WHEN Dr Charles Dickson's ground king history of the 1798 rising in Antrim and Down was first published in 1960 he wrote, in an appendix about the Orange Society, that "any interested parties who hope to transform the Irish Orangeman into an Englishman are likely to be on the losing side. To the personal knowledge of the present writer there is many an Orangeman in the counties of Antrim and Down today whose proudest boast it is (in private) that his ancestor had a pike in his thatch in 98."
With the republication of his book in the run up to the bicentenary of the rising next year, it may be opportune, albeit tendentious, to ask if there are many, or any, Orangemen in those counties today who would be willing to admit (even in private) that their ancestors were "out" in 1798. Here is a book, however, that could put steel into their timorous hearts and persuade them to look back less fearfully at the events and the people of the 98 rising in those two counties. Who knows, some good might come of it.
In the author of this erudite and balanced history, such Orangemen will find one of their, own a Presbyterian born in Co Down who served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in France and Belgium in the Great War and whose credentials as an impartial historian have stood the test of time. With a robust independence of mind, he is unafraid to confront the myths and misapprehensions in the story of Ulster, for his book ranges back to what he considers to be the origins of that sad saga in the 16th century. The titles of some of his twelve short but masterly introductory chapters - give a hint of his approach - "Old Scots and New Scots", "Divide and Conquer" and "Murder as a Policy" ("Mass murder in Elizabethan, Stuart and Cromwellian times appears to have been an accepted part of military operations at least in Ireland").
But it is in the remaining ten chapters that Dr Dickson displays his consummate skills as an historian and narrator to the full. From the rise of the society of United Irishmen to the aftermath of the 98 rising, he excels in the marshalling of facts and details and in the use of sources. Nor is he afraid to quote, in his introduction, another northern Dissenter, John Mitchel:
"Whatever god or demon may have led the first of them to these shores, the Anglo Irish and the Scottish Ulstermen have now far too old a title to be questioned: they were a hardy race and fought stoutly for the pleasant valleys they dwell in. And are not Derry - and Enniskillen Ireland's, as well as Benburb and the Yellow Ford? - and have not those men and their fathers lived, and loved, and worshipped God, and died there? - are not their green graves heaped up there - more generations of them than they have genealogical skill to count? - a deep enough root those planters have struck into the soil of Ulster and it would now be ill striving to unplant them..."
Indubitably a thought for today.
This, then, is a timely book and one that could be read, with profit, by the descendants of those independent minded Dissenters who fought for their rights and the rights of their Catholic neighbours in 98. The facsimile reproduction is clean, though the rather rough maps could have been improved, and I was puzzled about the use of a George Cruikshank drawing on the cover which shows, oddly, the capture of Bagenal Harvey and John Colclough, the Wexford United Irish leaders, on the Great Saltee Island. Perhaps the Constable editor wanted to show that the risings in Wexford and in the North were part of the same plan?
There is a history lesson of another kind in The Mayo Binghams, written by a present day representative of the family which put down its roots in Mayo in the 16th century. Sir Richard Bingham, "favoured by Queen Elizabeth", was sent to Ireland "to quell the rebellion". Other notable Binghams included the third Earl of Lucan, George Bingham, who at the time of the Famine evicted 10,000 tenants from his Ballinrobe estate and took part (with his brother in law the Earl of Cardigan) in the notorious "charge of the Light Brigade" at Balaclava, and John Bingham, a 20th century crime writer and journalist. There is a mention, too, of the seventh, so called "vanishing" Earl.
Although Theresa Bingham Daly was born and grew up in Binghamstown, Co Mayo, and her love of the place shines through her descriptions of rural life and local characters, her "big house" mentality betrays itself on many pages. Shane O'Neill is "the infamous rebel", the Irish Volunteer Army (sic) of 1922 engaged in a "campaign of terror" and Charles Bingham "had a keen interest in agriculture ... replacing small holdings with larger expanses of land surely the ultimate euphemism for land clearances.
Yet this is a useful and informative book, with many family and local photographs, and it is written with style and feeling. John Hume may baulk at the spelling of his name (Hulme) on page 173, and the assertion that "croquet was first played by Irish monks" may raise a few eyebrows in academia here. But the folk in Binghamstown, Co Mayo, will undoubtedly be interested in dreading about themselves and their local gentry - they too are part of the history of the place.