1828-1882, b. Mullinahone, nr. Cashel, Co. Tipperary (‘besides the
Anner at the foot of Slievenamon’); son of a draper and Anne O’Mahony;
cousin of the Fenian founder John Mahony; nephew of Fr. Roger Kickham,
a Vincentian, and Fr. Charles [Kickham], of Cashel diocese; named after
a grandfather; intended for medicine but suffered injury to eyesight and
hearing in gunpowder-drying accident at 14 [var. 13]; contrib. to The
Nation, The Celt, The Irishman, and Shamrock;
founded Fenian ‘Confederate Club’ at Mullinahone and went into
hiding after the 1848 Rising; worked for Tenant Right League (1850), and
lost faith in political agitation with its failure in 1855; joined IRB
(Fenians), 1860; travelled as IRB delegate to the Chicago Convention,
1863; published “She Lived by the Anner” on emigration, and
“Rory of the Hill” (1857), the most popular Fenian ballad; editorial
staff and leader-writer of The Irish People at invitation of James
Stephens with whom he was arrested in Nov. 1865 for recruiting to IRB;
tried before William Keogh at St Green St. Court and sentenced to 14 yrs.
on 5 Jan. 1866, with judicial expressions of sympathy for the prisoner
and his intellectual attainments, the sentence being conveyed to him by
his attorney through ear-trumpet and heard with a smile; held in Richmond
Prison with James Stephens; suffered death of his sister in first year;
served four years in Pentonville, Portland, and later in Woking invalid
prison; released through ill-health in March 1869, having completed Sally
Cavanagh (1869), his tale of the Irish peasant woman who resists seduction
by the venal landlord Grinden and suffers the death of her children, keeping
a deranged vigil over what she supposes to be their graves until forcibly
removed before herself dying of fever; professed to have missed ‘children,
women, and fires’ in prison; returned to Mullinahone on release;
stories and verses collected as Poems, Sketches and Narratives Illustrative
of Irish Life (1870); defeated by four votes in Tipperary elections,
in footsteps of O’Donovan Rossa (whose election was annulled); moved
to Dublin; joined Supreme Council of IRB, 1872; Knocknagow, or The
Homes of Tipperary (1873), reissued by Duffy (1879); object of national
collection to relieve poverty, 1878; visited in latter days by Rose Kavanagh
and attended in his last hours by his sister, a Sister of Mercy; d. 21
Aug., Blackrock, his death being precipitated by accident in jaunting
car; refused sacraments as a Fenian and bur. without any local clergy
in attendence; funeral oration by John Daly, the Limerick Fenian; well-remembered
songs incl. ‘Rory of the Hill’; ‘The Irish Peasant Girl’;
and the ballad ‘Patrick Sheehan’ that caused the government to
pension a Crimea veteran; a commemorative statue by John Hughes (1865-1941)
was unveiled by John O’Leary, 1898 [var. 1897]; For the Old Land
(posthum. 1886); recollections of Kickham were written by Ellen O’Leary
and Rose Kavanagh; Micheál Breathnach (1881-1908) translated Knocknagow
for An Claidheamh Soluis (1906-24), while Mairtín Ó
Cadhain translated Sally Cavanagh as Saile Ní Chaomhánaigh;
nó, Na hUaigheanna Folamha (1932). CAB DNB PI JMC DBIV IF
DIB DIW DIH MKA FDA SUTH DNB OCIL
[ top ]
Fiction, Sally Kavanagh, or The Untenanted Graves (Dublin: W. B. Kelly; London: Simpkin, Marshal 1869); Knocknagow, or The Homes of Tipperary (Dublin: Duffy 1873); Do. [2nd edn.] (Dublin: Duffy 1879); Do., with an Introduction by ‘M.R.’ [Matthew Russell] [ 3rd edn.] (Dublin: Duffy 1887, & edns.), pp.vii-xii [ infra]; Do., ed. Robert Lee Wolff [1-vol. facsimile of 1879 edn. with Russell’s introduction] (NY: Garland Publ. Co. 1979); Do. [rep. of 1879 edn.] (Dublin: Anna Livia 1988); and Do. (Woodstock 2000); For the Old Land: A Tale of Twenty Years Ago (Dublin: M. H. Gill 1886), and Do. [new edn.] (Dublin & Waterford: M. H. Gill [1904]), 384pp. [‘Déanta i nEireinn’]; The Eagle of Garryroe (Dublin: Martin Lester [1920]), and Do. [rep. edn.] (Dublin: Talbot Press 1963); Tales of Tipperary [abridged] (Dublin: Talbot Press [1926]), 49pp. [contains “White Humphrey of the Grange”, “Never Give Up”, “Annie O’Brien”, “Poor Mary Maher”, “Joe Donegan’s Trip”].
