cromwell in ireland

‘Ireland in Schools’ Blackpool Pilot Scheme SISNational Secondary Strategy - Thinking Skills/Leading in Learning Also Assessment for learningFirst draft, 260606

Cromwell in Ireland

Collective memory&Audience & Purpose

by

Helen Loxton & Lauren HaywoodHighfield Humanities College

Contents

About this unit

Scheme of learning (PlanEasy2)

WorksheetsNaked Protestants - image to be enlarged to A3 for group exerciseNaked Protestants - Image with transcription for checking and debrief Song package, ‘Young Ned of the Hill’What & how have we learned?

Notes for teachers1641 RisingCromwell & IrelandBackground note to ‘Ned of the Hill’

Blackpool PS, Cromwell in Ireland, 2

About this unit

This unit of work introduces two thinking skills activities from the Secondary National Strategy, namely‘Collective memory’ and ‘Audience and purpose’.

‘Collective memory’In ‘Collective memory’ pupils work in small groups to recreate an image, map, poem, or other item that hasan obvious physical structure.

1. They take turns to look at and memorise a central image for a limited length of time before returningto the group.

2. After each turn, groups reflect and plan the next visit.3. After a few visits each, pupils are asked to compare their versions with the original.

This strategy helps pupils to process and ‘decode’ visual information; enables them to look carefully atcomponent parts of images; and devise strategies to commit them to memory.

Above all, it requires pupils of whatever ability to do a task that is complex, and unless they plan and do ittogether they will fail. In this collaborative process they have to be metacognitive, that is, they have to talkabout their thinking.

‘Audience and purpose’‘Audience and purpose’ aims to develop pupils’ awareness of, and skill in addressing, what they are doing andwhy.

There is a strong link with literacy, but pupils need to be made aware of the connections between differentsubjects.

This strategy encourages pupils to think hard about why things are done and takes them into the realms ofmeeting a need or a demand rather than just doing or supplying something.

PlanEasy2This unit of work was developed by, and for, a school that is developing Accelerated Learning, and so thelesson structure uses the PlanEasy2 format of four phases: connect; activate; demonstrate; and consolidate.

TimeThe unit is designed to take place over two lessons, each of one hour.


Cycle 1 - Cromwell in Ireland PlanEasy2Scheme of learning

Overview:

To assess if Cromwell was a hero or a villain.

Learning Outcomes:By the end of the session we will ...

1 Start to explain if Cromwell was a hero or a villain

2 Analyse sources about the views of the Irish and the English towards Cromwell.

We are learning this because ...

We are trying to find out if Cromwell was good or bad.

We will know we are successful ....

If we can explain how people in England and Ireland viewed Cromwell.

Online Resources:

Delivery of Cycle

Phase @ Process Resources

Connection(Links to previouslessons)

Pupils have to write down 3 facts and 2 key words they already knowabout Cromwell.They also have to write down 1 unanswered question about Cromwell. Feedback as a class

Activation(Giving informationyou want pupils tolearn)

Pupils will then undertake a collective memory exercise in groups of 5. Possibility of Assessment for learning as the pupils decide which posteris the best. Debrief on the board what information this poster tells thepupils about the view of Cromwell in Ireland. Play pupils the song‘Young Ned of the Hill’. Discuss what this song tells us aboutCromwell.START OF LESSON TWOIn groups of 3-4 pupils are given a copy of a verse of ‘Young Ned ofthe Hill’. In their group the pupils need to work out what view thesong has on Cromwell. Each group shares their ideas with the class.

Sources of IrishRebellion/Rising 1641

Demonstration(Pupils demonstrateto selves and otherswhat they know)

Play to the class again ‘Young Ned of the Hill’.Give pupils a copy of the whole lyrics to follow. DemonstrationPupils then need to write a whole new verse for the song writing froman Irish person’s point of view.

Individualverses of‘Young Ned ofthe Hill’.

