Tipperary communities unite to mark 175th anniversary of 1848 Slievenamon Monster Meeting

Caption for photo above: Slievenamon 1848 Committee members at the commemoration launch event in Kilcash Community Centre last Friday night. Back: Niall Walsh, Dr Thomas McGrath, Tony Musiol, Richard Walsh, Michael Keogh, artist Mia Carney, Robert Duggan, Anna Hutchinson, Tara Quirke, Sharon Ahearne, Nyah Ahearne. Front Row: L-R Attracta O’Reilly, Riley Austin, Maryjo Kehoe, Sean Nugent.

Tipperary people are being urged to pull on their hiking boots and climb Slievenamon on Sunday, July 16 and be a part of the 175th anniversary re-enactment of the Young Irelanders’ Monster Meeting protest over the export of food during The Famine.

The call out to take part in the re-enactment of the famous mass protest reputed to have been attended by up to 50,000 people has come from the Slievenamon 1848 Commemoration Committee that unveiled its detailed plans to mark the special anniversary at Kilcash Community Hall last Friday night.

The committee, comprising an estimated 50 people from communities surrounding Slievenamon, along with the Lingaun Valley Tourism Group have spent months organising the commemoration.

The Monster Meeting re-enactment on Slievenamon summit is the main event of the day of commemoration.

The walk up to Slievenamon from Kilcash village and all sides of the mountain will commence at 12 noon and the re-enactment around the cairn at the summit will begin at 2pm.

People are being encouraged to wear period costumes if they can.

Local historian Robert Duggan of Lingaun Valley Tourism Group, who has given recent talks on the Monster Meeting at Clonmel and Carrick Libraries, said the re-enactment will begin with the performance of excerpts from the play Cathleen Ní Houlihan written by WB Yeats and Lady Gregory.

The character Cathleen Ní Houlihan, who represents an independent Irish state, will be played by

This will be followed by re-enactments of the eloquent speeches given at the Monster Meeting by Young Irelander leaders

Michael Doheny from Fethard and Thomas Francis Meagher from Waterford, who rode up to the summit of Slievenamon on a white horse led by a band from Cashel.

Actors dressed in costume will recite the speeches before the crowd.

Mr Duggan said the ceremony will also include the singing of Slievenamon followed by the hoisting and waving of the Irish flag.

The Monster Meeting was one of the first occasions in which the Irish Tricolour flag was flown as a symbol of Irish nationalism.

It had been presented to Thomas Francis Meagher by a French women’s group just a few months before the Slievenamon protest.

The organisers plan to film the Monster Meeting re-enactment using drones and other cameras and hope at a later stage to make a film about the event.

The re-enactment ceremony is scheduled to finish at about 3pm and the crowd will then descend the mountain.

The commemoration events will continue in Kilcash village where there will be music and refreshments served and an exhibition of memorabilia and children’s art celebrating the special anniversary in Kilcash Community Centre.

For people unable to walk to the top of Slievenamon, the Young Ireland leaders’ speeches will be recited again at a podium in Kilcash after the re-enactment ceremony.

The children’s art exhibition is an important aspect of the commemoration. Kilcash based artist Mia Carney ran an art project to mark the Monster Meeting anniversary in ten primary schools based around Slievenamon stretching from Kilsheelan to Cloneen over the past few months.

Some samples of the imaginative art pieces the children have created for the exhibition were displayed in Kilcash Community Centre last Friday for the launch event.

Also on display was a print of an article written by Slievenamon In Story & Song author Sean Nugent from Kilsheelan about the 1848 Monster Meeting, which was published in The Nationalist in 1998.

Slievenamon 1848 Commemoration Committee Chairman Michael Kehoe said they have received great public support for the event and hope this will translate to people turning out on the day to take part in the re-enactment.

“We hope as many people as possible will take part. Anybody who goes up the mountain might appear in a movie someday,” he quipped.

The committee and Lingaun Valley Tourism have been working since Christmas to organise the commemoration and began publicising it at local St Patrick's Day parades.

Clonmel Agricultural Show on Sunday last was another opportunity to spread the word. The committee had a stand at the show advertising the event.

“My wife was at the show and she was taken by how many people were interested in the commemoration.”

At the launch last Friday night, Michael thanked the 40 to 50 volunteers involved in the committee and communities in the shadow of Slievenamon who are supporting the event in any way.

He thanked Tipperary County Council and Creative Ireland and local businesses for the funding and sponsorship support they have given the event.

The committee has set up a Slievenamon 1848 Commemoration GoFundMe funding raising appeal to assist with paying the costs of hosting the event.

Slievenamon Monster Meeting took place during dark days of The Famine 

The Slievenamon Monster Meeting of 1848 took place several years into the Great Famine to protest at the continued export of food from the country despite the desperate plight of its starving people.

The mass protest was organised by the Young Irelanders, led by William Smith O’Brien MP, Thomas Francis Meagher and Michael Doheny from Fethard. It was the first time the Irish Tricolour flag was displayed at a largescale event.

A band from Cashel led the Young Ireland leaders to the summit to meet the large assembly of between 20,000 and 50,000 people who had walked from all sides of the mountain.

The idea of marking the 175th anniversary of the 1848 Monster Meeting on Slievenamon was first proposed by Dr Tom McGrath of Ballingarry 1848 House Museum with Robert Duggan of Lingaun Valley Tourism last summer.

Robert Duggan said Thomas Francis Meagher, who rode up to the summit on a white horse, was big into symbolism.

He believes he deliberately chose the summit of Slievenamon for the Monster Meeting because of the biblical symbolism of Moses going to the mountain top to see the Promised Land for his people.

He believes the story of the Slievenamon Monster Meeting will strongly resonate with Irish American tourists whose ancestors left this country during and after The Famine.

“For Irish America, this is a very cool story.

“It shows how we stood up for ourselves. The Young Irelanders wanted a new, independent country where the food would belong to the people.”

Robert Duggan in period costume addressing the launch event for the 1848 Slievenamon Monster Meeting day of commemoration at Kilcash Community Centre last Friday.