Down by the Glenside performed by John Breen with Steven Collins on violin, whistles and bass.
Tis nearly a hundred years since Peadar Kearney wrote those words about The Bold Fenian Men, and a century-and-a-half since seven Irish exiles, in New York City, got together to do something which was revolutionary from the start. Revolutionary from the start in that recent, previous Irish risings against English rule had begun as reform movements, and had developed into physical force revolution only after reform was frustrated and/or the English occupation government had, often intentionally, provoked such action, in order to be able to chose the time of action. The United Irishmen of 1798 had begun as such reformers. Though the Irish Parliament which had sat at College Green in Dublin was achieved without revolution in Ireland, it was the result of intimidation by the Irish Volunteers during the American War for Independence. Even this reform was corrupted and done away with by English bribery and intrigue, in the same manner as the Scottish Parliament in 1707 ("Such a parcel of rogues in a nation," poet Robert Burns would later call them). Daniel O'Connell's movement to Repeal the "Act of Union," though inherently, and emphatically, non-violent, was confronted by the threat of military action to visit slaughter upon those unarmed Irish people who might show up at his "Monster Meeting" at Clontarf. The Young Ireland movement, which took up arms in 1848, had its roots in reform. After the failure of the Rising in 1848, the locus of Irish revolutionary activity had shifted from Dublin to New York. For the men who gathered in the law office of Michael Doheny of Tipperary (Chairman, Emmet Monument Association), as it would later be articulated by Brian O'Higgins in the Wolfe Tone Annual, the lesson of history was clear: Ireland had made progress toward freedom only through physical force, or the threat of physical force. This was the cornerstone of the purpose of The Bold Fenian Men -- The Fenian Faith.