Consolidation(Feedback toteachers)

Moving debate. Using a series of statements about Cromwell thepupils move around the class. One corner of the room is agree and onedisagree. Pupils move to different corners depending on their opinion.

Statements.

This cycle lasts approximately min.

Teacher Notes:

This cycle should take place over 2 lessons. A bell work activity could be used in lesson two

Assessment Notes:

Differentiation:


This woodcut bears the inscription:

English Protestants stripped naked and turned into the mountains in the frost and snow, wheremany hundreds perished to death, and many lying dead in ditches and savages upbraided themsaying ‘now are ye wild Irish as we are’.

It is from the History of the Irish Rebellion by Sir John Temple’s (1600-77), first published in 1646. It isthe most well-known of the lurid propaganda pieces produced in the aftermath of the 1641 Rising.


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* Curlews - Shore birds* Rapparee - Vagabond, one with no home

Young Ned of the Hill’ by The PoguesPeace & Love CD, 1989, Island Records, 422-842-838-2 http://www.pogues.com/Releases/Lyrics/LPs/PeaceAndLove/YoungNed.html

Have you ever walked the lonesome hillsAnd heard the curlews* cryOr seen the raven black as nightUpon a windswept skyTo walk the purple heatherAnd hear the westwind cryTo know that’s where the rapparee* must die

Since Cromwell pushed us westwardTo live our lowly livesThere’s some of us have deemed to fightFrom Tipperary mountains highNoble men with wills of ironWho are not afraid to dieWho’ll fight with Gaelic honour held on high

A curse upon you Oliver CromwellYou who raped our MotherlandI hope you’re rotting down in hellFor the horrors that you sentTo our misfortunate forefathersWhom you robbed of their birthright‘To hell or Connaught’ may you burn in hell tonight

Of one such man I’d like to speakA rapparee by name and deedHis family dispossessed and slaughteredThey put a price upon his headHis name is known in song and storyHis deeds are legend stillAnd murdered for blood moneyWas young Ned of the hill

You have robbed our homes and fortunesEven drove us from our landYou tried to break our spiritBut you’ll never understandThe love of dear old IrelandThat will forge an iron willAs long as there are gallant menLike young Ned of the hill

http://www.pogues.com/Releases/Lyrics/LPs/PeaceAndLove/YoungNed.html


Plenary - what & how have we learned? Thinking words

You will need to consider, discuss, look up, or ask about the following words:

adapt evaluate link

apply explain negotiate

assess hypothesise organise

assumption identify prioritise

compare interpret reflect

contrast interrelate sequence

convert judge structure

decide justify summarise

differentiate juxtapose visualise

Working with a partner:(Tick the boxes where you have used those skills in this piece of work.)

ò Choose any 3 skills from this list that you think you have used in this task, and be ableto explain how and at which points you have used them.

ò Choose any 3 different skills from this list that you have used both in this task and inother subjects, and explain how and where you have used them in other subjects.

ò Choose any 3 different skills from this list that you have used both in this task and inother situations in your life and, again, explain where/ when/ how.


1641 Risingtaken from The Oxford Companion to Irish History edited by S.). Connolly, OUP, 1998, 0-19866-240-8

The rising commenced in Ulster on 22 October 1641 amid a constitutional and related economic crisis convulsing Charles I’smultiple monarchy. There were three plots - a conspiracy by Rory O’More and Conor Maguire in February 1641; a conspiracyof army officers disbanded from Wentworth’s army, subsequently abandoned; and the coalescence of these earlier plots under SirPhelim O’Neill in August.

The insurrection has traditionally been seen as a revolt against the Ulster plantation. However, the main conspirators weredebt-ridden scions of families who were originally beneficiaries rather than victims of the plantation. Their demands were forimprovements in property rights and safeguards for religious freedom, reflecting their fear of the Puritan administration that hadsucceeded Wentworth in Ireland and of the growing assertiveness of a virulently anti-Catholic English parliament. The successfulrecent revolt of the Scots Covenanters provided a model.

