Memory of the Dead, The

DESCRIPTION: "Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight? Who blushes at the name?" The listeners are urged to recall the soldiers of the Irish rebellion, and to cherish their values
AUTHOR: Words: Joseph Kells Ingram (1823-1907)
EARLIEST DATE: 1843 (Zimmerman-SongsOfIrishRebellion: "According to _The Nation_, 12 April, 1843, 'The Memory of the Dead' was first sung in a 'Symposium' held on St. Patrick's Day")
KEYWORDS: Ireland rebellion memorial
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1798 - the 1798 Rebellion
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (12 citations):
O'Conor-OldTimeSongsAndBalladOfIreland, pp. 48-49, "The Memory of the Dead" (1 text)
Zimmerman-SongsOfIrishRebellion 51, "The Memory of the Dead" (1 text, 1 tune)
Moylan-TheAgeOfRevolution-1776-1815 136, "The Memory of the Dead" (1 text, 1 tune)
Galvin-IrishSongsOfResistance, pp. 39-40, "The Memory of the Dead" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hylands-Mammoth-Hibernian-Songster, p. 64, "The Memory of the Dead" (1 text)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #1418, p. 96, "Memory of the Dead. 'Who Fears to Speak of Ninety-Eight?'" (1 reference)
DT, MEMRYDED*
ADDITIONAL: Edward Hayes, The Ballads of Ireland (Boston, 1859), Vol I, pp. 276-277, "The Memory of the Dead"
Kathleen Hoagland, editor, One Thousand Years of Irish Poetry (New York, 1947), pp. 505-506, "The Memory of the Dead (1798)" (1 text)
H. Halliday Sparling, Irish Minstrelsy (London, 1888), pp. 63-64, 501, "The Memory of the Dead"
Charles Sullivan, ed., Ireland in Poetry, p. 90, "The Memory of the Dead" (1 text)
Donagh MacDonagh and Lennox Robinson, _The Oxford Book of Irish Verse_ (Oxford, 1958, 1979), pp. 80-82, "The Memory of the Dead" (1 text)
Roud #V5143
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Orange Yeomanry of '98" (lyrics)
SAME TUNE:
Easter Week (The Song of 1916)/Who Fears to Speak of Easter Week (Kathleen Hoagland, editor, One Thousand Years of Irish Poetry (New York, 1947), pp. 263-264; C. Desmond Greaves, _The Easter Rising in Song and Ballad_ (Kahn & Averill, London, 1980), pp. 28-29)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Who Fears to Speak of Ninety-Eight?
NOTES [111 words]: According to Robert Kee in The Most Distressful Country (being Volume I of The Green Flag), p. 203, this poem served to rehabilitate Ireland's memory of the 1798 rebellion, which at the time it was published "had been under a polite historical cloud for nearly half a century."
In an irony pointed out by the semi-parody "The Orange Yeomanry of '98," it was initially published anonymously.
In another irony, Ruth Dudley Edwards, The Seven: The Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic, Oneworld Books, 2016, p. 41 note, says that author Ingram was not an Irish nationalist because he thought Ireland incapable of governing itself. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: PGa039

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