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Knocknagow: Or, the Homes of Tipperary
Knocknagow, published in 1873, is a novel about the life of the Irish peasantry and is concerned with the workings of the Irish land system. The novel portrays landlords as apathetic to the needs of their tenants and their land agents as greedy and unscrupulous, leading to rural depopulation, emigration and poverty. The lives of the characters illustrate the iniquities of the land system but Kickham also provides a positive portrait of the virtues of Irish life. The novel centres around the land owner Sir Garrett Butler's agent, Isaac Pender, who refuses new leases to tenants. This and other injustices are received by the peasantry with restraint appropriate to contemporary respectable standards but they also illustrate a divided society. The novel also provides a contrasting vision of a harmonious community, symbolically expressed in music. James H. Murphy argues that this was the key to Knocknagow's popularity: "It presents Ireland both as a society riven with conflict and oppression...and as a society of harmony and celebration". Vincent Comerford accounts for the novel's success with the lower middle class by claiming that they saw "an explanation of [their] own origins in a struggle against vicissitudes of insecurity of tenure".
For fifty years after its publication, Knocknagow was one of the most popular books in Ireland. The young Michael Collins was once found weeping over the sufferings of the peasantry in the novel. Aodh de Blácam called Knocknagow "the national Irish novel" and claimed "Knocknagow will never die, unless the Irish nation dies".
Knocknagow was published in 1879, and rapidly became the most popular of all Irish novels. Its influence derives mainly from its political importance rather than its literary quality, which is about average for a best-seller but not outstanding. In this it resembles The Women's Room and The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, two other polemical novels which were very important politically but marginal as works of literary art. It attacks the evils of the landlord system in Ireland, and indirectly the English rule which supported that system. Kickham himself was a leading nationalist, and was imprisoned for his opinions.
For many years Knocknagow was the book - along with a prayerbook and Old Moore's Almanac -- most likely to be found in any Irish home. Most Irish writers born between 1870 and 1950 would have read it as children. Yeats described it as "The most honest of Irish novels" and Con Houlihan as "The greatest Irish novel." For all its sentimentality and inept plotting, it gives a very accurate picture of rural Irish life in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, it is one of the few such novels which was written by one of the ordinary people. Almost all the other writers who dealt with the rural poor were either of the landlord class themselves (Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, Somerville and Ross, Emily Lawless, Maria Edgeworth) or urban Protestant middle-class (George A. Birmingham, Charles Lever, Dion Boucicault, Samuel Lover). However sympathetic and well-writen their accounts, they were written from the outside looking in. Knockangow was written from the inside.
For fifty years after its publication, Knocknagow was one of the most popular books in Ireland. The young Michael Collins was once found weeping over the sufferings of the peasantry in the novel. Aodh de Blácam called Knocknagow "the national Irish novel" and claimed "Knocknagow will never die, unless the Irish nation dies".
Knocknagow was published in 1879, and rapidly became the most popular of all Irish novels. Its influence derives mainly from its political importance rather than its literary quality, which is about average for a best-seller but not outstanding. In this it resembles The Women's Room and The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, two other polemical novels which were very important politically but marginal as works of literary art. It attacks the evils of the landlord system in Ireland, and indirectly the English rule which supported that system. Kickham himself was a leading nationalist, and was imprisoned for his opinions.
For many years Knocknagow was the book - along with a prayerbook and Old Moore's Almanac -- most likely to be found in any Irish home. Most Irish writers born between 1870 and 1950 would have read it as children. Yeats described it as "The most honest of Irish novels" and Con Houlihan as "The greatest Irish novel." For all its sentimentality and inept plotting, it gives a very accurate picture of rural Irish life in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, it is one of the few such novels which was written by one of the ordinary people. Almost all the other writers who dealt with the rural poor were either of the landlord class themselves (Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, Somerville and Ross, Emily Lawless, Maria Edgeworth) or urban Protestant middle-class (George A. Birmingham, Charles Lever, Dion Boucicault, Samuel Lover). However sympathetic and well-writen their accounts, they were written from the outside looking in. Knockangow was written from the inside.
628 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1870
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107 people want to read
About the author
Charles Joseph Kickham
14 books2 followersCharles Joseph Kickham was an Irish revolutionary, novelist, poet, journalist and one of the most prominent members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 12, 2023
In his The Ascendency in Ireland J.C. Beckett dismisses native Irish writers like Kickham as having no literary merit. In a sense he's correct, if you compare Knocknagow with the careful plotting and pellucid prose of, say, Trollope. But Knocknagow isn't rooted in the same realist tradition -the tone is more heroic folktale; the characters are highly sentimental and break into song and poetry without any encouragement; the peasants are exemplars of strength and bravery; the girls are visions of beauty. I suspect writing a novel for the readers of Trollope was never Kickham's intention. Rather, it's a series of sketches and episodes from the life of rural Ireland, written for the occupants of those cabins and houses, not for a broad readership in the English-speaking world. Comic escapades, sentimental domestic scenes, mostly in the local vernacular. Nor is explicitly polemical, though the land question appears throughout.