Although the plan to take Dublin Castle on 23 October was betrayed by Owen O’Connolly, the rising in Ulster had alreadybegun. Co-ordinated attacks took the colony by surprise but what was conceived as an armed constitutional protest legitimizedby forged royal commissions degenerated into a spate of sectarian massacres as the gentry lost control of untrained levies. At least4,000 settlers were murdered in such incidents as the notorious drowning of a refugee convoy at Portadown. Reprisals followedagainst Irish living in planter-controlled districts, notably the massacre of the inhabitants of Islandmagee, Co. Antrim. FromUlster, the insurgents turned south, capturing Dundalk on 31 October and defeating a government force at Julianstown (29 Nov.).Around 3 December the Old English gentry of the Pale, having been again denied the Graces and fearing a government backlashagainst all Catholics, made a historic decision to throw in their lot with their co- religionists. Thereafter the insurrection spreadnationwide, laying the basis for the Confederate War.

Lurid propaganda produced in the aftermath of the rising, notably Temple’s Irish Rebellion (1646),1 alleging a premeditatedplot to exterminate the Protestant population and wildly exaggerating the numbers killed, helped legitimize the sequestration ofCatholic land in the Adventurers’ Act and Cromwellian land settlement. Many of these accounts drew on depositions collectedfrom Protestant survivors. For over a century annual church services of deliverance inaugurated on 23 October 1662 alerted IrishProtestants to the fundamental disloyalty of their Catholic compatriots evidenced by the rising.

1 History of the Irish Rebellion by Sir John Temple’s (1600-77) was published in 1646 and is the most well-known of the lurid propaganda pieces produced in theaftermath of the rising.

The propaganda alleged a premeditated plot to exterminate the Protestant population and, wildly exaggerating the numbers killed, helped legitimise thesequestration of Catholic land in the Adventurers’ Act and Cromwellian land settlement.

The frequent republication of the History of the Irish Rebellion - nine times by 1812 - reflected periods of Irish Protestant anxiety. Conversely, the book wasloathed by Irish Catholics and was publicly burned on the orders of the Patriot Parliament of 1689.


Cromwell in Irelandtaken from The Oxford Companion to Irish History edited by S.). Connolly, OUP, 1998, 0-19866-240-8

Ireland’s first and only commoner lord lieutenant, Oliver Cromwell (1600-58) campaigned in Ireland between 15 August 1649and 26 May 1650. Backed by a 20,000 strong army, a huge artillery train, and a large navy, Cromwell projected himself as aprovidential liberator from Irish barbarism, royalist misrule, and Catholic hypocrisy.

His best remembered actions were the sieges of Drogheda (11 Sept. 16491) and Wexford (11 Oct. 1649). Giving no quarter togarrisons refusing to surrender was in line with contemporary European practice. However, Cromwell’s own explanation of themassacre at Drogheda, which had never been under Confederate Catholic control, was plainly influenced by religious convictionsand propaganda about the 1641 massacres. In Wexford the New Model Army ran amok-killing 2,000 in the market place afteran outpost had surrendered whilst a parley was still in progress. Though not responsible, Cromwell once more justified his army’saction with reference to massacres of Protestants in the vicinity.

Cromwell’s campaign was quickly running out of steam. Sickness and the need to man garrisons reduced his army’s size andon 2 December 1649 he was forced to abandon the siege of Waterford. He resumed the next year, as a string of towns surrenderedwith good terms offered to inhabit-ants and defenders, only to meet disaster at Clonmel (17 May 1650). When his men pouredthrough the breached walls, they were trapped in a killing ground prepared by Hugh Dubh O’Neill. Estimated losses of1,000–2,500 were the heaviest the New Model Army had experienced anywhere. Cromwell was conspicuously silent aboutClonmel in his dispatches to parliament.

