`Commemoration is a moral act", the former President, Mary Robinson, once said but in the echoing handball alley of Irish history, one can only raise an eyebrow at some of the local commemorations of 1798: the banner-wielding pageants and full-blooded battle re-enactments, which have been dotted around the country.
Some of it is pure festival, although it is always hard to extricate it from the local politics. Patrick Fitzsimons, an archaeologist who set up Clan Visions in Belfast, was involved in a commemoration of a couple of weeks back of the hanging of Henry Munro, the commander of the victorious United Irishmen at the battle of Ballinahinch - it was called off not because of the goriness but because there were descendants around who might take offence.
"In contentious historical episodes, like the household we did of the planter, Hezekiah Menzies in the history Park in Omagh, we tried to look at it from both sides of the story, planter and native. But in general, commemorations of 1798 are quite subdued, because apart from whatever inclusive messages you can draw, with Presbyterian leaders fighting alongside Catholics, it was a rebellion against the Crown and not everyone wants to see unionist rate-payer's money going into the celebration of that," he says.
However, full-blooded battle re-enactments as community field events are commonplace in England, where Fitzsimons dates them back to 1968, when Brigadier Peter Young founded The Sealed Knot, the English Civil War enactment society. In Ireland, Fitzsimons dates the boom in interest here from a multi-period re-enactment in Ferns in May 1995: "I also think Braveheart has a lot to do with it. The living history community has been growing rapidly ever since." But 1798 runs deeper in the Wexford countryside, where hordes of pikemen have been on the march again in recent weeks, in a staggering array of pageants and full-scale re-enactments. These, and many other events around the country, are co-ordinated by Comoradh '98, a committee set up by Wexford County Council, chaired by Bernard Browne. Browne is also the director of the new £3m 1798 Centre, a permanent legacy of the bicentenary and a balanced and quite vivid display. Wexford has a fair claim on 1798.oradh's 10 years in preparation - their first trial run was a big commemoration of Bastille Day in 1989 - but, In the county alone, 20,000 of a population of 120,000 lost their lives, which left a deep aftershock in the memory.
Although there are many other events both gone and to come, the commemoration of the Battle of Vinegar Hill in Enniscorthy on Sunday was a climactic event.
It involved about 3,000 pikemen and foreign contingents from France, the USA and Canada as well as FCA, Army and Garda bands. About 40,000 people crowded Enniscorthy's narrow, steeply sloped streets.
Although the battle of Vinegar Hill was the eleventh of 23 battles, and not the worst (roughly 3,500 died in New Ross), it was a decisive turning point.
Having taken the town on May 28th, the rebels were over-run by the redcoats on June 21st. While their army under Anthony Perry retreated largely unscathed, the day was marked by an atrocity, when about 700 people, largely women and children, were trampled or executed by soldiers. It seems like an odd, shabby, sad event to commemorate with such enthusiasm.
Sunday turned out to be a fine muggy day - just a few spits of rain by the time the pikemen (and women) got to the mountain for the national anthem. Although there was a seriously festive atmosphere to the town over the weekend, the pageant itself was a reasonably solemn, if good-humoured event, in form, if not in function, and uncannily echoed a long tradition of the faith and fatherland nationalist commemoration which burgeoned in the 19th century and came to a peak in the 1798 centenary.
The day itself began in traditional style, involving a colour party and an ecumenical prayer. In time-honoured republican style, the flags were blessed - the tricolour, the purple and gold of the county and the United Irishmen's green flag with its emblazoned harp - before being hoisted aloft.
And then at the foot of Oliver Sheppard's fine 1907 bronze statue of Father Murphy urging a young insurgent, towards distant horizons, a ceremonial wreath was laid by Minister of State, Seamus Brennan. In fact he laid it a few times, blinking around at the cameras.
Meanwhile, busloads of pikemen were "mobilising" in the Bellefield GAA ground, and led off by bands, they began to march down from the Duffry Gate (breached both by the rebels and the Crown forces in taking back the city) down through Market Square, down Abbey Square, across the new bridge and up onto Vinegar Hill.
Apart from the stand at Abbey Square, where local historian Nickie Furlong bravely commentated on the parade in stirring tones, like those of a hurling commentator ("Well done New Ross, Miles Byrne, the finest hero, the finest hero to come out of Wexford"), once it got out of the town, the squadrons marched in silence.
There was an awesome aspect to the catalogue of banners: Boulavogue, Oulart, Monageer, Crossabeg, Three Rock, Killann, Marshallstown, Bunclody, Taghmon; fife and drum bands and the pipe bands from New Ross and Ballindaggin and the Commodore John Barry banner of the New York Wexford Men's Association, newly restored by the nuns at the local Adoration convent.