On the land question, the tone is of moderate accommodation - that the grievance is with individual instances of tyranny by landlords and their agents, rather than at the political injustice of the entire system. "I don't despair of old Ireland, yet," said the priest. "The people are good if they only get fair play."
As to the evictions of peasant farmers, the sense from Knocknagow is that families with small holdings had their rents raised to force their eviction, so their farms could be added to the leases of their more prosperous neighbours, who could then afford to pay higher rents. In Knocknagow this relationship between the land agent and their middle-class tenants is certainly an uneasy alliance - the Kearneys could themselves end up at the mercy of the land agent if they misplay their cards. Another of these neighbours, it turned out, had actually bribed the land agent to make an eviction. The book was written in the early 1860s, by which time the land issues were well established. Though not mentioned together, the three Fs - fair rent, fixity of tenure and free sale - are all hanging over characters at different times. By free sale is meant some compensation at the end of a lease for any improvements to the holding during the tenancy, in Knocknagow, called the goodwill, a one-off per-acre payment that a new tenant makes to the old one. The improvements are usually draining and adding lime. The digging of drainage ditches is a common improvement activity in the novel. On the subject of the lease, or the lack of it, Kickham is unusually lyrical: "...they were conceived and born under a notice to quit. It took the light out of their mother's smile, and ploughed furrows in their father's face while he was yet young, it nipped the budding pleasure of childhood as frost will nipt the spring flowers, and youth's and manhood's joys withered under its shadow; it taught them to cringe and fawn and lie, and made them what they are now..."
Some other observations: the Irish middle class, the prosperous farmers and professional classes, are very comfortable in the company of their Ascendency landlords (the upper ten), and themselves keep maids and servants and treat them as badly as the landlords treat theirs. For example, Matthew Kearney, a prosperous farmer, builds a new shed for his animals and gives the old one, filthy with animal waste, to his farm labourers to sleep in. Curiously, Kickham has the middle class Irish speak in plain English, their servants in the vernacular "Begob Mat, there's nothin' so incouragin' to a poor man as to have the rint riz on him." At a local wedding, the peasants are dancing and playing music in the barn; after a while the gentle folk retire to the house, so there's a clear and well-observed distinction between the classes.
What is pronounced throughout Knocknagow, and is presented as national trait, is the love of merrymaking, even in the gloomiest of times. There's a contrast described between the revelry at the wedding celebration above and a similar wedding in England where the only words spoken throughout were the prayers at the dining table.
Odd too is how little public sympathy there is for the evicted families. The Brien family for example are evicted and are destitute, sleeping at the side of the road in a shelter made of sods. One of characters surreptitiously passes them some potato cake and that's the extent of the charity. Next step for the Briens is the workhouse and the shame that goes with it. This is in contrast with the endless sentiment for Norah Lahy, a young girl dying of consumption, the hand-wringing and the spontaneous tears every few pages.
As to the practice of courtship, we see two extremes - at the poorer end, we have the matches made on the strength of the girl's dowry: money, land and livestock. For the better off, we see the most high-minded romance - men enraptured by the shape of a girl's gloved hand spotted in the distance, or by the curl of their ringlets, and carrying their secret passion for years on a no more substantial basis. The girls are more straightforward in their approach and discuss amongst themselves with whom they're going to flirt. Nor does religion seem to be an obstacle. Actually the only obstruction caused by religion is the apparently high cost charged by the priest for the service. One poor couple can't get married because they can't afford the priest's fee.
Another oddity is that the book was written less then twenty years after the famine, but it doesn't get mentioned . We hear about the money from America that most households seem to be getting and of untenanted holdings, but nothing about the starvation and the diseases that caused the emigration and the evictions. It surely must have been fresh in the memory of the community. But perhaps that part of east Tipperary was spared the worst of it.
For a Fenian who spent fourteen years in gaol for sedition, it's strange that Kickham doesn't make Knocknagow a vehicle for his revolutionay politics. There are grievances about the land question, but no anti-British broadsides nor other explicitly pro-Fenian sentiments. The acts of agrarian violence in the novel - the land agent shot at - are neither admired nor condemned. The characters seem to treat them as a natural part of the landscape.
And where are the huge families? We imagine Irish families of the time to have had a dozen children each. Not in Knocknagow - two or three seems to be the norm.
