The Agreeable Recreation Of Fighting

Many scholars have suggested that violence provides a means of attaining status for those who are barred from economic or political achievement. For example, Kenneth Polk has suggested that physical violence is the means of competition for status only among groups where economic or political avenues to dominance are denied.(12) However, recreational violence in late nineteenth century Ireland was not simply a response to political oppression or dire poverty. Post-famine Ireland had actually reached new levels of political and economic sophistication. By the 1860s the Irish economy had largely recovered from the devastation of the famine and the structure of rural society was changing. The "strong" farmers who leased substantial holdings represented a growing force in the rural community. Even the smaller tenant farmers had become more vocal and politically aware. The agricultural laboring class, which had been hardest hit by the famine, was also more prosperous after the drastic decline in population had made more land and work available. Furthermore, literacy was increasing among all classes and a lively provincial press enhanced political awareness.(13)

Property and position were no guarantee of decorum. Thirty-five percent of homicides in brawls involved strong farmers or their families. As a quarter session chairman noted in 1875, "the assaults increase with the increase of prosperity of the farming-class, whose wealth, in a great measure, finds its way into the public house."(14) Though it might be argued that such rowdiness was a hold-over from earlier times in which political and economic success were effectively denied to Irish tenant farmers, it was in the most prosperous areas of the countryside that the violent traditions were longest-lived. The lack of correspondence between peace and prosperity was noted by the Munster News "There should be less cause of atrocity here than in other places. The country around is fertile; the farmers are in comfortable circumstances and a barefooted boy or girl is seldom observed."(15)

But while violence was not always motivated by economic or political concerns, it could be a response to other needs. In his study of the American West, Roger McGrath points out that even though men went to the frontier in the pursuit of material gains their fights were over the non-material values of honor, pride and courage.(16) One possible explanation for the attraction of recreational violence can be found in post-famine demographics. Throughout the nineteenth century, but especially after the famine, inheritance patterns changed. In order to keep the family farm intact only one son was chosen as heir and only one daughter dowered for marriage. In 1851, 14.5 percent of men and 13.5 percent of women over the age of thirty five had never married. By 1891, among persons over the age of thirty-five, 21.8 percent of men and 20 percent of women were single.(17) David Courtwright has recently argued that the disproportionate number of single men is a key factor in explaining the high level of violence in American society. In Courtwright's analysis the absence of family ties favors irresponsibility.(18) However, the single men of rural Ireland were subject to social controls far more repressive than those experienced by husbands and fathers. Unmarried adult children in rural Ireland could either emigrate or remain on the family farm as unpaid servants.(19) Consequently an enormous number of people were simply never allowed to function as autonomous adults. These unmarried adults were referred to as "boys and girls" and treated accordingly. Fighting was often the only opportunity many of these 'boys' had to achieve any individual status. Recreational violence was also a response to the monotony of rural life. Fighting was often one of very few leisure activities available in the countryside. The defense attorney in a case in which more than a hundred men had been involved in a brawl "alluded to the very few recreations which the country people had to amuse themselves with."(20)