Poetry & Anthologies, Poems of Charles Joseph Kickham (Dublin: Educational Co. [1931]); The Valley near Slievenamon: A Kickham Anthology, ed. James Maher [Kilkenny People 1942]; James Maher, ed., Sings a Song of Kickham: Songs of Charles J. Kickham;with Gaelic Versions and Musical Notations (Dublin: Duffy 1965) [contribs. incl. Maher, Benedict Kiely, Katharine Tynan, and W. B. Yeats].
Knocknagow, or The Homes of Tipperary, with Preface by ‘M.R.' [Matthew Russell; [1st edn. Duffy 1873, 1879; here rep. 13th edn.] (Dublin: Edmund Burke & Co. 1887), green boards, 628pp. [17th edn. ditto]. Title-page: KNOCKNAGOW; or, THE HOMES OF TIPPERARY / by / CHARLES J. KICKHAM / Author of / “Sally Cavanagh; or, The Untenanted GRAVES”, Etc., /”Yet meet him in his cabin rude/or dancing with his dark-haired Mary, / You'd swear they knew no other mood, But mirth and love in Tipperary.” —Thomas Davis. / Copyrighted in Ireland, America, and Great Britain. / Dublin: James Duffy and Co., Ltd., / 15 Wellington Quay. Verso: Printed by Edmund Burke & Co., 61 & 62, Great Strand Street, Dublin. [Dedication page]: I Dedicate this Book / About the Homes of Tipperary / to / My LITTLE NEICES, ANNIE AND JOSIE, / with many regrets and apologise / that in spite of all their entreaties I was obliged to “Let Poor Norah Lahy Die”. C.J.K. Chapter titles: I. Mr. Henry Lowe becomes the Guest of his Uncle's principal Tenant [9]; II. “My eldest Daughter, Sir” [15]; III. Mat the Thrasher [22]; IV. The Tracks in the Snow [29]; V. The Doctor makes himself comfortable [34]; VI. The Station. Barney Brodherick's Penance. Mrs. Slattery creates a Sensation [42]; VII Norah Lahy. The old Linnet's Song [51]; VIII. Honor Lahy's good luck [58]; IX. Billy Heffernan and his Flute [63]; X. “A little Nourishment” [68]; XI. Father Hannigan's Sermon [74]; XII. Matrimony and “Marriage-money.” - The Widow's last Wish [78]; XIII. The Doctor in a Fix [85]; XIV. Mount Tempe and its Master [97]; IV. A Day's Shooting lost [97]; XVI. An Uninvited Visitor [101]; XVII. Lory [107]; XVIII. Miss Lloyd's Foibles [112]; XIX. Will Sir Garrett Renew the Lease?' [117]; XX. Mr. Lowe gets a Letter of Warning [123]; XXI. Five Shillings' worth of Dance [130]; XXII. The Blue Body-Coat with gilt Buttons. Absence of Mind. “Auld Lang Syne” [138]; XXIII. Mat Donovan at home [149]; XXIV. “God be with ye!” [158]; XXV. Phil Lahy in the bosom of his family [168]; XXVI. A Bridegroom who couldn't describe his Bride [174]; XXVII. The Jay [182] XXVIII. Barney wins a Bet; and loses mueh precious time [189]; XXIX. The Hauling Home. “Is Norah Lahy strong?” [198]; XXX. Ned Brophy's Wedding [200]; XXXI. Mr. Lloyd does what Irish Landlords seldom do [ 220]; XXXII. An old Croppy's notions of Security of Tenure. [228]; XXXIII. Billy Heffernan's Triumph [239]; XXXIV. Lonely [251]; XXXV. On the Road to the big Town with the Cloud over It [259]; XXXVI. Home to Knovknagow. A Tenant-at-will. [268]; XXXVII. Discontent and Resignation [281]; XXXVIII. “Are you in Love, Mary?” [288]; XXXIX. The hook-nosed Steed [295]; XL. The Dragoon's present. The Beauty Race. [312]; XLI. Miss Kathleen Hanly thinks it