Rody McCorley

DESCRIPTION: Rody McCorley is betrayed in Ballyscullion by Dufferin and McErlean. Testimony that he was "a foe unto the crown" leads to prison in Ballymena and hanging "upon Good Friday... Convenient to the Bridge of Toome"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1965 (OLochlainn-MoreIrishStreetBallads)
KEYWORDS: rebellion betrayal execution prison trial Ireland patriotic
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
February 28, 1800 - Rody McCorley hanged in Toome. (source: Moylan-TheAgeOfRevolution-1776-1815 citing John Moulden) [but see NOTES]
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (3 citations):
OLochlainn-MoreIrishStreetBallads 21, "Rody McCorley" (1 text, 1 tune)
Moylan-TheAgeOfRevolution-1776-1815 122, "Rody McCorley" (1 text, 1 tune)
Graham-Joe-Holmes-SongsMusicTraditionsOfAnUlsterman 13, "Come Tender-Hearted Christians" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #5279
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Roddy McCorley" (subject)
NOTES [288 words]: OLochlainn-MoreIrishStreetBallads: "This is the authentic 1798 ballad"
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 this is accurate he might have been executed Good Friday, April 6, 1798 or, more likely, March 22, 1799 [but see Moylan's note].
The ballad is recorded on two of the CD's issued around the time of the bicentenial of the 1798 Irish Rebellion. See:
Roisin White, "Rody McCorley" (on "The Croppy's Complaint," Craft Recordings CRCD03 (1998); Terry Moylan notes)
Franke Harte and Donal Lunny, "Roddy McCorley" (on Franke Harte and Donal Lunny, "1798 the First Year of Liberty," Hummingbird Records HBCD0014 (1998)) - BS
Graham-Joe-Holmes-SongsMusicTraditionsOfAnUlsterman notes a newspaper report that it was ROGER MacCorley who was executed on February 28, 1800 and buried beneath the gallows by the Bann.
Few histories even mention McCorley. The only one I found to allude to him was A. T. Q. Stewart, The Summer Soldiers: The 1798 Rebellion in Antrim and Down, Blackstaff Press, 1995. On p. 156, we learn, "If the Toome rebels are remembered at all, it is beause 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 'nera the Bridge of Toome' on Good Friday, 1799."
In the footnote to this passage (on p. 271), Stewart adds, "Though hardly mentioned in the Presbyterian annals, Roddy McCorley is a major figure in nationalist mythology because he became the subject of a famous song." - RBW
Last updated in version 5.2
File: OLcM021

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