Cromwell’s success lay as much with the Old Protestants as with the legendary efficiency of his army. Michael Jones’s victoryat Rathmines provided him with Dublin as a bridgehead; subsequently the victories and influence of Charles Coote and RogerBoyle secured Ulster, Connacht, and south Munster. More generally Protestant royalists began deserting in increasing numbers,culminating in significant submissions in April 1650. Nevertheless Cromwell’s triumphant return from Ireland, coupled withthe revolutionary situation in England, gave him the opportunity for political power that some previous lord lieutenants hadmerely contemplated and he ruled England as lord protector from 1653 until his death. He continued to exercise influence inIreland through his sons-in-law Ireton and Fleetwood, and later through his younger son Henry Cromwell.

Although Cromwell’s direct connection with Ireland lasted only nine months, his dominance in England has meant that hisname is associated with the events of the whole period 1649-58, which saw the ruthless suppression of Catholic and royalistresistance, the execution, transportation, or imprisonment of substantial numbers of Catholic clergy, and the wholesaleconfiscation of Catholic lands.2 Barnard suggests that the black legend of Cromwell the oppressor took its present form only inthe 19th century. However, his campaign was evidently controversial at the time, and he himself published an extraordinarydefence of his policies in response to the decrees of a Catholic ecclesiastical assembly at Clonmacnoise in December 1649. Gaelicpoets of the 17th century already associated his name with the destruction of the Catholic elite and their replacement bynewcomers of lowly social origins. Hence the ironic picture in Pairlement Chloinne Tomais of churls hailing Cromwell as theirliberator, and the poet Daithi Ó Bruadair’s references to ‘Cromwellian dogs’.

1 This was Oliver Cromwell’s first major, and most infamous, action in Ireland. The parliamentarians were anxious to re-capture Drogheda, wrested from them theprevious July, to prevent a possible juncture between Ormond and Owen Roe O’Neill. The royalist-Confederate Catholic garrison under Sir Arthur Aston defendedstoutly until Cromwell’s artillery began a bombardment on 9 September. The walls were breached on the third day, the Boyne draw-bridge taken, and Astonoverwhelmed in a last-ditch stand on the Millmount.

Official figures were 3,500 slain. The quarter given to the Millmount’s defenders was ignored. Cromwell tried to vindicate the killing of civilians, of whompossibly 1,000 were slaughtered, on the erroneous grounds of their involvement in the massacres accompanying the rising of 1641. His other claim, that the actionwas an expedient to win the war quickly by terrifying other towns into submission, was borne out only in the case of nearby garrisons.

2 This was the greatest early modern transformation in Irish landowner-ship, creating an estate system which lasted with minor adjustments until the late 19th century.Indeed it is no accident that J. P. Prendergast’s pioneer study, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland (1865), coincided with the emergence of the Irish land questionas a contentious political issue.

Although the Act for Adventurers had raised only £306,718, the Cromwellian conquest of Ire-land had cost an estimated £3.5 million. Other state creditors,and arrears of pay due to 35,000 soldiers, had thus to be satisfied out of Irish land. The first object under the 1652 act for the settling of Ireland was to identify ‘rebel’landowners for clearance. The most guilty, including 105 named chief rebels, were subject to execution, banishment, and transportation, while others who had notshown ‘constant good affection’ to parliament were subject to various levels of forfeiture and transplantation to Connacht.

