The 1798 Rising is still fresh in the memories of many Wexford families. My grandfather was able to recall the stories handed down by his grandfather, Edmund Comerford; as a boy, according to my late aunts, he had witnessed the massacre of the men in Bunclody in John Street, Wexford, in 1793; five years later, he saw the executions of the Rebel leaders on Wexford Bridge; and family lore says he barely escaped with his life near Bunclody.
However, myth and memory can be selective. Family lore failed to pass on to me the memory of one of the first people to be shot dead in the Rising - James Comerford was one of the four Protestant yeomen killed after the Rector of Kilmuckridge, the Rev Robert Burrowes, was killed by a raiding party on Kyle Glebe near Oulart, led by Father John Murphy prior to the Battle of Oulart Hill on May 27th, 1798.
Bishop James Caulfield of Ferns, worried about a new generation of Rebel priests, made safe appointments, and moved another member of the family, Father Laurence Comerford to replace Father Murphy's parish priest at Boolavogue, Patrick Cogley. There he rebuilt the chapel burned on the first morning of the Rising.
Family connections with the Rising are common among the researchers and historians who have turned their attention to 1798.
In The Irish Times this week and in the latest edition of the Journal Of The Wexford Historical Society, Dr Tom Dunne, Professor of History at UCC, has been critical of some of the modern interpretations of the Rising. However, he points out that his own historical consciousness has been shaped powerfully by 1798, to the degree that his current research on the Rising has become partly an exercise in memory and autobiography. Born at Carrigbyrne, the site of the rebel camp before the battle of New Ross, and close to Scullabogue Barn, he was taught by his mother "to be proud of her great-great-grandfather, John Rice of Irishtown, who was killed in the aftermath of the battle of New Ross on June 5th, 1798". Dr Daniel Gahan, author of the finest modern account of events in Wexford, The People's Rising, grew up close to The Harrow and Boolavogue, and family lore told him that his great-great-great-grandfather, Denis Gahan, "had been out in '98."
Bernard Browne, who is co-ordinating Comoradh's commemorations this year, likes to point out that two members of his family were closely involved in previous commemorations: Michael Browne of Rathronan Castle in 1898 and Senator Kathleen Browne in 1938. His family lore recalls that one of the Brownes was born in the open in an orchard during the Rising as the family home at Fardystown was being raided continually.
Another family member, Thomas Browne, was captured with Cornelius Grogan and sentenced to death. When the prisoners were marched past the Browne house on the evening prior to their planned execution, Anne Browne held up her daughter Ellen in her arms to have a last look at her father before he was hanged. Browne was reprieved the following morning, and lived to tell his children how Grogan's hair turned white the night before his execution.