advisable to be “doing something” [325]; XLII. A Haunted Farm [332]; XLIII. Tom Hogan boasts that he never fired a Shot. [338]; XLIV. Hugh Kearney thinks he will get his Fishing rod Repaired [345]; XLV. Tom Cuddehy bids his old Sweetheart Good-bye. [351]; XLVI. “Mat Donovan is Killed!” [355]; XLVII. Billy Heffernan wonders what is “ coming-over” Norah [364]; XLVIII. The “Dead Past” and the “Living Present”. Mrs. Donovan's sad face [374]; XLIX. In the lonesome Moor Meditating Murder. Darby Ruadh thinks himself badly used. Tom Hogan has an argument against Phil Lahy [383]; L. Tom Cuddehy feels “Someway Quare”. A glance baekwards to clear up the Mystery of the Tracks in the Snow [397]; LI. Mat Donovan in Tramore. Mrs. Kearney and her “Own Car.” The “Coulin” [408]; LII. The Bull-bait. The Carrick-man and his Dog, “Trueboy.” Lory punishes Beresford Pender and Rides home behind Mr. Bob Lloyd, on the grey hunter. Miss Lloyd involuntarily sits down [427]; LIII. The Hurling in the Kiln-field. Captain French throws the Sledge against Mat the Thrasher. Barney in trouble. Father M'Mahon's “Proud Walk” [447]; LIV. Bob Lloyd in Danger. Mat Donovan's opinion of “Desaving” People in the way of Courtship [467]; LV. Billy Heffernan makes Dr. Kiely a present. “As a friend of Phil Lahy's” [481]; LVI. The White Jacket [497]; LVII. A Great Event. Tommy Lahy's Accomplishments. Arthur O'Connor [502]; LVIII. Father Carroll's Hoardings [514]; LIX. Another eventful Day. “Magnificent Tipperary” [520]; LX. Burglary and Robbery. Mat Donovan a Prisoner. Barney disappears. Mr. Somerfield and Attorney Hanly apply for Leases, and old Isaac dreads the Consequences [529]; LXI. Barney is Captured. His Account of himself. Mat the Thrasher in Clonmel Jail, and the Big Drum Silent [537]; LXII. Sad News from Ballinaclash [547]; LXIII. Ejected. The Bailiffs in the old Cottage. Billy Heffernan plays “Auld Lang Syne” again and the old Linnet Sings in the Moonlight [568]; LXIV. A Conspiracy. The “Coulin”. Miss Lloyd wants to know all about It. Visions of happy Days [565]; LVV. Mat Donovan follows Grace's advice; but Bessy Morris is gone. Honer and Phil Lahy in their new Home [577]; LVI. “Only a woman's hair!”. More Weddings than one. A Heart as “Big as Slievenamon”. Beautiful Ireland. The sort of a Wife that Barney got [698]; LXVII. Good-bye. The old Room. Mrs. Heffernan's Troubles. “Magnificent Tipperary.” A Gleam of Sunshine. But Knocknagow is Gone [611]. INTRODUCTION, M.R. sketches biography [as supra], with narrative of Kickham's trial and a story of his discovering a picture of the Blessed Virgin on the floor directly after sentencing, together with another concerning the Dublin Exhibition of 1864 of his ‘linger[ing] long before a painting, “The Head of a Cow”, by one of the Old Masters, not on account of any subtle genius he discovered in it, but “because it was so like an old cow in Mullinahone”, being ‘a quaint trait of the affectionate and home-loving nature which made it fitting that his grace should be where his cradle had been, “besides the Anner at the foot of Slievenamon”.' [pp.vii-xii; xii; see also under Quotations, infra.]
