seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: John Mitchel


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First Public Unveiling of the Irish Tricolour

irish-flag

At a meeting in his native Waterford on March 7, 1848, the Young Ireland leader Thomas Francis Meagher first publicly unveils the flag from a second-floor window of the Wolfe Tone Club.

Following the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which pits the “green” United Irishmen against the Orange Order who are traditionally loyal to the British Crown, the ideal of making peace between both traditions in a self-governed Ireland is first mooted.

The oldest known reference to the use of green, white, and orange as a nationalist emblem date from September 1830 when the colours are used for rosettes and badges. Since that historical period the use of the tricolour becomes the preferred mark of a republic in national flags. However, widespread recognition is not accorded to the flag until 1848.

Presented to Meagher as a gift in 1848 by a small group of French women symathetic to the Irish cause, the flag flies proudly as Meagher addresses the Waterford crowd gathered on the street below who are celebrating news of the French Revolution. Speeches made at that time by Meagher suggest that it is regarded as an innovation and not as the revival of an older flag.

From March 1848 Irish tricolours appear side-by-side with French “tricolores” at meetings held all over the country. John Mitchel, referring to the provisional Irish banner which Meagher had presented at a meeting in Dublin on April 15, 1848, says, “I hope to see that flag one day waving as our national banner.”

Although the tricolour is not forgotten as a symbol of a free Ireland, it is rarely used between 1848 and 1916. Even up to the eve of the 1916 Easter Rising, the green flag featuring a harp holds undisputed sway. Neither the colours nor the arrangement of the early tricolours are standardised. All of the 1848 tricolours show green, white, and orange, but orange is sometimes put next to the staff, and, in at least one flag, the order is orange, green and white.

In 1850, a flag of green for the Roman Catholics, orange for the Protestants of the Established Church, and blue for the Presbyterians is proposed.

In 1883, a Parnellite tricolour of yellow, white, and green, arranged horizontally, is proposed. Down to modern times, yellow has occasionally been used instead of orange but such substitution tarnish’s the tricolour’s fundamental symbolism.

The flag is adopted by the rebels in the 1916 Easter Rising rebels and raised above the General Post Office in Dublin. This marks the first time that the tricolour is regarded as the national flag. It is subsequently adopted by the Irish Republic during the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921). Its use is continued by the Irish Free State (1922–1937) and is later given constitutional status under the 1937 Constitution of Ireland. The tricolour is used by nationalists on both sides of the border as the national flag of the whole island of Ireland since 1916.


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Novelist Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Dies In Dublin

joseph-sheridan-le-fanu

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu, journalist, novelist, and short story writer, often called the father of the modern ghost story, dies in Dublin on February 7, 1873. He is the leading ghost-story writer of the nineteenth century and is central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era. His best-known works include Uncle Silas (1864), a suspense story, and The House by the Churchyard (1863), a murder mystery. His vampire story Carmilla, which influences Bram Stoker’s Dracula, has been filmed several times.

Le Fanu is born at 45 Lower Dominick Street in Dublin to Thomas Philip Le Fanu and Emma Lucretia Dobbin, a literary family of Huguenot, Irish, and English descent. Within a year of his birth the family moves to the Royal Hibernian Military School in Phoenix Park where his father, a Church of Ireland clergyman, is appointed to the chaplaincy of the establishment.

In 1826, the family moves to Abington, County Limerick, where Le Fanu’s father takes up his second rectorship. Le Fanu uses his father’s library to educate himself and by the age of fifteen he was writing poetry.

The disorders of the Tithe War (1831–1836) affect the region in 1832 and the following year the family temporarily moves back to Dublin, where Le Fanu works on a government commission. Although Thomas Le Fanu tries to live as though he is well-off, the family is in constant financial difficulty. At his death, Thomas has almost nothing to leave to his sons and the family has to sell his library to pay off some of his debts.

Le Fanu studies law at Trinity College, Dublin, where he is elected Auditor of the College Historical Society. He is called to the bar in 1839, but never practices and soon abandons law for journalism. In 1838 he begins contributing stories to the Dublin University Magazine, including his first ghost story, The Ghost and the Bone-Setter (1838). He becomes owner of several newspapers from 1840, including the Dublin Evening Mail and the Warder.

In 1847, Le Fanu supports John Mitchel and Thomas Francis Meagher in their campaign against the indifference of the government to the Irish Famine. Others involved in the campaign include Samuel Ferguson and Isaac Butt. Butt writes a forty-page analysis of the national disaster for the Dublin University Magazine in 1847. Le Fanu’s support costs him the nomination as Tory Member of Parliament (MP) for County Carlow in 1852.

In 1856 the family moves from Warrington Place to the house of his wife Susanna’s parents at 18 Merrion Square. His personal life becomes difficult at this time, as his wife suffers from increasing neurotic symptoms. She suffers from anxiety after the deaths of several close relatives, including her father two years previous. In April 1858, Susanna suffers a “hysterical attack” and dies the following day. She is buried in the Bennett family vault in Mount Jerome Cemetery beside her father and brothers. He does not write any fiction from this point until the death of his mother in 1861.

He becomes the editor and proprietor of the Dublin University Magazine in 1861 and begins to take advantage of double publication, first serializing in the Dublin University Magazine, then revising for the English market. He publishes both The House by the Churchyard and Wylder’s Hand in this manner. After lukewarm reviews of The House by the Churchyard, which is set in the Phoenix Park area of Dublin, Le Fanu signs a contract with Richard Bentley, his London publisher, which specifies that future novels be stories “of an English subject and of modern times,” a step Bentley thinks necessary for Le Fanu to satisfy the English audience. Le Fanu succeeds in this aim in 1864, with the publication of Uncle Silas, which is set in Derbyshire. In his very last short stories, however, Le Fanu returns to Irish folklore as an inspiration and encourages his friend Patrick Kennedy to contribute folklore to the Dublin University Magazine.

Le Fanu dies in his native Dublin on February 7, 1873, at the age of 58. Today there is a road and a park in Ballyfermot, near his childhood home in south-west Dublin, named after him.