It's certainly an odd sight to see, from afar, the pikes streeling across the bridge, or winding through the narrow country lanes up to the summit. The sheer mass of people there had called for safety measures; and the only musket fire came from a field half a mile from the summit, a bunch of redcoats fired off canons and musket rounds. Among the thousands of volunteer marchers, nobody had wanted to be a redcoat. But the mood was good-humoured when the redcoats came down the street. "Eyes ahead lads, never mind lip".
A prominent figure in the commemoration is Bill Murray, a Carrickbyrne farmer, who organised the largest single contingent of 300 pikemen and women from numerous parishes. I caught up with him on the GAA field over a cup of tea and sandwiches out of the back of his car.
He remembers walking nine miles into New Ross to join the troops in the 1948 commemoration. "There's certain streets in New Ross where the dead were said to be eight deep; I can't walk them without the hairs rising on the back of my neck."
He claims that from an early stage of discussion of the nature of the Wexford commemorations, there was pressure to tone down the militancy of so many pikes, and that Seamus Brennan had recommended that they "leave the pike in the thatch". "But you couldn't commemorate 1798 in Wexford without pikemen. And apart from all the dignitaries" - he laced the word with a certain irony - "if you didn't have it going at grass-roots level, it wouldn't be worth anything."
A big figure in the local amateur drama movement, Murray was responsible for mobilising the pikemen last year for the RTE and BBC documentaries, as well as the four-screen video re-enactment in the 1798 Centre. The men were trained in their steps by FCA officers, while a few karate guys among them organised the hand-to-hand combat. For special effects he thatched and twice torched to the ground the house where he was born and reared. Meanwhile for the cannon scenes, Murray cooked up an explosive mixture of his own. Did he use fertiliser, I asked? He laughed: "hah ha, that's what the Guard asked me as well."
Neither does he shy away from the political overtones of the event. "Of course, it's republican, 90 per cent, I'd say of the pikemen are republican in sympathy, not that they'd be into violence. It's a very solemn occasion, it's about commemorating the dead, about walking in the shoes of those dead men, and every man and woman today had a strong sense of that."
There's a deeply emotive undertone to the whole event, which again harks back all the way through that thrumming funereal chord in Irish culture and indeed republican commemoration - an elaborate funerary code, which writer and critic Nina Witoszek has called a theatrum mortis or "theatre of the dead". At the turn of the century, republicans commemorated the dead patriots with monuments, funerals and rallies at the graves of patriots, and eventually hunger strikes and executions, political performances re-enacting the Irish Way of the Cross.
Certainly, the symbolic potency of the event was not lost on Sinn Fein, who back in February, held a national commemoration at Vinegar Hill, with thousands bussed in from the north and the rest of the country, replete with bands and masses of pikemen. Gerry Adams made the keynote speech. Comoradh '98 distanced itself publicly from the event and although there was an element of controversy over the use in the poster of an image of a young Gorey man, Eddie O'Brien, who died in 1996 when the bomb he was carrying on a London bus, exploded, about half of the 5,000strong crowd on Vinegar Hill that day were locals.
Bill Murray that day presented Adams with a replica pike. "I was very careful to say that I was not representing my pikemen, that it was a personal gesture. It was a great moment and I make no apologies for it. As far as I'm concerned, there's no one more deserving of such a gesture than Gerry Adams."
Comoradh man and Treasurer of the Urban District Council, Cllr Sean Doyle, had taken the short cut up the hill that day. He had been active in the IRA Border campaign of the 1950s but resigned his 27-year membership of Sinn Fein after he condemned the Harrods bombing.
A man of surprisingly frank views, he says: "I just believe it's best to be honest and let everything hang out and be seen for what it is. I know there's criticisms of the types of commemoration but, to be honest, I think around here, people don't like to be told how they should or shouldn't commemorate their history and culture." Then with a glint in his eye, he gagged, "maybe the pikemen should march on Dublin 4."
We were watching the closing ceremony, of nine runners, representing the baronies of Wexford, who each take a brazier to carry the flame of liberty to the pinnacle of Vinegar Hill. Within 20 minutes, they were up. It was an eerie sight, bringing a lump to the throat.
Interestingly, despite the success of the day, the organisers are adamant that it won't become an annual event. As Murray said, "It's not a festival; that's not the point of it."
But try telling that to the pikemen. It looked like there never was craic quite like it.