Michael Cavanagh, ‘In Memoriam’, in Celtic Magazine, I, Nos. 1, 2 & 3 (Jan-March 1883); John Francis Meagher ‘The Men of the Old Guard’ in Irish Fireside, 5 (1885).
John O’Leary, Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism, 2 vols. (London 1896); John Francis Meagher, ‘Recollections’ in Shamrock, 26 (1889).
Richard J. Kelly, Charles J. Kickham: Patriot and Poet (Dublin: Duffy 1914); James J. Healy, Life and Times of Charles J. Kickham (Dublin: Duffy 1915) 146pp.
T. P. O’Connor, ‘My Friend Charles Kickham’, in Gaelic American, 4 (April 1925)
Hester Sigerson, ‘Personal Recollections of C. J. Kickham’, in The Irish Press, 9 May, 1933
Annie Kickham White, ‘The Family of Charles Kickham, 1752-1940’, in James Maher, ed., Romantic Slievnamon (Mullinahone 1954).
John Cronin, ‘Charles Kickman, Knockagow’, in The Anglo Irish Novel: The Nineteenth Century [Vol. I] (Belfast: Appletree Press 1980), pp.99-114.
E. R. R. Green, ‘The Beginnings of Fenianism’ and ‘Charles Joseph Kickham and John O’Leary’, [both in] T. W. Moody, ed., The Fenian Movement (Cork 1988) [q.pp.].
Malcolm Brown, ‘Bibliographical Note’, in The Politics of Irish Literature from Thomas Davis to W. B. Yeats (London: George Allen & Unwin 1972), p.415.
Matthew Russell [signed ‘M.R’], Introduction, Knocknagow, or The Homes of Tipperary [1873] (Dublin: 1887), pp.vii-xii.
Richard J. Kelly, K.C., C. J. Kickham, Patriot and Poet: A Memoir (Dublin: James Duffy 1914), 64pp
Stephen Gwynn, Irish Literature and Drama in the English Language (London: Nelson 1936), p.110.
Malcolm Brown, ‘Bibliographical Note’, in The Politics of Irish Literature from Thomas Davis to W. B. Yeats (London: George Allen & Unwin 1972), p.415.
R. V. Comerford, Charles J. Kickham: A Study in Irish Nationalism and Literature (Dublin: Wolfhound 1979).
D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (London: Routledge 1982; 1991 Edn., , p.98 & n.
Kevin Whelan, in ‘The Bases of Regionalism’, in Prionsias Ó Drisceoil, ed., Culture in Ireland - Regions: Identity and Power (Belfast: QUB/IIS 1993), p.39.
William Trevor, Excursions in the Real World [1st ed. 1993], Penguin 1994, Introduction, p.xv.)
Terry Eagleton, ‘Form and Ideology in the Anglo-Irish Novel’, in Mary Massoud, ed., Literary Relations: Ireland, Egypt and the Far East (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1996), pp.135-46.
James H. Murphy, ‘Catholic Ireland and Kickham’s Knocknagow: ‘“Not a Bad Dream”’ [Chap. 7], Catholic Fiction and Social Reality in Ireland, 1873-1922.
Benedict Kiely, ‘Charles Kickham and the Living Mountain’, in A Raid into Dark Corners and Other Essays (Cork UP 1999).
[ top ]
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University of America 1904), gives extracts from Knocknagow and Sally Cavanagh; also verse, "Rory of the Hill" [‘That rake up near the rafters. / Why leave it there so long?’], ‘Patrick Sheehan’ [‘My father died; I closed his eyes / Outside the cabin door; / The landlord and the sherriff too / Were there the day before’ and "Patrick [sic] Sheehan". Kickham’s comment at the conclusion of his trial was terse, "I have endeavored to serve Ireland, and now I am prepared to suffer for Ireland." JMC Reports that Kickham lost his eyesight while in prison [err]; quotes John O’Leary in A Treasury of Irish Poetry [ed. Brooke & Rolleston]: ‘Kickham was above all things "kindly Irish of the Irish, neither Saxon nor Italian" - a patriot first and a poet after ... with a knowledge of the manners, customs, feelings, and moods of the Irish peasant greater, I think, than was possessed by any other man I ever met.’ A statue was raised to him in Tipperary town. Note that McCarthy remarks, ‘Kickham’s ballads are equally popular, and are just what ballads for the people should be - simple in language, direct in purpose, and in an easy and common measure.’
