Forkhill Protestants and Forkhill Catholics 1787-1858
By Kyla Madden
McGill-Queen's University Press, 240 pages
By Pat Donnelly, June 9, 2007
...Another McGill-Queen's history book recently found its way into my hands, via my own Irish roots-searching path. Kyla Madden's award-winning Forkhill Prostestants and Forkhill Catholics, 1787-1858, is an academic work, based on a thesis. Although the bulk of it is a little dry for the casual reader, Madden reveals a flair for lyrical prose. She sums up with a briliant meditation on the true nature of history, using astronomical terms: "The moments of recorded history are like stars scattered through a vast galaxy. The brightest stars in this galaxy draw our gaze and we join them, one to another, creating historical narratives that are constellations unto themselves. The structure that these narratives provide helps us make sense of history, but the system is not flawless."
She goes on to say that because history tends to document the extraordinary rather than the ordinary, through necessarily subjective narratives, we must be careful not to allow them to "assume a degree of permanence and unassailability that they do not deserve." Or, in other words, don't believe everything you read in the newspapers (or history books), folks -- not even this one.
Madden's view that there's a lot more to Northern Irish history than the old saw of sectarianism is timely (peace seems to have settled in there at last), as well as refreshing. And her book told me things that I never knew about my paternal ancestors, who were Catholic, and their Protestant neighbours, including details about the lives of ordinary women.
