On The Battle of the Boyne

Today marks the anniversary of one of the most mythologized battles in Anglo-Irish history: the Battle of the Boyne.  In July of 1690, King William III soundly defeated James II and secured Ireland's Protestant supremacy while sowing the seeds for centuries of violent conflict.  The battle also marks the debut of one of Ireland's most prominent writers, Dr. Jonathan Swift, whose poem "Ode to King William" celebrates the Orange victory.

Text of "Ode to King William": https://www.online-literature.com/swift/poems-of-swift/3/

Text of “Written for My Son to His Master, on the Anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne": https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/works/pba35-w0450.shtml

Additional Music:

"Derry’s Walls": Sam Wilson and the Loyalists, 1963

https://archive.org/details/lp_no-surrender_sam-wilson-the-loyalists/disc1/02.06.+Derry's+Walls.mp3)

"Boyne Water": Stuart Eydmann, 2020

 https://ia601700.us.archive.org/13/items/raretunes-eydmann-boyne-water/RaretunesEydmannBoyneWater.mp3  

"Awake The Trumpet's Lofty Sound": Heroic Music For Organ, Brass And Percussion; New England Brass Ensemble; CBS Masterworks (MS 6354), 1962

https://archive.org/details/lp_heroic-music-for-organ-brass-and-percussio_e-power-biggs-new-england-brass-ensemble

Transcript

Hey, folks – bet you didn’t figure I’d be cluttering up your feeds again so soon!  I’m jamming your inbox with another episode of the Classic English Literature Subcast because we’re at the anniversary of another monumental historical event with some rather interesting poetry attached.  Giving a little more rhyme a little more reason – that’s my brief.

Today’s bonus episode is kind of an adjunct to our last outing.  Previously on the Classic English Literature Subcast, we discussed England’s so-called Glorious Revolution, when Parliament invited the Protestant Prince William of Orange to depose the Catholic Stuart King James II.  While little to no violence attended that particular turn of events, the years that followed saw their share of bloodshed.  We now call this the Williamite War in Ireland, and it set the stage for the turbulent relationship between England and Ireland, as well as the latter’s virulent sectarian struggles, for the next three centuries.

Now, I don’t mean to imply that the Rose and the Harp had been living in neighborly amity before this time.  English power in Ireland goes back at least to 1171, when King Henry II claimed dominion with the excuse of whipping Celtic Catholics into conformity with Rome.  This establishes what’s called the Lordship of Ireland, essentially England’s first colony.  In 1494, Poyning’s Law restricted the Irish Parliament.  Henry VIII completes the conquest of Ireland and declares himself king there in 1542.  Of course, his break with Rome establishes religious factions and by the end of the Tudor dynasty the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell rebel, but they fail and flee to Europe – the famous Flight of the Earls. Under James I the plantation of Ulster – resettling Scottish and English Protestants in the northeast of Ireland – creates a Protestant majority in that region while dispossessing native Catholics of their land.  We’ve already mentioned Oliver Cromwell’s ruthless ethnic cleansing during the 1640s and 50s in previous episodes.

So, even before Good King Billy set up Orangery, relations between the two countries were somewhat frosty.  James II ghosted to France and couch-surfed with Louis XIV for a while, hatching cunning plans to regain the throne.  Ireland seemed a grand staging ground, since some 75% of the population held to the old faith.  1689 saw a series of skirmishes between James’ Irish Army and various Protestant militias.  This stage of the war culminated in April’s Siege of Derry – a key town in northern Ireland.  The Jacobite army – Jacobites is the term for supporters of James – with its French officers, tried to starve the town into submission.  For 105 days citizens endured, but the besiegers retreated when supply ships broke through and replenished the ravaged city.  The cry “No surrender” became integral to Protestant sectarian politics as indicated in this verse from an old anonymous ballad called “Derry’s Walls”:

We'll fight and don't surrender

But come when duty calls,

With heart and hand and sword and shield

We'll guard old Derry's Walls.

The Jacobite defeat at Derry (or Londonderry now – its name depends upon one’s sympathies) gave William the chance to land an expeditionary force which crushed James’ army at the Boyne River west of the town of Drogheda (yes, where Cromwell did his bashing and burning) in July of 1690.  The Battle of the Boyne has become a legend in Irish history.

Here’s the first few lines from a traditional ballad variously called “The Boyne Water,” “The Muddy Boyne,” or simply “The Battle of the Boyne.”

JULY the first, in Oldbridge town,

There was a grievous battle,

Where many a man lay on the ground,

By the cannons that did rattle.

King James he pitched his tents between

The lines for to retire;

But King William threw his bomb-balls in,

And set them all on fire.

