“In the year of the French the harvest was early and the weather was fine”

Here, in deciding in this instance to curate the photograph albums of William Fee McKinney as folklore, we can indicate in his harvest photographs a subaltern counter memory, a performance of remembrance and commemoration of rebellion, a trace of how ” ‘1798’ provides a classic example of an Irish Lieu de Mémoire – a site of collective memory – transmitted and transmuted through song, story, stone and commemoration  … in the agricultural calendar, the invasion coincided with the harvest season. It was remembered that the French came in to Killala “on a fine harvest day” and that “Bliain na bhFranncaigh – bhí ‘n foghmhar go luath, bliain bhréagh a bhi inti” (in the year of the French the harvest was early and the weather was fine) … the multiple temporal perspectives in folk history present cubist portrayals of the past …

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The kaleidoscopic nature of time and calendar in social memory poses a challenge to standard historic periodization, which presumes to authoritatively date events along a set linear sequence … To paraphase Kark Marx, in social memory “all that is solid melts into air” and the remembrance of the Year of the French as not merely a straightforward chronology of all the events that happened (in Connacht) over a month in the late summer of 1798. Overall, the field of Irish folk history evidently had distinct characteristics, both in its variety of form, contexts of performances, practitioners, and modes of temporality. All this should be kept in mind when examining the content of collected folklore sources, a task that may illustrate more specifically how the Year of the French was remembered. … “(Guy Beiner, Remembering the Year of the French : Irish Folk History and Social Memory, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007, p134/135 )

We should remember that William McKinney’s own writings reflect upon how both his grandparents joined the United Irishmen who at first united only on reforms being made in the existing government without any intention of fighting…. (Brian Walker, Sentry Hill: An Ulster Farm And Family, Dundonald, Blackstaff, 2001) The commemorative Bastille jug for which William Fee McKinney had ensured a photographic record, had entered the McKinney family through his grandparent’s generation, through the figure of United Irishman John McKinney. It commemorates and celebrates the French Revolution. William McKinney’s grandparents grew up in the era of the French Revolution. In 18th century Ireland, many Ulster Presbyterians looked to the French example and the new political ideas of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’. They also supported the Society of United Irishmen who sought to plant these ideas in Ireland. In June 1798 John McKinney had carried the signal for local United Irishmen to rise and march on Antrim town but the rebellion failed, and in fact William’s great-uncle, Samuel George, was killed at the Battle of Antrim. Traces of how the United Irishmen, 1798 and this battle were commemorated visually are visible within the collection and photography of  William Fee McKinney. The artist JW Carey was a figure present, even in a secondary sense, in the social circle of McKinney, providing illustrations for a book on United Irishman William Orr by McKinney’s friend and distant relative the antiquarian Francis Bigger . JW Carey had “… established in Belfast a graphic design office which provided illustrations of historical scenes for antiquarians  … visual representations of oral traditions … Carey’s paintings (of the United Irishmen battles of 1798) reflected a subaltern counter memory, which could not be put on canvas until many years after the event … ” (Guy Beiner, Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster, OUP, 2018, p 325/326, 556/557). Benier also points out that McKinney retained in his collection at Sentry Hill pikes and muskets from the time of the United Irishmen rebellion.

The defeat of the United Irishmen,of course “did not mean the end of their ideals, and Dr William Drennan, coiner of the principles of the United Irishmen, was a founder in 1810 of the Belfast Academical Institution, among whose aims was demonstrably the continuation of revolution by other, educational, means as articulated in Drennan’s wish that: ‘ a new turn might be given to the national character and habits’ …” (David Cairns & Shaun Richards, Writing Ireland: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Culture, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1988, p22) and it is therefore noteworthy that subsequently, for three generations, the McKinneys selected this Belfast Academical Institution as the primary educational influence upon most of the young sons within the McKinney family, with two of William Fee McKinney’s brothers and all of his own sons and several of his grandsons being taught there.