Shock Shootout at Shercock’s Fighting Fair
This is the first of two columns on the infamous Fighting Fair of Shercock in 1814 by Jonathan Smyth in the latest Times Past column...
The television never went on early in the mornings, but I remember Christmastime in the 1980s that the telly was belting out those great black and white Tarzan movies each morning. Based on the novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes lived in the jungle where life was at its most primitive. Sometimes his habitat experienced an unwanted interruption from uncivilised visitors possessed of lower ideals who came to plunder and rob.
Looking at today's world, we observe wars and tragedy everywhere, so, the other day in a moment of reverie, I wondered, hypothetically, what if we were to equate world leaders to characters in a Tarzan story? Who might be what? Sadly, conflicts can ruin the most progressive societies. Differences of opinion, and tempers lost, uprisings and territorial wars are as old as the Earth itself, and they regularly manifest throughout history. There is hardly a year that did not produce a battle.
In ancient times, bust-ups regularly brewed between regional kings across Ireland who tenaciously defended their kingdoms. That brings me to the peacemakers. I have a great fondness for the famous peacemaker Nelson Mandela who in his wisdom, once said, ‘you will achieve more in this world through acts of mercy than you will through acts of retribution.’ Unkind acts and hateful attitudes have a knack of persisting, but so does kindness and the call to treat others as you, yourself, would like to be treated.
Often, localised, provincial spats erupted, which were often violent and bloody in nature. An extraordinary example was the infamous Fighting Fair of Shercock in 1814. The trauma of this tragedy was indelibly imprinted on the minds of many inhabitants, and it received coverage in all major newspapers of the day.
The Liverpool Mercury took its cue from the Ulster Recorder labelling the terrorism, as being the ‘fruit of Orangeism’. However, the ‘fruit’ referenced may be interpreted as the product of a sustained campaign of propaganda, which came about following the Act of Union. It would be learned later that there are always more sides to a story. Unfortunately, the guns in the hands of the Orangemen did not help in the Shercock situation.
Just 16 years earlier, many Catholic and Protestant people fought together in the 1798 Rising. Earlier again, in 1791, Theobald Wolfe Tone co-founded the United Irishmen ‘to unite Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter under the common name of Irishmen in order to break the connection with England’, which he perceived to be ‘the never failing source of all our political evils’.
In 1795, three years prior to the said rebellion, the Orange Order was founded to counteract the popularity of the United Irishmen. Later, the Act of Union, passed in 1800 ‘by means of legal and illegal machinations’, abolished the Irish Parliament and placed complete control of Irish affairs in London’s hands. Egged on by the English parliament, a sustained campaign of propaganda using Orange Order connections in cahoots with the ascendancy had aimed to discourage Irish Protestants from contemplating future co-operation with their Catholic neighbours as they had in 1798.
‘Class consciousness’ whereby one might become aware of one’s place in society and the realisation of one’s shared interests with others was not likely to be tolerated if it should interrupt the status quo in the parliament.
Fair Day, May 30th, 1814
As we have mentioned, blame in the Shercock affray was laid squarely at the feet of the Orange associations, or so it was suggested by the Ulster Recorder who asserted, ‘we have not hesitated to ascribe the sanguinary scenes of which this is our distressing duty this day to publish, the fruitful parents of our great miseries in the north of Ireland, (are) the orange associations.’
News of the sensation caused by the saddening scenes spread throughout the country and seeped into British newspapers. The ‘calamity’ as it was dubbed and the resultant heinous bloodshed inflicted upon an innocent people was said to have impacted ordinary families who were of an ‘industrious and humble’ nature, coming from the town and environs within an ‘eight miles’ radius of Cootehill. Persons who died were mostly of the Catholic faith, with the exception of a man and woman who were Protestant. In all, 22 people were killed. They were shot by muskets, which the press said were ‘placed in the rioter's hands by the government of the day’, supposedly, they added, for the purpose of ‘protecting the peace and tranquillity’ of the locality.
Violence suddenly erupted at the Shercock Fair when matters allegedly turned sour between a constable and a man leading his horse through the town whom the lawman had asked to stop. The policeman did not think it was sensible to ‘parade horses’ around the main thoroughfare while people were conducting business and informed the man to either sit on his horse or take it away. The owner angrily refused to be ordered about, and the constable was struck, knocking him to the ground.
The horse owner had friends amongst the Orangemen of the town who defended him. However, the majority of those attending the Fair were Catholic and they did not know what caused the ‘quarrel’, and yet when confronted by the Orangemen, they had no hesitation to fight them. The Orangemen quickly retreated to certain houses from which they grabbed guns and fired them into a crowd of unarmed citizens. The streets emptied rapidly, and the men emerged from the houses and ‘pursued their prey and shot them down on the road’, which is how one report described the unfolding situation. The terror lasted from five o’clock in the afternoon until 11 o’clock that night. Noticeably, and to the publics disgust, none of the local magistrates intervened to quell the anger.
The only figure to receive commendation for his display of leadership was the Rev Thomas Blake. The Ulster Recorder stated, ‘were it not for the Rev Mr Blake’, a Catholic parish priest, the whole village of Shercock would likely have been burned to the ground by the people’ and continued, ‘this gentleman exhibited a heroism on this occasion which does him immortal credit’ having ‘conquered the vengeance of his parishioners and made them spare even their enemies.’
None of this should have happened had the Orangemen no recourse to arms, emphasised the report; but it was the government’s policy of ‘folly’ to arm and support them. A similar incident had taken place at Kilkeel where people on both sides of the altercation received equal punishment.
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