Thereat enraged, they vowed revenge

Upon King William’s forces;

And often did cry vehemently

That they would stop their courses.

You’ll find some discrepancy of dates for the battle if you look it up: July 1, July 11, July 12.  This has to do with a change from the old Julian calendar (for which the date is the 1st) to the new Gregorian calendar that happened in 1753.  Protestants in Northern Ireland today commemorate the battle on the 12th, with what are called Orange Day parades, from the victorious William of Orange.  This spelled the end of James’ quest for restoration.  Jacobites lost Dublin and following a siege of Limerick, William’s forces accepted Jacobite surrender in 1691.  The puppet Irish Parliament established anti-Catholic Penal Laws: banning Catholic clergy and suppressing Catholic education, prohibiting Catholics from voting, holding public office, and entering the legal profession, and limiting Catholic land ownership.  These laws – in effect for over a century, with their repercussions lasting until our own time – plowed the ground for the bloody internecine conflicts to come.  Additionally, Scottish Jacobitism – the movement to restore the House of Stuart (whom they called the “kings over the water” due to its exile) – would play a prominent role in British politics during the 18th-century, with risings not only here in 1689, but also in 1715, 1719, and 1745, this last led by Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Today, in Northern Ireland, July 12 is a public holiday, marked by bonfires and Orangeman Parades, as I mentioned, and these commemorations have sometimes been occasions of violent confrontation between Nationalist Catholic and Loyalist Protestant groups.

One of the more interesting poems to come out of this tumult is the debut of an Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman who will come to dominate English literature in the following century.  We will be doing a couple of episodes on him in the fullness of time, but in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of the Boyne, Jonathan Swift published his first work, called, in the dogleg titling conventions of the time, “An Ode to the King on His Irish Expedition and the Success of His Arms in General, Presented to His Majesty Upon His Departure from Ireland.”  Let’s just call it the “Ode to King William,” shall we?  Swift probably wrote it in the summer of 1690 and it was printed by John Brent in the following year.  It’s written in 12 quatrains – a symbolic number, to be sure – of alternately rhyming iambic pentameter – feels like a hybrid of heroic and ballad verse styles, so both lofty and homely.

It seems clear that a young and ambitious Swift makes a play for royal patronage, striking while the social and political upheaval makes the literary iron hot.  Despite the title, I don’t think it’s really an ode, at least not in the classical sense and in the way most readers will come to understand the form during the later Romantic period.  But again, I will refrain from such hairsplitting.  Have you noticed that since I fulminated against it a couple of episodes ago, I have found several occasions on which I have been tempted to indulge in such fastidiousness?  I am but a weak and feeble man.  We’ll accept “ode” if we mean by it, as most normal folks do, a lyric poem written in an elevated style and addressed to a particular subject.

We might call this poem a panegyric – a verse of effusive public praise.  It certainly begins that way:

To purchase kingdoms and to buy renown,

  Are arts peculiar to dissembling France;

You, mighty monarch, nobler actions crown,

  And solid virtue does your name advance.

Your matchless courage with your prudence joins,

  The glorious structure of your fame to raise;

With its own light your dazzling glory shines,

  And into adoration turns our praise.

In the first two lines, Swift establishes the contrast between France – who gave James II safe harbor and offered military assistance – and William of Orange. The language of commerce marks the deceitful and exploitative French crown, a sullying of true nobility and glory.  The word “arts” here connotes a disingenuousness or mendacity: perfidious scheming.  Line three directly addresses William and is, incidentally, almost perfectly trochaic in its rhythm; that is, the accent falls on the first syllable of the foot, rather than the second, as in iambic verse.  An interesting rhythmic variation, as this downward beat suggests humility or even genuflection on the part of the speaker – bowing before the alliterative mighty monarch, whose “solid” virtue shames the artifice of his enemies.  William’s renown is founded upon his courage and prudence, a rectitude to be praised.

Stanza 4 concludes with “Who could so well a dying nation save, /  At once deserve a crown, and gain it too.”  Interestingly, the lines seem both declarative – stating a fact – and interrogative.  William clearly both deserves the crown and has earned it.  Who else possibly could?

The next couple of stanzas recall personified Britannia’s plight, her “ruin” and “danger.”  How she lost the protection of the law.  Here, William becomes the hero of romance, saving the damsel in distress from “the monster’s jaws.”  Then we come to the necessity of winning not only the war, but also the peace: “as glorious is the care /  To preserve conquests, as at first to gain.”  I like Swift’s rhyme in this stanza – the fourth line ends “what it bravely won, does well maintain.”  The “gain” and “maintain” pairing nicely encapsulates the twin tasks of William’s quest.  

