We don’t have to look too far around our present world to see how the thin veneer of civilisation barely conceals a vicious savagery in humankind,
writes Brian Byrne. Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, and the treatment of the Uyghur people of China. The Minneapolis murders by state agents, and the camps across the USA holding arrested migrants in horrific conditions. Not so long back, Ireland, during the inappropriately named nightmare of the ‘Troubles’. All through history, and still today, killings, tortures, and myriad other cruelties have been the lot of so much of the planet’s populations, usually inflicted by a few on the many who just want to get on with their lives.
Kildare writer Martin Malone saw his own share of the human race’s inhumanity to itself while serving in the Middle East as a peacekeeper. He has written several books set in that part of the world, illustrating it. His latest is also about such cruelty, but this time right on his home doorstep, during the 1798 Rebellion.
Pike Hill: The Rath Massacre is not always an easy read. It’s not a slick write, either. The language can be unsteady, the sequencing jumpy, and the descriptions sometimes uncertain. All of which is as it should be, because it makes the book feel very true to its characters. The 1798 conflict, short as it was, progressed erratically in both Wexford and Kildare, the latter notably in Kilcullen along with some other nearby locations. On one side was arguably a rebellion of rabble, on the other, counter-attacks of relative discipline. In both camps, sweat of fear and testosterone of bravado mixed heady and noxious and instigated tragedy.
The rebellion’s shape is the frame on which Malone builds his stories of those involved. Real historical figures like General Dundas and others on the British side. Ordinary Irish folk in their fictionalised space, some climbing on the bandwagon of conflict in the hope of gain for themselves. Others follow because they’re afraid not to. More are again trying to hold lives and families together through something over which they have no control.
Malone’s people are written as rough, living in rough times. Their speech reflects their place and class, any strangeness to our ears from the author's endeavour to find language patterns from over two centuries ago. But their emotions and interactions are all familiar to us, as they would also have been to their forebears of two centuries before, and beyond. For those of us reared in this county, the place names and their features haven’t changed much. Nor has that thing we call life.
All of which is clearly me not telling the story of Pike Hill: The Rath Massacre. That’s not my job — it’s for you readers to find for yourselves. If you know the general story of 1798, the book may put some flesh on doomed ambition and the terrible duplicity which resulted in a bloody massacre. If you don’t know the local connections, it may encourage you to delve further.
Malone is not a historian, but the storyteller who is essential to making history relatable. A Kildare native, he knows the land which generated his inspiration, where the local part of the rebellion sprouted. Having family connections in Wexford also made inevitable his interest in the doomed-to-fail uprising.
Pike Hill: The Rath Massacre didn’t happen as a smooth writing progression. Malone began the original story two decades ago, then set it aside when it seemed not to be going anywhere. His more recent winning of a short story competition, which gave him a starting concept, revived his interest in the shelved manuscript. He has suggested that this may be his last book. That’s probably not likely — writers generally don’t really stop, our work is our addiction, and one without a 12-step recovery plan. Though it may well be his last self-published one, through the Oul Fella’s Press imprint that he runs with his wife, Valerie. Small publishers simply don’t have the clout to get the distribution and promotion to find shelf space in an overcrowded market.
Martin Malone, whom — full disclosure — I have known as a friend for decades, is one of those people dedicated to their writing. Not because it is extraordinary prose, or because it might make a profit, but because he has stories that have to be told. This one shows, sadly again, that the horrors being inflicted in so many places around today’s world are lessons from history not learned.
Pike Hill: The Rath Massacre is available locally in Woodbine Books and in other good bookshops across the country. For obvious reasons, especially in Kildare and Wexford.
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