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), lists Sally Cavanagh [Duffy [1869]; NY: Benziger new ed. 1902), evils of landlordism and emigration, besides tragic heroine, contains noble Protestants in Mr & Mrs Hazlitt; Knocknagow (Duffy [1879]); For the Land, small farmers, emigration (Gill [1879, and 14 eds to 1916/19], NY: Benziger 1914, rep.1916); The Pig-Driving Peelers, appears in one of the ‘Knickerbocker Nuggets,’ entitled Representative Irish Tales, compiled WB Yeats (NY: Putnam n.d.). Brown on Knocknagow, One of the greatest of Irish novels, pictures of Tipperary village introducing all the characters affectionately; photographic fidelity to peasant life; throws light on the Land Questions [LAND], and some ‘dull’ middle class conversation. IF2 adds The Eagle of Garryroe (1919), a romance of 1798, with central character ‘Hubert Butler’ of TCD; Tales of Tipperary, stories first collected here (1920).
John Cooke, ed., Dublin Book of Irish Verse 1728-1909 (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis 1909), gives bio-dates 1828-1882, and selects "Rory of the Hill" ("That rake up hear the rafters, why leave it there so long ... ‘You’ll shortly know the reason, boy!, said Rory of the Hill!"); "The Irish Peasant Girl".
Colm O’Lochlainn, Anglo-Irish Songwriters (Dublin: Three Candles Press 1958), cites Kickham's novels Knocknagow, Sally Cavanagh, and For the Old Land; also his sweet and melodious songs, "Slievnaman", "She Lived Beside the Anner", "Patrick Sheeran, or the Glen of Aherlow", and "Rory of the Hill".
Brian McKenna, Irish Literature, 1800-1875: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978), cites Michael Cavanagh, ‘In Memoriam’, in Celtic Magazine, I, Nos. 1, 2 & 3 (Jan-March 1883); John Francis Meagher ‘The Men of the Old Guard’ in Irish Fireside, 5 (1885); John O’Leary, Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism, 2 vols. (London 1896); John Francis Meagher, ‘Recollections’ in Shamrock, 26 (1889); James J. Healy, Life and Times of Charles J. Kickham (Dublin: Duffy 1915) 146pp.; T. P. O’Connor, ‘My Friend Charles Kickham’, in Gaelic American, 4 (April 1925); Hester Sigerson, ‘Personal Recollections of C. J. Kickham’, in The Irish Press, 9 May 1933; Annie Kickham White, ‘The Family of Charles Kickham, 1752-1940’, in James Maher, ed., Romantic Slievnamon (Mullinahone 1954).
Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1979), lists ‘Knocknagow; or, The House [sic] of Tipperary’.
