SEARC'S WEB GUIDE - Charles J. Kickham (1828-1882)

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Searc's Web Guide to 19th Century Ireland - Charles J. Kickham (1828-1882)

Charles Kickham was born and educated at Mullinahone, County Tipperary. At thirteen he was involved in a gunpowder accident which permanently injured his sight and hearing. Soon after he founded the Mullinahone Young Ireland Confederate Club. Kickham contributed articles to James Stephens' The Irish People at this time and later became that paper's editor in which capacity he was arrested in 1865 for writing 'treasonous' articles. Kickham, nearly blind and almost completely deaf, was tried and sentenced to fourteen years penal servitude. He was imprisoned in Portland and Woking prisons where he wrote his first novel Sally Kavanagh (1869).
Kickham was released in 1870 due to ill-health. He lived in Blackrock, County Dublin where he continued to write poetry and novels. His Knocknagown; or The Homes of Tipperary (1879) was a phenomenal success, making Kickham the most popular Irish novelist of the 19th century.
Kickham's funeral procession was one of the largest ever witnessed in Ireland when he died in 1882 with over 150,000 mourners in attendance. A novel For the Old Land (1886) and Poems of Charles J Kickham (1931) were published posthumously. The poem Patrick Sheehan was written while Kickham was in Portland Prison in 1866.©

Charles J. Kickham (1828-1882)

Patrick Sheehan
My name is Patrick Sheehan,
My years are thirty-four;
Tipperary is my native place,
Not far from Galtymore;
I came from honest parents,
But now they're lying low;
And many a pleasant day I spent
In the Glen of Aherlow.

My father died; I closed his eyes
Outside our cabin door;
The Lord Lieutenant and Sheriff too
were there the day before!
And then my loving mother,
And sisters three also,
Were forced to go with broken hearts
From the Glen of Aherlow.

For three long months, in search of work,
I wandered far and near;
I went then to the poor-house,
For to see my mother dear;
The news I heard nigh broke my heart;
But still in all my woe,
I blessed the friends who made their graves
In the Glen of Aherlow.

Bereft of home and kith and kin,
With plenty all around,
I starved within my cabin;
And slept upon the ground;
But cruel as my lot was,
I ne'er did hardship know
Till I joined the English Army
Far away from Aherlow.

'Rouse up, there,' says the Corporal,
'You lazy Hirish 'ound;
Why don't you hear, you sleepy dog,
The call 'To Arms' sound?'
Alas I had been dreaming
Of days long, long ago;
I woke before Sebastapol,
And not in Aherlow.

I groped to find my musket -
How dark I thought the night!
O Blessed God, it was not dark,
It was the broad daylight!
And when I found that I was blind,
My tears began to flow;
I longed for even a pauper's grave
In the Glen of Aherlow.

O Blessed Virgin Mary,
Mine is a mournful state;
A poor blind prisoner here I am,
In Dublin's dreary gaol;
Struck blind within the trenches,
Where I never feared the foe;
And now I'll never see again
My own sweet Aherlow.

A poor neglected mendicant,
I wandered through the street;
My nine months pension now being out,
I beg from all I meet:
As I joined my country's tyrant,
My face I'll never show
Among the kind old neighbours
In the Glen of Aherlow.

Then Irish youths, dear countrymen,
Take heed of what I say;
For if you join the English ranks,
You'll surely rue the day;
And whenever you are tempted
A soldiering to go,
Remember poor blind Sheehan
Of the Glen of Aherlow.
© Searc's Web Guide 1997-2008

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