![[Willie Condon's Fenian Flag of 1867]](../images/i/ie_condon1867.jpg)
image by
David Lawrence, 2 August 2011
Last modified: 2011-09-24 by rob raeside
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image by
David Lawrence, 2 August 2011
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1867. A Unique Fenian Flag, carried in parades and demonstrations from the
1860s to the 1920s
Medium: woven silk with restored gold lettering
Dimensions:97 by 135cm, 38 by 53in.
Willie Condon's Fenian Flag of 1867
http://antiquesandartireland.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/062.jpg
[copyright permission for extracts given by Ian Whyte, Whyte & Sons Auctioneers
Ltd., Dublin]
This was in another auction recently - it was sold for
€52000 at Whytes in Dublin on 13 / 11 / 10.
Dated to 1867, ' A Unique
Fenian Flag' that was carried in parades and demonstrations from the 1860s to
the 1920s, 97 x 135cm, 38 x 53 inches, made of woven silk with restored gold
lettering. It is from the Galtee Mountain area of East Limerick and North Cork
and was commissioned and used by Willie Condon (1840-1908) from Anglesboro near
Mitchelstown. It was a feature at skirmishes, raids, meetings and demonstrations
from the 1860s right through the Land League campaigns of the 1880s and onwards.
"The flag consists of woven silk on which there is a frame of double lines
of black and gold coloured thread piping. The original design has a sunburst at
left, with lettering in gold – GOD SAVE vertically and to the left of a large
gold harp and IRELAND vertically to the right and ANGLESBORO ’67 in gold at the
base, with gold trefoil shamrocks at each corner. The original lettering was
worn away when Hannah Condon restored it in the 1950s with gold painted card
lettering and decorations The Sunburst symbol was used by Irish nationalists
from the first half of the nineteenth century and although the green flag with a
gold harp was the preferred banner, the following lines, penned in 1843, foresaw
the combined use of the Sunburst and the Harp on green:
That the ‘harp on
the green’ our land flag should be,
And the sun through clouds bursting, our
flag at sea.
The green-borne harp o’er yon battery gleams,
From the
frigate’s topgallant the ‘sunburst’ streams.
Willie Condon was born in
the Mitchelstown area and settled in Anglesboro, County Limerick, where he
married “a Quane woman of mountain foot”. He befriended John O’Mahony of nearby
Kilbehenny and joined the Fenian Brotherhood which O’Mahony had founded in 1858
from exile in America. It is believed he was involved in the battle with Crown
forces at Kilclooney Woods where a 100 strong group of Fenians was intercepted
on the way to Limerick under Peter O’Neill Crowley, who was killed in the
engagement.
It is thought that Condon had the flag made to commemorate
the Fenian Rising and it was used at a demonstration on the first anniversary in
1868. It was put to regular use thereafter, especially during the Land League
campaign which Willie Condon joined with great enthusiasm and was very active in
the Anglesboro, Ballylanders and Mitchelstown districts. On one occasion in
1881, carrying the flag, he led 250 men armed with spades from Anglesboro to
Ballylanders to free his imprisoned comrade William Manahan, who had been jailed
under the Coercion Act. On another occasion Clifford Lloyd, a military officer
based in Mitchelstown in the 1880s, wrote1 of an attempted impounding of cattle
for non payment of rent and rates which was intercepted by a huge crowd led by
Willie Condon. Even though Lloyd’s raiding party was well armed “the sight of
such an enormous crowd led by Willie Condon with the Fenian Flag fluttering in
the breeze, convinced the raiding party that discretion was the better part of
valour” (2)
In other encounters with the Crown Condon had roads blocked
with stone walls, and he led his “Galtee Mountain Boys” under the Fenian Flag to
Mitchelstown on 9 September 1887 to join a 15,000 strong protest over the
appearance in a Coercion Court there of John Mandeville and William O’Brien. The
crowd were attacked by police but they had to beat a hasty retreat to the
barracks from where they shot dead two of Condon’s men. The battle cry “Remember
Mitchelstown” dates from that time. In 1906 Willie Condon was a member of the
committee that erected a statue to Mandeville in the square at Mitchelstown.
When he died in 1908 over 25,000 people attended his funeral and a large Celtic
Cross monument was erected over his grave at Kilgulane Cemetery. This is an
extremely important flag of the Fenian Brotherhood, that was carried with fierce
pride by Willie Condon and his “Galtee Mountain Boys” (3) for over fifty years,
and was kept safe from the Black and Tans during the War of Independence by his
daughter Hannah, who was commander of the Cumann na mBan in the area. After the
war it was carried by Willie Condon’s descendant at annual commemorations of the
Fenian Rising, the Mitchelstown shootings, and Willie Condon’s anniversary, up
to the early 1970s, until it was feared it might get damaged so it was kept
since in a frame in a descendant’s home.
(1) Charles Dalton Clifford
Lloyd Ireland Under The Land League – A Narrative of Personal Experiences,
William Blackwood, Edinburgh & London, 1892
(2) Kilfinane Coshlea Historical
Society Historical Journal Volume 5, 2009, pp 55-59
(3) Hannah Condon Cleary
wrote the famous song The Galtee Mountain Boys, the first verse of which goes:
Hurrah, they came, brave Galtee Men,
The village people cried,
As into
Ballylanders the mountain men they hied.
They marched into the village street
And faced down Clifford Lloyd
With Willie Condon at their head
The Galtee
mountain pride.
and it ends:
Alas, he sleeps that humble chief
In Kilgulane’s lonely grave
That hero brave who fought his way
To
emancipate the slave.
His memory will be honoured
And a monument will rise
To tell the fame of Condon bold
With acknowledgement to Whyte’s Fine Art & Collectibles Auctioneers & Valuers
– www.whytes.com
David Lawrence,
2 August 2011