John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989) adds contrib. poetry to the Shamrock, A prime example of the closer connection of politics and fiction in Victorian Ireland than in Victorian England. British Library holds 4 fiction titles.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2; selects Knocknagow (the dispute between priest and militants, Chp. 32), [248-52]; Fenian brotherhood, Thomas Clark Luby, Charles Kickham and John O’Leary, James Fintan Lalor, 207; the first ed. published by AM Sullivan in 1873, v. rare; 2nd ed. 1879; first 36 chps. published serially in The Emerald, New York, and The Shamrock, Dublin, 248; Kickham on Cullen in The Irish People [see RX]; John O’Leary wrote, ‘after defying the Archbishop to "produce one ungarbled passage in support of his assertion [that the nationalist press is vilifying the Catholic Church]", he proceeds to carry the war into the enemy’s camp [in The Irish People, 1865, 39th issue]. "If faith and morals have been subverted in his diocese, let him charge it to his won imprudence, or attribute it to his own neglect. The doctrines which subverted the faith or debauched the morals of his flock were not taught in the columns of the Irish People [sic]. What we have taught, and what we shall continue to teach, is, that Dr Cullen or any other ecclesiastic is not to be followed as a guide to politics ... We have yet to hear what Dr Cullen did previous to the establishment of those journals pretending to be the organs of the Irish people to limit the circulation in Ireland of journals really subversive of faith and morals. What steps did he take with reference to Reynolds’ publications, Family Herald, Penny Dispatches, and other cheap periodicals. We leave Harlots’ Progresses and horrible suicides to cheap English publications. We have no need of such heroes ... We find heroes enough, both lay and clerical, amid the traitors to Ireland ... Dr Cullen expects to crush the cause of Ireland ... Dr Cullen knows that, though the Irish People should find no difficulty in refuting his statement, the poison of his pastoral is diffused through a thousand channels through which the refutation can never enter. &c" John O’Leary, in Recollections (1896), Chp. IX, written in 1893 [256-59]; ... men like Kickham thought Irish soldiers in the American Civil War used be used as soon as possible for fighting in Ireland, 263; Devoy gives the story of Stephen’s escape from a cell in Richmond Prison next but one to Kickham’s (Recollections, 1929), 269; Kickham opposed to the New Departure (i.e., the IRB’s treaty with Butt’s IPP), 276; Kickham, as political prisoner, 281; among Fred Ryan’s list of English-speaking nationalists (Dana 1904), 999;, BIOG, 367, b. Mullinahone, Co. Tipperary; deaf and sight damaged by gunpowder at 14; in hiding after 1848; IRB, and ed. of The Irish People, 1865; COMM, PS O’Hegarty, ‘Kickham’s Novels,’ IBL XXVI (1938) 41-43; R. V. Comerford, Charles J Kickham: A Study in Irish Nationalism and Literature (Dublin: Wolfhound 1979). See also David James O’Donoghue, ‘The Literature of ‘67’, in Shamrock, 30 (1893)
Kevin Rockett, Luke Gibbons, John Hill, et al., eds., Cinema & Ireland (London: Routledge 1988), lists Knocknagow, filmed 1917; produced by Film Co., of Ireland, dir. Fred O’Donovan; inspired by screening of D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation; its success in Ireland only exceeded by Willy Reilly. [q.p.]
Anthony Slide, The Cinema and Ireland (1988), p.12-14, notes that the most important of the Film company of |Ireland productions was Knocknagow, adapted by Mrs NF Patton from the popular and still in print novel by Kickham. Initially nine reels, the film ... was released as a six-reeler, directed by Fred O;Donovan, who also acted, with Nora Clancey, Valentine Roberts, Kathleen Murphy, Arthur Shields, Brian McGowan, Alice Keating, Kathleen O’Connor, and Cyril Cusack. ‘Terrific success’. Slide offers this summary, set in Ireland of the 1850s, concerns Arthur O’Connor, who gives up the notion of a priest when he falls in love with Mary Kearney; peasants oppressed by absentee landlord Sir Garrett Butler; Irish nationalism very apparent in the titles such as ‘In the name of the law that protects you, the huts are pulled down that the people may perish; there will be an awful reckoning, in not in our time then later’; and ‘its a land of plenty, and God forgive those who come to Ireland to starve the irish’; and ‘What curse is on an Irishman that he cannot have even proverty’s crumbs for his dear ones?’. The film was nevertheless well reviewed in England, ‘There is more than a soupcon of underlying propaganda about this native Irish production, which, although it has many technical faults, is by no means without charm and interest.’ (Bioscope, 16 Oct. 1919). ... The film was Michael MacLiammoir’s first appearance under his adopted name; Nora Clancey appeared, being married to Fred O’Donovan. The film opened in Clonmel at Magner’s Cinema Feb 6 1918, and was trade shown in Dublin at the Sackville St Picture House, 6 Feb 1918. The Boston Globe reviewed, ‘The best photography we have seen in any European picture to date is in Knocknagow. The acting is remarkable for its naturalness and the Irish pictures have surely won a place in the American markets on their merits.’ (p.14).
