Elizabeth, Dinah and Jane, three unsung Wexford women who gave their all in 1798, and an understanding of why Her-story is as important as his... For Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio 1, listen to Three Women of 1798, by AM Cousins above.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, directly after the 11 o'clock 'sos', our nuns switched classes.
Sr Dominica gathered up her books and swished out through the glass partition that separated the 'little’ classroom from the ‘big’ room as Sr Ultan, who taught the Infant half of the school, struggled into our classroom with her piano accordion already strapped onto her small, stout frame. She carried a roll of charts onto which she had painstakingly transcribed the notation and words of whatever song she was going to teach us that day.
Her repertoire ranged from quaint, old-fashioned songs like 'My sweet little Alice-Blue Gown' to patriotic ballads that celebrated the 1798 Rebellion. As a lot of the 1798 action was centred in Wexford, there were plenty of songs that commemorated local heroes and places – The Boys of Wexford was the one that captured my imagination as it seemed to celebrate a young woman preparing to abandon her petticoats and her family’s political affiliations to fight with the rebels: In comes the captain’s daughter, the captain of the Yeos, Saying: "Brave United Irish men, we’ll ne’er again be foes. A thousand pounds I’ll give you, and fly from home with thee, And dress myself in man’s attire, and fight for liberty!"
But, I was disappointed that there was no further mention of this feisty young woman as the rest of the verses dealt with the battle of Vinegar Hill with lots of ‘pike’ action and the taking and the subsequent loss of New Ross and Wexford Town. I hummed the chorus on the road home from school, ‘We are the boys of Wexford, who fought with heart and hand,’ not wasting any time wondering what the girls of Wexford were up to in 1798. If you’d asked me, I probably would have guessed that they were doing housework – essential – but so boring and mundane that no one bothered writing a song about it. It’s only in recent years that I discovered what some Wexford women were doing during the summer of the ill-fated rebellion.
Listen to more from Sunday Miscellany here.
