“My grandfather’s name was Philip Brady. He was a native of Sonnagh, Aughnacliffe, in the parish of Colmcille. He was in (the) 1798 (rebellion) and marched to Granard. Entering the town they encountered English troops, and to protect themselves from the bullets, they pushed (cart)loads of hay before them along the road. My grandfather was wounded by a bullet in the upper part of his leg. The leader of the Colmcille men rode a white horse. He was killed. (The Schools’ Collection Volume 0758)

When the Irish Folklore Commission set up a project in schools in the 1930’s for pupils to collect folk tales and oral history from older people in their locality, Patrick3 Brady then aged about 75, contributed several stories, including the one above, which provides us with the earliest evidence of one of our ancestors taking part in a significant historical event, for Patrick was a brother of Bridget Brady, who married John3 Boyle in 1890.

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The ‘Battle of Granard’ was a skirmish intended to divert British troops away from the large French expeditionary force which had landed in the west of Ireland some weeks previously. A combatant on the British side reported  4,000 rebels "drawn out in line of battle...a hot and well directed fire was kept up which soon obliged them to break and fly in all directions...the slaughter was immense; about 150 were left dead on the field." including the mounted leader, Patrick Farrell. 

The French army had invaded in support of the revolutionary United Irishmen, and was marching towards Dublin. It was joined by thousands of Irish rebels. The decisive battle was fought at Ballinamuck, within a mile of Gaigue on 8th September 1798 in which the outnumbered French-Irish force was defeated. While the captured French were treated as prisoners of war, about 700 of the inexperienced Irish rebels were either slaughtered on the battle field or hunted down and killed in mop-up operations over the following days and weeks.​​

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If Philip1 Brady was fighting in 1798, he was probably born in the 1770s or early 1780s. Patrick3 states that his grandfather was a native of Sonnagh, a few miles away, and it’s not known when he came to Gaigue. No Bradys are listed in the Tithe Applotment Books (1823) for either place, but by the mid-19th century, at least three of his sons are occupying farms in Gaigue.  It is possible that he is the Philip Brady whose death is noted in the Drumlish Parish records on 24th June 1837, when he would have been about 60.

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