The traditional sports described are sledge throwing, hurling and bull-baiting. The hurling match seems to be an ad hoc affair, held on any unploughed field. The only rule seems to be that each side should have 20 players, but there are apparently no goalposts (and I suspect only goals; no points) nor referees nor team jerseys. The bull baiting is as you would expect - setting one dog after another at a young bull, but there seems to be general distaste for it in Knocknagow. Even by then it had become a underground, unsavoury pursuit.
Nobody seems to ever knock at a door before entering a cabin. Push in and say "God save all here." And it seems to be a custom that travellers could drop in anywhere at any hour to get a light for their pipe from the hearth. Was the traditional "candle in the window" something to do with this?
While Sunday mass attendance is widely observed, that seems to be the extent of the religious obligation. No nightly rosary in any of the houses, nor holy medals, nor prayers to saints for their intervention. None of the trappings we associate with traditional Catholic Ireland. The priests move in middle-class circles exclusively, but their power over the peasants is clear - they pronounce publicly on the behaviours of the parishoners from the pulpit.
Keeping wild birds in cages was popular - goldfinches, linnets, jays are all pets in different cottages.
For dinner in a peasant cottage, the mother drains the potatoes and upends the pot onto the middle of the table. People eat them off the point of whatever utensil they have, a fork or a knife. There are no plates or dishes. If there's a fish, it too is left in the middle of the table and people take a pinch of it with their fingers.
The wild cherry tree was common- every holding seems to have had one. In the book the cherries are thrown by children playing; there's no mention of anyone eating them. Too sour, I suspect.
On the land question, the tone is of moderate accommodation - that the grievance is with individual instances of tyranny by landlords and their agents, rather than at the political injustice of the entire system. "I don't despair of old Ireland, yet," said the priest. "The people are good if they only get fair play."
As to the evictions of peasant farmers, the sense from Knocknagow is that families with small holdings had their rents raised to force their eviction, so their farms could be added to the leases of their more prosperous neighbours, who could then afford to pay higher rents. In Knocknagow this relationship between the land agent and their middle-class tenants is certainly an uneasy alliance - the Kearneys could themselves end up at the mercy of the land agent if they misplay their cards. Another of these neighbours, it turned out, had actually bribed the land agent to make an eviction. The book was written in the early 1860s, by which time the land issues were well established. Though not mentioned together, the three Fs - fair rent, fixity of tenure and free sale - are all hanging over characters at different times. By free sale is meant some compensation at the end of a lease for any improvements to the holding during the tenancy, in Knocknagow, called the goodwill, a one-off per-acre payment that a new tenant makes to the old one. The improvements are usually draining and adding lime. The digging of drainage ditches is a common improvement activity in the novel. On the subject of the lease, or the lack of it, Kickham is unusually lyrical: "...they were conceived and born under a notice to quit. It took the light out of their mother's smile, and ploughed furrows in their father's face while he was yet young, it nipped the budding pleasure of childhood as frost will nipt the spring flowers, and youth's and manhood's joys withered under its shadow; it taught them to cringe and fawn and lie, and made them what they are now..."
Some other observations: the Irish middle class, the prosperous farmers and professional classes, are very comfortable in the company of their Ascendency landlords (the upper ten), and themselves keep maids and servants and treat them as badly as the landlords treat theirs. For example, Matthew Kearney, a prosperous farmer, builds a new shed for his animals and gives the old one, filthy with animal waste, to his farm labourers to sleep in. Curiously, Kickham has the middle class Irish speak in plain English, their servants in the vernacular "Begob Mat, there's nothin' so incouragin' to a poor man as to have the rint riz on him." At a local wedding, the peasants are dancing and playing music in the barn; after a while the gentle folk retire to the house, so there's a clear and well-observed distinction between the classes.
What is pronounced throughout Knocknagow, and is presented as national trait, is the love of merrymaking, even in the gloomiest of times. There's a contrast described between the revelry at the wedding celebration above and a similar wedding in England where the only words spoken throughout were the prayers at the dining table.
Odd too is how little public sympathy there is for the evicted families. The Brien family for example are evicted and are destitute, sleeping at the side of the road in a shelter made of sods. One of characters surreptitiously passes them some potato cake and that's the extent of the charity. Next step for the Briens is the workhouse and the shame that goes with it. This is in contrast with the endless sentiment for Norah Lahy, a young girl dying of consumption, the hand-wringing and the spontaneous tears every few pages.