In September 1653 the English parliament set aside four counties (Dublin, Kildare, Carlow, and Cork) for the government, and ten counties (Armagh, Down,Antrim, Laois, Offaly, Meath, Westmeath, Limerick, Tipperary, and Waterford) for division between the adventurers and soldiers, with more land to be providedout of other counties if necessary. A tripartite Civil Survey, by jury inquisition, ‘gross’ estimation, and mapping supervised by William Petty, was ordered. In January1654 1,500 adventurers began dividing their halves of the ten counties by lot. In this way 1,043 adventurers were eventually assigned 1.1 mil-lion acres, 5 per centof total profitable land, the biggest beneficiaries being London merchants who had recently bought out other investors at knock-down prices. The 33,419 debenturesissued to disbanding soldiers, theoretically convertible into Irish land at the same ‘act-rates’ as the adventurers, were worth only Izs. 6d. in the pound after theadventurers’ share-out. More land had to be made available but only 11,804 certificates of possession were taken out, most soldiers having sold their debenturescheaply to their land-hungry officers. Some soldiers, particularly Munster Protestants who had turned coat late in the day, got nothing, as indeed did some adventurersbecause of the inaccuracies of the ‘gross’ survey. Petty reckoned that II million of Ireland’s 20 million acres had been confiscated, but Henry Cromwell complainedthat the land and debt problems were still not fully resolved in 1659. The post-Restoration books of Survey and Distribution show that Charles II confirmed 7,500soldiers and 500 adventurers in their lands. In the interim land speculation had continued with Old Protestants in particular rounding off their estates.

The Cromwellian land settlement saw no new wave of immigration. Bottigheimer claims ‘that the adventurers were more interested in a return on theirinvestment than in bringing over English yeomen. By 1657 Catholic tenantry had drifted back into many confiscated territories or had never left, and the 1659 ‘census’indicates that they still composed three-quarters of the population. However, Catholic landowners had been displaced from Ulster, Munster, and Leinster by victoriousarmy officers and opportunistic Old Protestants.


Background note to ‘Young Ned of the Hill’Based on ‘Young Ned of the Hill and the Reemergence of the Irish Rapparee: A Textual and Intertextual Analysis by Ray Cashman,University of Indiana, U.SA, Cultural Analyss Volume 1, 2000, http://ist-socratesberkeley.edu/~cafioruMcolume1/vol1_article4.html

1. SummaryIn 1989, the Pogues, an eclectic Irish folk/punk/rock band, included ‘Young Ned of the Hill’, a song written by Ron Kavana andPogues member Teny Woods, on their ironically titled album, Peace and Love. The song is somewhat remarkable as a politicalstatement, fiercely condemning Oliver Cromwell and his ruthless seventeenth-century campaign through Ireland.

It is really about the conflict in Northern Ireland. It selectively draws upon and re-interprets the folk-lore of Ned of the Hilland Irish musical traditions to lend support and legitimacy to the IRA.

Given the song’s juxtaposition of Ned and Cromwell - resistance fighter and English invader - the song provides commentary on therole of republican paramilitary groups such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in contemporary Northern Ireland, a commentary thatdraws on the aura of tradition for its authority.

As an allegory for contemporary political conflict in Northern Ireland, ‘Young Ned of the Hill’ is an attempt to provide thatassignment of virtue and blame and to render the world in black and white. If the IRA volunteer can be equated with the rapparee offolklore, he, too, partakes of the transgressive power and appeal of one who can simultaneously be bad and do the right thing bybreaking the law. He, too, is a heroic outlaw enforcing social justice and invoking laws higher than those legislated at the expense ofthe oppressed.

The song’s tone ‘is also standard fare for this now defunct London-based band of mostly Irish ex-patriots, who cultivated animage of hard-drinking, blue-collar machismo.’

2. The textIn this song Ned’s function is to provide a platform for the denunciation of Cromwell and the ills he visited on Ireland and

the Irish and to create an ‘us’ and ‘them’ conflict between the Irish and the English.There are four stanzas and a refrain that appears after the first two stanzas and last two stanzas. The first two stanzas, each

of seven lines, can be taken as a unit, as can the last two, each of eight lines.The first stanza establishes the bleak and lonesome existence of the rapparee in ‘lonesome hill’ , while the second populates

the hills with noble men, the victims of Cromwell, willing to fight with Gaelic honour held up high. Then comes the vilificationof Cromwell in the refrain (‘A curse upon you Oliver Cromwell/You raped our motherland’) and fourth stanza.

