers......Page 316 Later Works......Page 317 Index......Page 320