Sally Cavanagh (1869) bears an epigraph from a poem by Thomas Davis: ‘The child of a peasant; yet England’s proud queen / Has less rank in her heart and less grace in her mien’. Knocknagow (1873) has another from the same writer: ‘Yet meet him in his cabin rude / Or dancing with his dark-haired Mary / You’d swear they knew no other mood / But mirth and love in Tipperary.’
W. B. Yeats’s poem ‘The Ballad of the Foxhunter’ is ‘founded on an ancient incident, probably itself a Tipperary tradition, in Kickham’s Knocknagow’ (Variorum Poems, p.798; cited in Daniel Albright, ed., Poems, 1992, p.426). Yeats’s poem was first publ. in East and West (Nov. 1889), and after had its second printing in United Irishman (28 May 1892) where it carried the subtitle information, ‘An incident from Kickham’s Knocknagow.’ The huntsman in Kickham is named Rody also. Yeats included some other items from Knocknagow in his anthology Representative Irish Tales (1891), while still other material from it had been used in Wanderings of Oisin (1889). See A. N. Jeffares, A New Commentary on the Poems of W. B. Yeats (London: Macmillan 1988), p.53.
James Joyce held a copy R. G. Walshe, Knocknagow (Dublin: James Duffy 1917), a play based on Kickham’s novel, in his Trieste library. (See Richard Ellmann, The Consciousness of James Joyce, London: Faber, 1977, p.130 [Appendix].)
F. S. L. Lyons points out that for Charles Kickham the famine was a watershed in that it ‘wiped out a paternalism which, if sometimes vicious, could also be benevolent and had substituted in its place the cash nexus.’ (Ireland Since the Famine, 1971, p.128; quoted in Robert Welch, Irish Poetry from Moore to Yeats, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980, p.138.)
British Library holds [1] Life and Times of Charles J. Kickham.. pp. xiv. 146. J. Duffy & Co.: Dublin, 1915. 8o. [2] Charles Joseph Kickham, patriot and poet: a memoir. 64pp. J. Duffy & Co.: Dublin, 1914. 8o. [3] For the Old Land. A tale of twenty years ago ... With twenty-two illustrations. 188pp. M. H. Gill and Son: Dublin, 1886. 8o. [4] For the Old Land. A tale of twenty years ago. (Sally Cavanagh; or, the untenanted graves.). 2 pt. Ford’s National Library: New York, 1887. 8o. [5] Knocknagow; or, the Homes of Tipperary ... Twenty-fifth edition. xxii. 9-628pp. J. Duffy & Co.: Dublin, 1930. 8o. [6] Knocknagow; or, the Homes of Tipperary. [A novel.]. Dublin, [1879.] 8o. [7] Saile Ní Chaomhánaigh; nó, Na huaigheanna Folamha ... Máirtín Ó Cadhain do chuir i nGaedhilg. 251pp. Oifig Díolta Foillseacháin Rialtais: Baile Átha Cliath, 1932. 8o. [8] Sally Ca[v]anagh; or, the Untenanted Graves. A tale of Tipperary. [With a portrait.]. Dublin, 1869. 8o. [9] [Tales of Tipperary.] [missing details] 155pp. [missing details] 1953. 8o. [10] The Eagle of Garryroe. 171pp. Martin Lester: Dublin, [1920.] 8o. [11] The Eagle of Garryroe and Tales of Tipperary. 2 pt. Talbot Press: Dublin, 1963. 8o. [12] The Old Land ... New edition. 384pp. M. H. Gill & Son: Dublin, 1904. 8o. [13] The Valley near Slievenamon. A Kickham Anthology ... Compiled and edited by James Maher, etc. [With illustrations, including portraits.]. pp. xx. 365. Kilkenny People: Kilkenny, [1942.] 8o. [14] [missing details] (For the Old Land.) [missing details] etc. 421pp. [1939.] 8o. [15] [missing details], etc.. 1924, 29. 8o. [Missing details due to faulty BL entries codes.]
Belfast Central Public Library holds Sally Cavanagh; Knocknagow; Tales Of Tipperary, and also The Eagle of Garryroe (n.d.)
|
|
[ top ] |
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)