Life
1816-1877, b. Kilbeheny, Co. Limerick; ed. Cork, and TCD (Classics); supported
Repeal Association; joined Young Ireland; seceded from O’Connell,
1845; involved with William Smith O’Brien in 1848 Rising; attempted
to organise a further rebellion, fighting at action in Ballingarry on
Waterford-Kilkenny border; escaped to France, lived in of poverty and
taught English; encountered James Stephens; emig. USA 1852 with Michael
Doheny [var. 1853 DIH]; helped found Emmet Monument Assoc. in NY, 1854;
published English trans. of Keating’s Forus Feasa na hEirinn
(NY 1857); founded Fenian brotherhood with Stephens and Doheny, 1858;
raising $400 to establish IRB in Ireland, establishing a branch simultaneously
in America; directed American Fenian movement as Head Centre until 1867;
visited Ireland, 1860, returning in 1861 for funeral of Terence Bellew
MacManus; organised 99th New York National Guard (Fenian Regt.) in American
Civil War, 1861-65, serving as colonel; defended the Fenian spy 'Red' Jim MacDermott;
lost position as Head Centre to Co. W. E. Roberts, leader of Senate Wing,
during reorganisation of Fenians, 1865; opposed attack on Canada and urged
Stephens to bring on Irish rising; lived precariously in NY after 1867
failure. Stephens sought to heal breach between O’Mahoney and Roberts
but was himself deposed by Thomas J. Kelly (who led the Chester raid and
was himself rescued by the Manchester Martyrs); betrayed by MacDermott
in his attempt to capture island of Compo Bello off New Brunswick; later
years in obscurity, suffered mental breakdown prior to death in obscure
poverty; d. 7 Feb., NY, buried Glasnevin, with large funeral; classical
and Irish scholar. DNB DIB DIW DIH FOST FDA OCIL
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Works
John O’Mahoney, trans., Geoffrey Keating, The History of Ireland
(NY: P. M.Haverty 1857); A Book of Memory: The Birthday Book of the
Blessed Dead (London: Hodder & Stoughton [1906]); rep. as A
Little Book for John O’Mahony’s Friends (Petersfield: Pear
Tree Books P. 1906), another ed. (Portland, Maine: Thomas B Mosher 1909),
with memoir by Katherine Tynan [of her brother-in- law].
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Notes
Roy
Foster, Modern Ireland (1988): O’Mahony joined Repeal
Association, then YI, 1845; Irish Confederation with Smith O’Brien,
1848; escaped to France, moved to NY, 1852; cofounded Emmet Assocation,
1855; trans. Keating, 1857; inaugurated Fenianism in proposing new revolutionary
organisation to Stephens, 1958; organised Fenian regiment, as Colonel,
in Civil War, 1861-65; ceased to be Head Centre with rise of ‘Senate’
wing, 1865; no further political influence; d. NY, bur. Glasnevin. Also,
under Stephens, infra, Stephens blamed O’Mahony for delay of revolution,
1861; but also, Stephens denounced for delay, 1867. See also short section
in Desmond Ryan, The Singing Flame (1978). SEE also Foster, Modern
Ireland, 1988, pp.390-91, The word ‘Fenian’ arose in Ireland
during the MacPherson controvery and referred solely to Fionn Mac Cumhaill
[until] about 1858 [when] it was given political resonance when it was
appropriated by John O’Mahoney for the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
See Michael Mac Craith, ‘The Saga of James MacPherson’s Ossian’,
in Linen Hall Review (Sept 1991), pp.5-9 [and CRITIC]. Foster narrates,
The name is appositely vague for a movement that emerged, rather than
being founded. Though formally constituted as the Irish Republican Brotherhood
in 1858, the Gaelicist label Fenian (a reference to the Fianna army in
the medieval saga of Fionn MacCumhail) was the identification that stuck.
It brought together remnants of Anglophobic Young Ireland like John O’Mahony,
and James Stephens, organisers of local nationalist clubs like O’Donovan
Rossa, and expatriate nationalists who formed societies with code names
like the Emmet Monument Association. Technically the IRB was a conspiratorial,
pledge-bound secret society based in Ireland, while the Fenian Brotherhood
was a support organisation, largely based in America, intended to provide
the sinew of war; but Fenian did duty for both. In fact, the IRB in its
early days avoided naming itself altogether, the organisation, the brother
hood, the firm, served as identification ... occupied natural place in
Irish political life [Townsend] ... adopted ehtos of secret societies
such as Ribbonmen ... view of England as satanic power on earth and mystic
commitment to Ireland, and belief that an independent Irish republic ‘virtually’
established in the hearts of men, possessed a superior moral authority.
See also bio-note on O’Mahony. NOTE that there is no reference to
him in McCarthy, Irish Literature (1904), presumably in keeping
with IPP politics. NOTE vars., 1819 (DIW), and 1815 (DIH).
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, p.243.
Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde (1974), John O’Mahony (1815-1877), Fenian organiser; 25 years in US, where he died in poverty; keen interest in Irish language; his translation of Keating’s history of Ireland at the top of Douglas Hyde’s list of Anglo-Irish books; because of technical breach in copyright, using with full acknowledgements the notes from O’Donovan’s edition of Annals of the Four Masters, the sale of the book was prohibited in Ireland [n., 207] Hyde’s ‘O’Mahoney’s Lament’ [i.e., John O’Mahony], read by Hyde to Sigerson, Tynan, Taylor, Rose Kavanagh, and others at John O’Leary’s house in Leinster St., is printed in Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland (1888), and also in Dublin Verses by Members of Trinity College, ed. HA Hinkson (1895). The poem was reprinted in Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland (1888). Tynan wrote of ‘Douglas Hyde’s poem on John O’Mahoney the Fenian which I have heard John O’Leary say exactly mirrored the mind of him whom Douglas Hyde had never known’. (Middle Years, p.22) [n., 207]
Belfast Public Library holds J., O’Mahoney, The Sunny Side of Ireland (n.d.) [QRY].
On several pages of The History of Ireland, O’Mahoney makes
connections in notes [pp.7, 10-11, 345, n.64] between old Fianna and the
Fenians of his own day. Desmond Ryan, in The Phoenix Flame (London:
Arthur Barker 1937), cites his notes and discusses further connections
established by the Fenians themselves and Finn and his Fianna. SEE D.
Torchiana, Backgrounds for Joyce’s Dubliners (1986), n.4&8,
p.187.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)