Everybody knows of The Man From God Knows Whore, Thomas Russell, hanged in Downpatrick in 1803. But, as interest grows in suitable 1798 commemorations in the North, you may keep coming across a character who flashes over the scene, uttering four words only. He appears in Dr Charles Dickson's Revolt in the North, David Hammond, who is making a series for TV on 1798 quoted him to a friend at Basil Blackshaw's recent exhibition in Dublin; and in The Summer Soldiers, A.T.Q. Stewart has him. Don't know if he's in Madden.
Stewart tells us that after the Battle of Antrim, the dead were buried in sandy ground, easily trenched, on the shore of Lough Neagh, near where the Sixmilewater flows into it. The Yeos dug deep and "the bodies were shot in, a cartload at a time." Where the devil did these rascals come from the officer asked the driver of one cart. A poor wretch raised a bloodstreaked face from the cart and feebly answered: "I come frae Ballyboley." He was buried along with the rest. Four words only, but they run through the histories of the time.
How many people know where Ballyboley is? How many people south of the Border, historians apart, know much of the 1798 Rising in the North? Denis Carroll gave us a fine guide to Dublin's 1798 landmarks. We could do with a small brochure on the Antrim Rising in particular. Starting at Donegore Hill, not far from Templepatrick, at the foot of which is a graveyard where Sir Samuel Ferguson is buried, author of the majestic Lament for the Death of Thomas Davis and so many more sonorous and lyrical poems.
We need in this map or guide, Ballycarry, Randalstown, also the grave of one of the finest of them all, Jimmy Hope, at Mallusk; Islandmagee for McClelland. Just a simplemap and commentary, with graphics. Could it be got out in time for the summer holidays? And, please, pinpoint for us Ballyboley, the source of those four words that echo down the centuries: "I come frae Ballyboley." And Antrim is a lovely green county. You need to know it.