Roddy McCorley

DESCRIPTION: "Oh see the fleet-foot host of men..." who are hurrying to stage a rescue. "For young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today." They are too late. The song recalls McCorley's actions; he would not turn traitor even to save his life
AUTHOR: Words: Ethna Carberry (1866-1902)
EARLIEST DATE: c.1798 (Zimmerman-SongsOfIrishRebellion)
KEYWORDS: Ireland rebellion death execution
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
February 28, 1800 - Rody McCorley hanged in Toome. (source: Moylan-TheAgeOfRevolution-1776-1815 citing John Moulden)
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (5 citations):
OLochlainn-MoreIrishStreetBallads 100, "Rody MacCorley" (1 text, 1 tune)
Zimmerman-SongsOfIrishRebellion 17, "Rody Mac Corly" (1 text, 1 tune)
Moylan-TheAgeOfRevolution-1776-1815 123, "Rody MacCorley" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 324, "Roddy McCorley" (1 text)
DT, RMCORLEY*
Roud #5279
RECORDINGS:
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, "Roddy McCorley" (on IRClancyMakem02)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Rody McCorley" (subject)
NOTES [478 words]: The Fiddler's Companion site says "McCurley was a County Antrim rebel leader in the rising of 1798."
The rebels [were] defeated at Antrim in June 1798. If any of [the details in the song "Rody McCorley are] accurate he might have been executed Good Friday, April 6, 1798 or, more likely, March 22, 1799.
Zimmerman-SongsOfIrishRebellion: "Rody McCorley was hanged c.1798." [But see Moylan's note.]
Stewart, p. 156, gives this account: "If the Toome rebels are remembered at all, it is because of Roddy McCorley. A young Presbyterian from Duneane whose family had been evicted from their farm after the death of his father, he was in hiding for nearly a year after the rebellion before being betrayed, tried by court martial at Ballymena, and hanged 'near the Bridge of Toome' on Good Friday, 1799." In the footnote to this paragraph, Stewart adds, "Though hardly mentioned in Presbyterian annals, Roddy McCorley is a major figure in nationalist martyrology because he became the subject of a famous song." Guess which one.
Moylan-TheAgeOfRevolution-1776-1815: "...by Ethna Carberry (Anna [Johnson] MacManus b. 1866), was written in the 1890s and may have been based on ["Rody McCorley"]. - BS
According to Hoagland, 1000 Years of Irish Poetry, p. 775, the name was spelled "Carbery" (a spelling supported by Granger's Index to Poetry and by Boylan) though Robert Gogan, 130 Great Irish Ballads [third edition, Music Ireland, 2004], p. 112, has the spelling "Ethna Carbury"); her collected poems were published posthumously in The Four Winds of Erin. Granger's cites six of her poems; this, interestingly, is not among them.
Boylan does not have a biography of McCorley, but does (p. 50) have a short one of Carbery:
CARBERY, ETHNA: pen-name of Anna MacManus, née Johnston (1866-1911), writer. Born Ballymena, Co. Antrim [the scene of McCorley's fight, I note]. Her writing did much to stimulate the early Sinn Féin movement. She wrote many poems for the Nation, United Ireland, etc. and with Alice Milligan founded a monthly paper, the Northern Patriot, in conjunction with a Belfast workingmen's club" -- then split with the club and founded the Shan Van Vocht.
Boylan's death date appears to be an error. Hoagland gives her death date as 1902, and Power, p. 160, refers to "Ethna Carbery of Belfast whose theme is Donegal and whose fame rests on one volume alone -- The Four Winds of Erin. This was published posthumously in 1902. She essentially belongs to the nationalistic ballad tradition which goes back to the Nation writers. Among her ballads is Rody Mac Corley, a ballad which has been incorporated into the ballad tradition of the people, its authorship forgotten to a large extent. But the bulk of her verse evokes the landscape and life of the people of Donegal among whom she lived for the last few years of her short life." .- RBW..
Bibliography

Boylan: Henry Boylan, A Dictionary of Irish Biography, second edition, St. Martin's Press, 1988
Power: Patrick C. Power, A Literary History of Ireland, Mercier Press, 1969
Stewart: A. T. Q. Stewart, The Summer Soldiers: The 1798 Rebellion in Antrim and Down, Blackstaff Press, 1995

Last updated in version 6.4
File: FSWB324

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