Captain Rock

Captain Rock was a mythical Irish folk hero, and the name used for the agrarian rebel group he represented in the south-west of Ireland from 1821 to 1824.[1] Arising following the harvest failures in 1816 and 1821, the drought in 1818 and the fever epidemic of 1816-19. Rockites, similar to the earlier Whiteboys, targetted the English and Anglo-Irish Feudal landowners. Captain Rock (or Rockites) were responsible for up to a thousand incidents of beatings, murder, arson and mutilation in the short time they were active. Which the rebel acts waning in 1824 with the return of "a bearable level of subsistence". Captain Rock was the symbol for retaliation by "an underclass which had nothing left to lose".[2]

References

  1. ↑ Ellis, Peter Berresford. Irelands Forgotten Rockite Rebellion, The Irish Democrat, 27 July (2004)
  2. ↑ The Irish Examiner. Review of 'Captain Rock: The Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821-1824', March 6 (2010)

Further reading

  • Donnelly, James S. Captain Rock: The Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821–1824 (2009)
  • Christianson, Gale E. "Secret Societies and Agrarian Violence in Ireland, 1790-1840." Agricultural History (1972): 369-384. in JSTOR
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