As to the practice of courtship, we see two extremes - at the poorer end, we have the matches made on the strength of the girl's dowry: money, land and livestock. For the better off, we see the most high-minded romance - men enraptured by the shape of a girl's gloved hand spotted in the distance, or by the curl of their ringlets, and carrying their secret passion for years on a no more substantial basis. The girls are more straightforward in their approach and discuss amongst themselves with whom they're going to flirt. Nor does religion seem to be an obstacle. Actually the only obstruction caused by religion is the apparently high cost charged by the priest for the service. One poor couple can't get married because they can't afford the priest's fee.
Another oddity is that the book was written less then twenty years after the famine, but it doesn't get mentioned . We hear about the money from America that most households seem to be getting and of untenanted holdings, but nothing about the starvation and the diseases that caused the emigration and the evictions. It surely must have been fresh in the memory of the community. But perhaps that part of east Tipperary was spared the worst of it.
For a Fenian who spent fourteen years in gaol for sedition, it's strange that Kickham doesn't make Knocknagow a vehicle for his revolutionay politics. There are grievances about the land question, but no anti-British broadsides nor other explicitly pro-Fenian sentiments. The acts of agrarian violence in the novel - the land agent shot at - are neither admired nor condemned. The characters seem to treat them as a natural part of the landscape.
And where are the huge families? We imagine Irish families of the time to have had a dozen children each. Not in Knocknagow - two or three seems to be the norm.
The traditional sports described are sledge throwing, hurling and bull-baiting. The hurling match seems to be an ad hoc affair, held on any unploughed field. The only rule seems to be that each side should have 20 players, but there are apparently no goalposts (and I suspect only goals; no points) nor referees nor team jerseys. The bull baiting is as you would expect - setting one dog after another at a young bull, but there seems to be general distaste for it in Knocknagow. Even by then it had become a underground, unsavoury pursuit.
Nobody seems to ever knock at a door before entering a cabin. Push in and say "God save all here." And it seems to be a custom that travellers could drop in anywhere at any hour to get a light for their pipe from the hearth. Was the traditional "candle in the window" something to do with this?
While Sunday mass attendance is widely observed, that seems to be the extent of the religious obligation. No nightly rosary in any of the houses, nor holy medals, nor prayers to saints for their intervention. None of the trappings we associate with traditional Catholic Ireland. The priests move in middle-class circles exclusively, but their power over the peasants is clear - they pronounce publicly on the behaviours of the parishoners from the pulpit.
Keeping wild birds in cages was popular - goldfinches, linnets, jays are all pets in different cottages.
For dinner in a peasant cottage, the mother drains the potatoes and upends the pot onto the middle of the table. People eat them off the point of whatever utensil they have, a fork or a knife. There are no plates or dishes. If there's a fish, it too is left in the middle of the table and people take a pinch of it with their fingers.
The wild cherry tree was common- every holding seems to have had one. In the book the cherries are thrown by children playing; there's no mention of anyone eating them. Too sour, I suspect.
July 22, 2012
What I liked about this is that it brings you right back to another era, per-electric, rural, innocent time. However, there are deeper meanings here too. Kickham was a nationalist and worked for freedom for his fellow countrymen. This theme pervades the novel just barely under the surface. The language is a bit difficult to understand at times but it is worth the effort. The death of Norah Leahy reminded me of Little Nell and I reckon Kickham is Ireland's equivalent of Charles Dickens. The similarities are there to be seen.
April 6, 2022
A loooong read, but very entertaining. Some very cringey, but amusing "peasant" banter. And A TWIST at the end! Dramatic.
June 8, 2023
For devotees of Irish literature, this book is a must-read. I don't know how I could have gone so long without being aware of "Knocknagow." What finally led me to this classic Irish novel is learning that it was the favorite book of Irish patriot, Michael Collins. I don't know how, too, I could have missed hearing about its author, Charles Kickham, who was a leader of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the author of the beautiful ballad, "Slievenamon." The setting of the novel is a rural area of Tipperary during the period of land clearances. While history books detail the causes and events of that period, there is nothing like a novel to bring those details to life and give them human faces. The land system in Ireland of that period was disastrous for all concerned. Kickham manages to portray the virtues of Irish rural life against a background of uncaring absentee landlords and unscrupulous agents. The invalid girl, Norah Lahy, is the epitome of the noble peasant, patient and inspiring. All the goodness and sweetness of the community finds its way to Norah. Meanwhile, evil is afoot in the little village, as the agent Isaac Pender arranges for evictions of even the best tenants with no regard for human consequences. With the whole village supplying characters for the novel, it is sometimes difficult to keep them in their proper places. But it is not hard to understand that despite living in a flawed agrarian system, the inhabitants of the village manage to maintain loving, caring dispositions with always a song or a dance at the ready to sweeten their difficult lives.
April 21, 2016
очень, очень 19-й век. только на пенсии читать, и то очень скучно
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews