Today, the Cork Fenian Society will host a commemoration to mark the 200th anniversary of Cath Chéim an Fhia (Battle of Keimaneigh), a battle between Irish tenant farmers – organized in secret, agrarian reform societies known chiefly as The Whiteboys and The Rockites – against the British militia in 1822.
On a frigid January 22 1822, a troop of yeoman cavalry left Bantry with the intention of quelling rebel Rockite activity around the Millstreet area, in the rugged mountainous region of West Cork. Close to Béal Átha an Ghaorthaigh (Ballingeary), in a narrow precipitous pass they were suddenly ambushed by a group of about 200 local Irish who hurled stones from the high ground onto the mounted yeomen below. The rebels also had a number of firearms and after a short skirmish, the yeomen retreated back to Bantry.
The ferocity of the ambush took the authorities by surprise and they did not venture back again. This area was always a loosely controlled and hard to temper region, and the likelihood of revolt coupled with the ideal terrain for guerrilla insurgence meant that the people here always had something of an indomitable spirit.
These agitationist –the Rockites and the Whiteboys- groups were chiefly a loosely organised reaction to economic and penal strife which was always simmering in the penal times in Ireland, but were exacerbated from time to time by wider international events. Following the Napoleonic wars where agricultural prices had risen steadily, an economic crash brought these same prices to rock bottom, leaving the agriculturally based economy of Ireland in dire straits.
Rising markets had also meant rising rents as rack-renting landlords sought to profit, but in the ensuing crash the landlords, who most times were absentee landlords, would not reduce the rents. This resulted in mass evictions and severe discontent.
Another outcome of this was that it put agricultural labourers and small and strong farmers in the same economic predicament and united them against the landlords and protestant clergy, and this exploded into an all out rebellion loosely united under a secret leader who went by the name of Captain Rock.
The Rockite movement was “a protest against the Tithe system, High Rents, Eviction at will and the other abuses inflicted on tenant farmers by the Landlords.”
Historian Ann Murphy notes that a train of events had been set in motion ten days previously, on January 11/12th when “a skirmish took place at Keimaneigh between members of the Rockites and the group of Yeomanry which had been mobilised by Lord Bantry and Captain White of Glengarriff. The skirmish occurred after the Whiteboys had raided the homes of the gentry in the Bantry area in search of ammunition.”
On the 22nd, the rebels mounted a much more significant ambush at the Pass of Keimaneigh (Céim an Fhia – the leap of the deer) described as a “precipitous ravine” in Uibh Laoire, which at the time “would have been an almost impossible route amongst huge boulders, screes and dense vegetation. The only usable route across the ridge was high above the cliffs on the south side, and this was little more then a meandering sheep track through very rough country.”
“The young men who gathered above Keimaneigh that January in 1822 in appalling weather, were a small but important part of the general movement throughout the Country to rid us of tyranny, and we should not forget them and their contribution,” one local historian wrote.
“The Whiteboy movement was made up of people from the local communities in which Whiteboy groups operated. For example, at the Battle of Keimaneigh ……local men including the sons of the famous poet were involved in the battle against a group of yeomanry led by Lord Bantry,” Ann Murphy notes.
Today’s commemoration seeks to “commemorate the courageous Whiteboys (Buachaillí Bána) who took part in the battle. One Yoeman, John Smyth, and three Whiteboys were killed in the battle. They were Fionnbarra Ó Laoghaire, Michéal Ó Cathasaigh, and Amhlaoibh Ó Loinsígh, with a fourth, Éamonn Ó Rinn being executed shortly afterwards at Deshure.”
A plaque at the spot is inscribed as follows:
“I gcuimhne na bhfear a cailleadh i gCath Cheim an Fhia
in Eanair na bliana 1822.Mícheál Ó Cathasaigh, Barra Ó Laoire,
Amhlaoibh Ó Loinsigh, (Buachaillí Bána Áitiúla).
Seán mac Gabhann (Fórsaí na nGall).
Crocadh Éamonn Ó Rinn i Márta 1822.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a n-anamacha.”
“To commemorate those who died at and after the Battle of Keimaneigh
January 1822.
Michael Casey, Barry O’Leary, Auliffe Lynch,
Edward Ring (local Whiteboys)
John Smith (Crown Forces)
May they rest in peace.”
The battle was captured memorably by Máire Bhuí Ní Laoghaire, a most marvelous poet who wrote the stirring and lyrical ‘Cath Céim an Fhia’ which has been widely sung every since, by the inimitable Peaití Thaidhg Pheig, the glorious voice of Diarmuidín Ó Súilleabháin amongst others.
The people of this area are proud of the part that their own ancestors took at this time when they were oppressed by superior might and unjust laws, and they rightly sing the song composed by Máire Buí, who according to some was on the high ground throwing rocks herself. My uncle, who is now passed God rest him, once told me of a conversation he had with a Cúil Aodha man –I think it was Maidhcí Ó Súilleabháin – when they once were in Millstreet, which is worth recounting.
“Do you see the head of them,” his friend said. “Cromwell sent a battalion of horse up from Cork to Killarney and they went into the woods at Millstreet. 200 men went in and not a button came out the other side.”
It’s an extraordinary story, and I’m sure it is exaggerated, but with a reputation like this in the minds of its people it is no wonder the Yeomen were reluctant to venture into the mountain passes and it is no wonder Tom Barry could forge his famous flying column 100 years after Céim an Fhia.
Other songs told of the Whiteboys or Rockities – those who followed leaders known as ‘Captain Rock’ during decades of agrarian unrest in Ireland as ordinary people chafed against the oppression of the British Empire.
See this story told by Pádraig Ó Murchadha from Céim an Fhiaidh, Béal Átha’n Ghaorthaidh school