Ned is mentioned by name only twice, briefly, and not until the second to last stanza. In fact, only one of the four stanzas, thethird, is entirely devoted to him, whereas Cromwell is introduced in the second stanza and remains the narrator’s addressee inthe refrains and possibly in the fourth stanza. The lyrics provide meagre information about Ned, although they establish that Nedwas prompted to become a rapparee as a result of his family being dispossessed and slaughtered. Consequently, the English puta price upon his head for which he was murdered.

The use of an authoritative narrator (‘I’ - possibly one of Ned’s fellow resistance fighters and thus a gallant man) creates (lines8, 9, 10) and ‘them’ groups: Cromwell’s victims described as noble and brave in their resistance, on the one hand, and oppressors- Cromwell and the English on the other. These groups are in timeless opposition for the narrator indicates that ‘Since Cromwellpushed us westward’ (line 8) - from the mid-seventeenth century onwards indefinitely - everyone who resists English colonizationis effectively part of the same solidarity.

The use of ‘you’ changes from signifying the imagined listener in the line 1 to Cromwell in the refrain (lines 15-18, 20-1,38-41, 43-4) and probably in stanza four (lines 30, 32-3). The change signals a shift in attention to the antagonist in the storyof Ned’s life. Not only is Cromwell addressed, in the third stanza he is cursed with ‘A curse upon you . . . and may you burn inHell tonight’. The narrator’s curse on Cromwell ironically appropriates and turns on its head a curse directed at the Irish,traditionally attributed to Cromwell - ‘To Hell or Connaught’, i.e., move westward or die.

The [repeated] curse on Cromwell is performative speech. In doing social work, it has illocutionary force - the act of saying the curseaccomplishes it, and therefore sends Cromwell’s soul to Hell. Its perlocutionary force is persuading the song’s audience of Cromwell’sunparalleled wickedness. The curse also has potential perlocutionary force in the wider socio-political world outside the song if itcompels audience members to defy in some way the dispossession and colonialism that Cromwell stands for in the songs [especiallysince] in face to face performance contexts, the refrain is the part in which the audience would feel most free to join in the singing.

The ‘they’ in line 25 and ‘you’ in the fourth stanza could mean the English army - all those murderous pillagers of whomCromwell is the most infamous example. The song would personify both sides - the Irish as Ned and the English as Cromwelland characterize only seventeenth-century conflict in rigid binary terms: Irish/English, good bad. Yet by leaving the historicalperiod in question open to any time (‘Since Cromwell pushed us westward’, line 8), Kavana and Woods allow them to mean anyparty that oppresses us, and those Irishmen at any time since Cromwell who ‘have deemed to fight’ (line 10).

3. The ‘aura of tradition’Historical realityKnown in Irish folk-lore as Éamonn an Chnoic or Ned of the Hill, Éamonn Ó Riain (Edmund O’Ryan) really did exist. He wasone of many Irish Catholic landholders forcibly dispossessed by English and Scottish Protestant settlers in the seventeenth century.Rather than fleeing to the continent, many like Ó Riain chose to remain in Ireland, hoping to frustrate their supplanters. Livingthe lives of political bandits - harassing British troops, robbing Protestant planters and landlords, and aiding the Irish poor - thesemen were outlawed and termed rapparees and tone by Crown authorities.

http://ist-socratesberkeley.edu/~cafioruMcolume1/vol1_article4.html


Ned was active in Tipperary in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, long after Cromwell’s death in 1658.Historically, William III and not Cromwell would have been his antagonist. The choice of Cromwell as Ned’s nemesis might havebeen the result of faulty historical research, but it could also have been deliberate because of the resonance Cromwell has for Irishaudiences as the archetypal anti-hero and quintessential evil invader.

Folk-loreAfter the historical Ó Riain’s death, ballads, chapbooks, and local legends immortalized him as a Robin Hood-like figure. Thetwo extant lyric texts paint a very different picture of Ned from that given in ‘Ned of the Hill’. In the Irish one, ‘Éamonn anChnoic’, for example, he is seeking shelter from the inhospitable wilderness and bemoans his miserably isolated life as a wantedman.

