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Who were "The Men of the West"? Folk historiographies and the reconstruction of Democratic histories
Folklore, August, 2004 by Guy Beiner
Altogether, a rich inventory exists of several hundred folklore sources relating to the events of 1798 in Connacht. Examination of these folk history narratives, which have largely been neglected by historians, challenges prevailing historiographical trends. Folk historiography exposes the elitist agenda of academic histories of 1798, which is evident in their tendency to focus on a limited "pantheon" of military and political leaders. Primarily a community activity, folk history-telling is in essence an expression of a "people's history," in so far as it was a historical discourse recalling the experiences of "common" people and narrated by their descendants. The democratisation of the historical subject occurs in folklore through two main processes: either in the transformation of the image of "major historical heroes so as to reflect popular reception of their character or, alternatively, by the inclusion of local heroes, so as to broaden the scope of the historical agenda. Both of these processes reflect the way historical events were perceived, narrated, remembered, and sometimes even commemorated, by members of local communities. By posing the questions of who were the heroes of the vernacular histories of "The Year of the French" and how were they represented, this article proposes to demonstrate how the study of historical folklore accounts can suggest new directions towards more democratic ways of narrating the past.
Humbert
Most scholarly histories of the Rebellion in Counacht centre on the military campaign and tend to focus primarily on the leadership of the French commander, General Humbert. In folklore, General Humbert (ymber) was localised to Humbert ("hVmb@:t). Sometimes the pronunciation of his name was further distorted. The writer Frank O'Connor recalled meeting an old man from county Longford, whose grandfather had participated in the rising: "Yes, his grandfather had told him all about the French invasion of 1798 under General Humbert--u'ber Grandfather used to call it" (O'Connor n.d., 286). [2] The difference in names is not merely semantic, for in folklore accounts the French general was transformed into an entirely different character, reflecting the way his persona was perceived by Irish locals and reconstructed in storytelling traditions.
Humbert left a distinct impression on the people of the Kilcummin where he landed. In particular, the memory of his despair occasioned by the local recruits who joined his army lingered on for at least two generations. A local resident, George Mounelly, recounted an account of the landing he had heard from his grandfather, who had been there at the time. Regarding local enlistment he said:
A lot of the fishermen here got guns and joined them. And 'twas one of the Kilcummin fisherman, a man named Hegarty that nearly shot General Humbert by accident when they got into Killala. But Humbert didn't blame him; he blamed them that gave a gun to a man that didn't rightly know how to use it (Hayes 1979, 216-8).
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