The singing professor will perform tomorrow night at University College Cork. The lecture, from the former professor of Irish history at UCC, will take the form of an overview of how the bicentenary celebrations of the 1798 rebellion have gone. John A. Murphy has drawn upon varied historical sources for his lecture. He does not pretend to have produced original research, but given his background, he feels entitled to bring various strands together and to offer an opinion.
The period he will deal with is the one in which the attempted French landing at Bantry - which didn't work - gave much hope but little concrete success. He will also deal with the Munster and especially the Cork contribution to the rebellion - even the absence of it.
He will ask why, particularly in Cork, there were only pockets of resistance during the ferment of the time - a cataclysmic period in Irish politics. But Cork, he will argue, after Bantry Bay, was a place of almost complete repression, dominated by the British military. And so complete was the dominance, he says, that in Cork, bar episodes in Clonakilty, Mallow and east Cork, the insurgents were muted.
Murphy believes the bicentenary celebrations were not only prompted by the Government but that there was a benign agenda on the part of the State. It was to show, he will tell his audience, that back then, if Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter could pull together, why couldn't the disparate groups who are party to the Belfast Agreement do to same?
That's one view. His is that the level of unanimity in 1798 has probably been oversold.
Should historians be able to sing? John. A believes they should, because ballads are an important part of the historical record. He does admit, without wishing to denigrate his fellow historians, that those who cannot warble are inclined to push the power of the ballad underground. He does no such thing, as his audience will discover tomorrow night.