South Armagh - A History of Resistance
South Armagh has always been, along with the very northern part of Co. Louth, a place apart. It was a borderland in pre-historic times and battles, real or imaginary, have been fought for control of the passes into Ulster from time immemorial.
In historical times we find South Armagh under the Gaelic Clans facing out towards the Norman Pale, which reached as far as Faughart, and Ballymascanlon and Castle Roche. The two baronies of the Fews and Orior were dominated by the O'Neills and the O'Hanlons, until the moves of the Elizabethans from the Pale came into conflict with the ONeills of Tyrone.
In 1601 Lord Mountjoy, the English military commander had gained his first, foothold in Ulster when he built Moyra Castle, after defeating Hugh O'Neill in the pass below. Oliver Cromwell visited the area in the mid-seventeenth century and King James and King William passed through on their way to the Boyne. Resistance did not die however. The 1641 rebellion had been planned in a crannog in Lough Ross; the Mac Murphys of South Armagh fought as a body at the Boyne and at Culloden, and Redmond OHanlon harassed the Planters in the woods and glens.
In the eighteenth century there was continual opposition to British rule and by the 1780s and 1790s Defenders and United Irishmen had organised in South Armagh and North Louth. People such as Alexander Ban Donaldson and his sister Peggy Ban of Cloughogue near Crossmaglen; Patrick Locke, Dromintee, John Small, Baliner, Shane O'Neill, Forkhill, Tommy Lappin of Cariff, and Thomas Birch of Maytown near Glennane, who was hacked to death near Ballymacnab, stand out above the rest during this period.
The nineteenth century was a time of famine and tragedy. The Ribbon societies were better organised in South Armagh, North Louth and South Monaghan, than in any other area in Ireland, and Francis Berry of Adavoyle and Neal Quinn of Annamar paid the ultimate penalty on the gallows. Rev. Daniel Gunn Brown, Minister of Newtownhamilton First Presbyterian Church, and Rev. Michael Lennon of Crossmaglen campaigned tirelessly against harsh landlords. The rise of the Fenian Movement had its effect in The Crossmaglen Conspiracy and Michael Watters died in jail in Dublin. The Land War, evictions and the Home Rule crisis all left their mark.
In the new twentieth century there was a national upsurge in awareness of all things Irish and in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising Frank Aiken of Camlough led the Fourth Northern Division of the IRA in South Armagh and North Louth. Michael Collins spoke at McGuills public house Dromintee (now The Three Steps) in 1921 and fired six revolver shots in the air at the end of his speech saying, " That is the only salute needed over the grave of a dead Fenian". There were six Fenians buried in the graveyard behind him.
In June 1922 the house of James McGuill, Sinn Fein councillor of Dromintee, was burned, and in July 1922 Margaret Moore, aged 12, and Minnie Connolly, aged 20, of Edenappa, Jonesborough, were shot dead by British military. John Halpin, a member of the Dromintee company of the IRA, was shot dead by Free State Forces in October 1922.
The tradition of opposition continued into the era of the corrupt six county statelet. Every decade saw new men and women ready to stand up and be counted. We think particularly of the Edentubber Martyrs; Michael Watters, Paul Smith, Oliver Craven, George Keegan and Patrick Parle in the 1950s.
Therefore we can see that South Armagh and North Louth has an unbroken chain of resistance to oppression spanning hundreds of years. Sean Campbell, Francis Jordan, Jim Lochrie and Gerry McKiernan are outstanding examples of this noble tradition: Their names will live on to be written about in the dawn of a New Ireland.
By Kevin Murphy |
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