Hmm . . . now that I’m looking at them, the subject of the next lines, grammatically, is William’s arm: “Your arm has now your rightful title show'd, / An arm on which all Europe's hopes depend.”  Perfectly traditional bit of synecdoche here – the arm often connotes one’s power.  But that verb from the preceding line:“maintain” – its Latin root means “to hold in the hand” – so a particularly apt choice for this little image.

Stanza 9 invokes the Battle of the Boyne directly, and the speaker wears a hole in his tongue what with all the bootlicking: 

Amazed, thy action at the Boyne we see!

  When Schomberg started at the vast design:

The boundless glory all redounds to thee,

  The impulse, the fight, th'event, were wholly thine.

Wow!  The whole thing?  William did the whole Boyne thing by himself?  Nice aural pun on “wholly,” meaning “completely” but also sounding kind of “sacred.”  Schomberg, incidentally, is the German-born officer who advised William against crossing the river – even he couldn’t see how totally, awesomely awesome you are, Good King Billy!

Wrapping up, Swift once again castigates French duplicity and effeminacy, her “secret malice.”  Then, the rousing huzzah:

Boldly we hence the brave commencement date

  Of glorious deeds, that must all tongues employ;

William's the pledge and earnest given by fate,

  Of England's glory, and her lasting joy.

Hip! Hip! Huzzah!  And that, dear listeners, is the happy story of William’s victory at the Boyne, which destroyed the nasty Catholics and made England a wonderland of goodness and plenty.  Swift lays it on a bit thick, don’t you think?  Not with a trowel, but a shovel.  But, if you’re a young poet on the make and hope to score some royal patronage, a dramatic demonstration of grovelling could be quite expeditious.  Sharpen up the quill and apply the Chapstick.  (kissing sound)

Alas, young Mr. Swift never did get William III’s thumbs-up.  He did have the patronage of another William, though, Sir William Temple, a diplomat who had arranged the marriage between the Prince of Orange and Mary Stuart, but playing on that connection didn’t really advance Swift’s career with the Tangerine King either.

I wonder why?  Well, maybe it’s because that panegyric to the Orange’s romp in the river has some cleverly ambiguous lines that may have raised the eyebrow of a clever monarch.  What I’m suggesting here is rather my own presumption, based on what I know of Jonathan Swift’s later career.  He’s most famous to us now as an absolutely savage satirist – I’ll not give spoilers for later shows, but he’s really a rather dab hand with the bitter irony.  And I also know that, despite being a Protestant, Swift was sympathetic to the plight of Catholics under English rule.  So, that very buttery lathering up of William in the ode doesn’t sit right with me.  I could very well be wrong – it could be a sincere celebration of a new king written by a young man whose social consciousness was still unformed.  But . . . 

Check out stanza 3 (bonus points to anyone who noticed that I skipped it in the above discussion – you are the best at listening!):

Had you by dull succession gain'd your crown,

  (Cowards are monarchs by that title made,)

Part of your merit Chance would call her own,

  And half your virtues had been lost in shade.

If you got the crown just by being born to it – you know, like almost every king for the last few hundred years – people might think you a coward, your best self wouldn’t be able to shine!  I don’t think I’m squinting too much to see a trace of irony here.  Why bring up succession as somehow illegitimate or undesirable?  Doesn’t that just call attention to the fact of right by conquest, which would even then seem a bit atavistic?  And wouldn’t William and Mary want their kids to succeed?  In fact, isn’t Mary “dully succeeding”?

And what about later on, when Swift compares William to “some guardian God” who will defend the “doubtful liberty” of the people?  I’m not even worried about the blasphemous hyperbole – though it is a skosh immoderate.  It’s the doubtful liberty part that intrigues me because that’s where I hear the cantankerous Swift with whom I’m familiar.  The surface meaning of that phrase is obviously “the liberty that is insecure” – that’s what William will defend and preserve.  “Doubtful” was used that way then.  But you can perfectly well read it as doubting liberty – that people don’t have it, or shouldn’t have it, or that it can even be secured.  I may be overreading this, but I’m fascinated by the word “doubt,” especially in the 17th century, when it meant both “to be skeptical” and “to suspect.”  What we call a contranym – a word that is its own antonym.  I doubt I’ve discussed this before – probably in the Hamlet episode.  Anyway, I wonder if Billy the Orange puzzled over this word choice, too, and sensed some bitter lemons beneath the poem’s frothy meringue.  

