I was in Carlingford, County Louth this week. Its a regular haunt for my family. And the birthplace of Thomas D’Arcy McGee.

 Before this monument was unveiled (in 1991 by Taoiseach Charles Haughey and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney) I had always assumed that McGee was from Wexford but in fact he spent his early childhood in Carlingford.

A strange historical figure. It is some years since I read about him but he was involved in propaganda supporting the 1848 Rebellion in Ireland and migrated to North America, essentially as I recall “border hopping” between United States and Canada where he settled just before the American Civil War.

He was a Fenian……but went “native” in Canada opposing the Fenian Border Raids in the years after the Civil War. He became pro-British and a Conservative politician in Canada. He was assassinated, allegedly by a Fenian called Whelan. There was a show trial and Whelan was publicly hanged. Still an air of controversy about who was to blame for his death.

Last week, I posted a piece about the American Civil War……and the Fenian involvement. A lot of years ago I read a lot of stuff about the Fenians in USA, Canada and Britain. It is a controversial and even murky story riddled with treachery, spying, framing innocent people…….and almost a bizarre story of an Irish Republican organisation based OUTSIDE Ireland………in United States, Canada and Britain. An organisation referred to in the Proclamation of 1916 as “our exiled children abroad”.

Often the problem with Irish History is that it is read as an academic study OR as a recreation. It means that unless you are actually in a “class” and have a genuine academic text, there is no filter which seperates genuine research from “folk history” or even propaganda.

Sometimes I think everything that I think I know about Fenianism is based on that “folk history” mentality which embarrasses me a little.

In the case of Jacobite History…….my filter is more developed. I can spot the credible book and I can spot the crude Stuart propaganda written even today by the lunatic fringe of “modern” Jacobites and “legitimists”.