By Bob Carney
“You my steadfast friend!
And I never believed you could die
Until your horse came to me,
With her reins trailing to the ground
And your heart’s blood on her cheek.
Excerpt from Caoineadh Airt Ui Laoghaire by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill
“All the penal laws of that unparalled code of oppression were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people whom the victors delighted to trample upon and were not afraid to provoke. They were not the effect of their fears, but of their security, whilst that temper prevailed, and it prevailed in all its force to a time within our memory, every measure was pleasing and popular just in proportion as it tended to harass and ruin a set of people who were looked upon as enemies of God and man; indeed as a race of savages who were a disgrace to human nature itself.”
– Edmund Burke
The Penal Code
French jurist Montesquieu said of the Penal Code that it was, “conceived by demons, written in blood, and registered in Hell.” The laws were constantly evolving, but all were designed to make the Irish-Catholic sub-human.
The Irish-Catholic was forbidden:
to the exercise of his religion
to receive an education
to enter a profession
to hold public office
to engage in commerce
to live in a corporate town
to own a horse of greater value than five pounds
to puchase land
to lease land
to accept a mortgage on land in security for a loan
to vote
to keep any arms for protection
to hold a life annuity
to buy land from a Protestant
to receive a gift of land from a Protestant
to inherit land from a Protestant
to inherit anything from a Protestant
to rent any land that was worth more than thirty shillings a year
to reap from his land any profit exceeding a third of the rent
could not be a guardian to a child
could not, when dying, leave his infant children under Catholic guardianship
could not attend Catholic worship
was compelled to attend Protestant worship
could not educate his child
could not send his child to a Catholic teacher.
The list goes on, allowing for the Irishman in Ireland to exist solely for the purpose of repressing him. The priest and the school master were banned and hunted with a bounty on their heads. The ultimate goal of the Penal Code was to erradicate the Irish Roman Catholic from Ireland.
The laws did not keep all the Irish in compliance. The mass was still said, albeit secretly, and Catholic education continued in the famous “hedge schools;” the language that the English tried to eliminate survived in the rural parts of Ireland. Indeed, some of the greatest poetry composed in Irish is from this time when the English were trying to wipe it out of existence.
Irish Poetry Airt Ó Laoghaire
O’ Leary was born in 1746 in Macroom, Co. Cork to a prominent Roman – Catholic family. When he became of age, he was sent to Europe, where he recieved a continental education. He was athletic, well educated and handsome.
All of that combined with his sense of adventure drove him to become an officer, a captain, in the Hungarian Hussars Regiment of the army of Empress Marie Theresa of Austria. He served in one of the Irish Brigades that were famous throughout the world for their bravery.
Captain O’Leary returned to Macroom after his service to Empress Theresa, with a magnificent horse that she had gifted him for his bravery and leadership. He lived the life of the gentry, and in 1767, he wed Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, the aunt of future Irish political leader Daniel O’Connell.
Proud and, some said, hot tempered, O’Leary became involved in a fued with a Protestant landowner and magistrate, Abraham Morris, of Hanover Hall, Macroom. What started the fued can only be guessed at, but it was thought to be a battle of will and stature between the two men.
When Morris was the High Sheriff of Co. Cork in 1771, he leveled charges against O’Leary, claiming an attack on the sheriff and the wounding of Morris’ servant. In October, O’Leary was indicted and Morris offered a reward for his capture.
O’Leary was never arrested or tried for those charges, but the animosity between the men grew. In 1773, Morris, taking advantage of the Penal Code, demanded O’Leary sell him the fine horse gifted him by the Empress Theresa for £5.
O’Leary refused and challenged Morris to a duel. The sheriff declined, instead using his position to persuade his fellow magistrates to once more proclaim Captain O’Leary an outlaw, who could then be legally shot on sight.
The sheriff then led a group of his soldiers to Carrignanimma, and on the 4th of May,1773, came upon O’Leary. Morris ordered his men to open fire, a soldier named Green, struck and killed O’Leary with his first shot.
Captain O’Leary’s wife Eibhlín’s poem and retelling of the incident say that Art’s horse ran back to his young bride and she climbed on to the blood soaked saddle and rode to find her husband. When she arrived at the place where her husband lay, in her grief she dismounted and cupping her hands, drank of his blood.
Morris and his soldiers were accused of murder by the coroner, but were acquitted by the all-Protestant Cork magistrates. O’Leary’s brother, Cornelius, later saw Morris through the window of a boarding house where the sheriff was lodging and firing three shots, wounded his brother’s killer. The shots were not immediately fatal, but Morris died the following year as a result of his injuries.
Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill composed most of the poem, “Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire,” with O’Leary’s sister and father adding verses to it later. It is considered one of the most important pieces of Irish poetry of this era.
O’ Laoghaire’s tomb bears the epitaph, “Lo Arthur Leary, generous, handsome, brave. Slain in his bloom, lies in this humble grave.” It was composed by Eibhlín.