A later poet, Mary Barber, did enjoy Swift’s patronage, however, and she composes a poem fretting that William’s deliverance from the Stuart menace might be forgotten, that the sacrifice of those noble Protestants will cease to provide a model for the preservation of liberty.  It’s called “Written for My Son to His Master, on the Anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne.”  We don’t know the date of composition – it doesn’t appear in print until 1734.  It’s rather brief, so I can quote it in full:

Is what we owe great William then

Forgotten by ungrateful Men?

And has His Fame run out its Date,

Who snatch'd us from the Brink of Fate?

Else, why should Scholars, Sir, I pray,

Be Prisoners on this glorious Day;

When Nassau's Arms, by Heav'n's Decree,

Devoted it to Liberty?

The first four lines of this eight-line octosyllabic stanza are pretty accessible: the call to “never forget” that often attends events of great trauma or moment, such as the Holocaust or 9/11.  Sadly, we often do, don’t we?  Personally, I often fear that, as we lose the members of older generations, those who held a living memory of the 20th century’s rise of fascism and totalitarianism, we no longer feel the urgency to resist when those forces once again rear their awful heads.  

Perhaps I should add a caveat here: I in no way equate the Williamite suppression of Ireland’s Catholics with the moral imperative of defeating Nazism or Stalinism.  This episode has necessarily focused on the Protestant framing of the Battle of the Boyne because – well, the winners do the writing, don’t they?  Apart from anonymous ballads, Catholic or Nationalist perspectives on the events of the 1690s don’t really start appearing in literature until the 19th and 20th centuries, when issues of Catholic Emancipation, land reform, and Home Rule begin playing a role in British politics.  Rest assured that we will touch upon them at the appropriate time.  All I mean to say is that human memory is not that different from that of the proverbial goldfish: we keep swimming around our little bowls and what is past becomes less and less germane to the imperative to keep swimming.

Anyway, back to the poem: I confess that I’m not clear at all on the content of its last four lines, what she means by scholars being prisoners on the anniversary of the Boyne.  Her son was educated and became a professor at Dublin’s Trinity College, but if there was some academic policy or political proscription concerning the battle, I cannot determine. 

Despite its somewhat opaque origins and intentions, though, one can see in it that exhortation to remember, but remember what?  It seems to me that we are to remember not so much the history – the actual, objective, indisputable bare facts of the event (were that even possible) – but rather the myth, the culturally useful legend and lesson that can be shaped from it.  We are to remember William’s bold defiance of fate, to preserve the fame of his greatness, the glory of our heaven-bestowed liberty.  I believe I’ve referred to my favorite quote from the 1962 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance before, but here it is again: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”  Facts mean less to us than do our interpretations of those facts.  This is not a criticism; I’m not clutching my pearls about today’s deterioration of a reality consensus (at least not at this moment).  It’s just how we are.  In some ways, history must become legend before we can use it, or misuse it, as the case may be.  If we Americans, for instance, need to believe ourselves avatars of freedom and justice, we must invoke the legend of the Revolutionary War as a righteous battle against tyranny and suppress some of the distasteful facts about slavery and cynical tax policies.  Former empires must emphasize the modernization of medicine, trade, and transportation they brought to the societies of the global south and explain away the exploitation that accompanied it.  It’s why there is so much controversy today around public statues and the veneration of historical figures.  What to do with a statue of Cecil Rhodes or Robert E. Lee?  If we agree that they were villains, what about the darker sides of national heroes like Queen Elizabeth or Thomas Jefferson?  The facts threaten the myth, and the myth tells us, often, who we are.  And, by extension, who our enemies are.  They create the foes we need.

Same thing with the Battle of the Boyne.  The story each side tells about it will determine the tenor of Anglo-Irish relations for centuries to come.  For many in Northern Ireland, the battle is a myth of liberation and deliverance, the triumph of enlightenment over superstition.  For many in what is now the Irish Republic, it was a terrible defeat, the confirmation of oppression, a raison d’tre of “Irishness.”  Members of the Irish-Catholic diaspora, particularly Irish-Americans, like myself, often romanticize the struggle against Britain, clinging to an imagined history to explain the crucible of immigration.  That’s why we all go mad every March 17th.  Public drunkenness as a form of identity theatre.  

OK, that’s it for the Williamite ascension and our nodding acquaintance with Jonathan Swift on the anniversary of one of the decisive battles in Anglo-Irish history, one mythologized almost as soon as the smoke cleared, and one whose myth has often blinded those who retell it.

If you had a good time, please leave a review on your platform saying so – your kind words are very helpful and very appreciated.  Click support the show if you want to help me defray some expenses.  Get in touch through text, email, the antisocial media.  Thanks so much for giving me your time.  Be well, be good, and I’ll stop by again in a couple of weeks.