A lot of 2021 has been spent furiously writing and rewriting the new book - The Ghost Limb: Searching for the Spirit of 1798. And also out in the world, actively in pursuit of it.
I’ve found that the spirit of 1798 is alive and well. It thrives in the cultural underground. Friends and neighbours from diverse backgrounds actively sharing and mingling their lives. Many of us are telling new stories about being Protestants in Northern Ireland. Beginning to imagine a different future.
My year has been filled with adventures in lost heritage. Often at events and tours with Reclaim the Enlightenment, and even more often with friends. I’ve made a few graveside orations and given short talks, particularly about the women of the 1790s. We have celebrated Bastille Day like the United Irish before us. We have laid wreaths for William Orr. Walked in the footsteps of the Antrim rebels. Bribed our kids with ice-cream to help us find forgotten radicals.
A few months ago, I organised an event at the Betsy Gray café in Six Road Ends in County Down. Betsy Gray was a United Irishwoman who died in the Battle of Ballynahinch in 1798. We gathered friends, neighbours, writers and descendants to share local United Irish stories. People from all different religions and politics. Sitting together, drinking tea and eating sausage rolls. Telling stories about the past and about our lives now. Comfortable enough to venture into prickly territory. This is what 1798 can do. For me, it’s not about engaging romantically with the past. It’s about enjoying the diverse community, relationships and conversations 1798 can awaken in the present.
My friend Stephen Baker, who tells his own story in The Ghost Limb, emails me after reading some early drafts. He says, “I’ve often felt that the there is a post-1798 melancholia in the north. A sort of community of mournful heritage enthusiasts longing for what might have been. But that’s changed now. This feels like a moment of opportunity. It’s also the start of something. The excavation, the recovery, the digging is necessary work. But we can’t hang around in graveyards forever paying our respects to the ghosts of dead generations. When we’ve done our excavations, what do we begin to build?”
And that is what this journey has always been about. Looking back, being present, imagining futures. Creating new stories of what is possible. Asking what do we want to build?
Most photos phone pics. Others (the good ones) courtesy of Mark Doherty.