Such men were not concerned with battling against the English. They were concerned with social justice and traditionally theirlonely plight and defeat of them attracted commiseration. It was their humanity and vulnerability which lent rapparee lore a senseof romantic quasi- defeatism.

Re-interpreting (distorting?) folk-loreIn the interests of pitting good against evil, the Irish versus the English, the song ‘Young Ned of the Hill’ transforms thistradition. Its purpose is vigorously to condemn English oppression. Ned’s defeat solicits anger and indignation, notcommiseration.

To emphasise the conflict between nations, ‘Young Ned of the Hill’ deliberately ignores facets of his life. First, althoughoutlawed with a price upon his head (line 25), Ned actually received a pardon. Secondly, although despite the pardon, the priceon Ned’s head was his downfall, he was murdered by his own kin -a foster brother or cousin by the name of O’Dwyer. Ignorantof the pardon, the cousin sheltered Ned but once he was asleep O’Dwyer chopped off his head with an axe. Such destruction isconsistent with almost all Irish outlaw legends: the rapparee can only be defeated by foul or unfair means, most often throughbetrayal.

This common motif of betrayal by confederates is rather inconvenient for the purposes of N ed of the Hill’. While it enhancesthe rapparees’ quasi-martyr status in Irish folklore, it also prevents any clear-cut distinctions being made between us and themin rapparee lore.

‘Young Ned of the Hill’, however, is intent on clearly defining the line between the solidarity of Ireland’s gallant men and thehomogeneity of Cromwell’s villainous crew and their successors. Admitting betrayal by the very community Ned defends and supportswould problematise the simplistic view of Anglo-Irish conflict offered by Young Ned of the Hill.

Other elements of Ned’s story in oral tradition are similarly not referred to for fear of invalidating the eternal conflict positedby the song. A fuller picture of Ned would have meant a more important role in the song than that of a two-dimensional foil toCromwell; the nationalistic message of the song would necessarily be subtler, as are the messages embedded in older songs andstories concerned with Ned and other rapparees. The rapparees’ actions portrayed in older folklore did have political implicationsthat invite nationalistic interpretations, but explicit antagonism toward a specific English ruler is unique to ‘Young Ned of theHill’.

4. Music & structure Drawing on traditionInitially, the instrumentation of ‘Young Ned of the Hill’ identifies the musical style as specifically Irish. The first stanza is givenonly the sparse accompaniment of tin whistle and accordion, cultivating the lonesome hills imagery of the text. Then in the secondstanza the tempo quickens dramatically, and bass, guitar, and bodhran (percussion) are added, complementing the introductionin the text of those noble men willing to fight with Gaelic honour held on high.

Departing from traditionOnce the lonesome hills have been populated in stanza two with these as yet unnamed rapparees, backup vocals join in the refrain,which pounds on in a frenetic pace to the third stanza. This orchestration and intensity is maintained until the end. Thus, giventhe management of tempo and instrumentation, the song follows a gradual crescendo toward the third stanza, in which Ned isfinally mentioned by name, then maintains a sort of high plateau through the fourth stanza and final refrain.

With its four stanzas and a refrain, the structure of the song is not a traditional Irish lyric form.

5. Conceiving a present, appealing to a pastThe transforming of ‘Young Ned of the Hill’ into a resistance fighter is part of a wider process of re-conceiving Ireland as acultural unity and as a nation with the right to independence in train since the late nineteenth century and emphasised by therenewed violence in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s.

Ned is not the only rapparee text to be re-interpreted. The re-interpretation of traditional texts, including rapparee stories andsongs, have a role to play in granting the IRA and other republican groups the legitimacy of being part of a longer, heroic traditionof resistance to English colonisation.

6. CautionThis summary does not do justice to the subtlety of Professor Cashman’s scholarship and the way he addresses the central issuesof context and contexualisation, text and entexualisation’. Only a reading of the full text can do that.

cromwell in ireland

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