User:Lonepalm58/Willie Brennan

Willie Brennan (d 1804) was a highway man in 18th century Ireland. His exploits were popularised by singers such as The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.

Brennan was Ireland's answer to Robin Hood. He took the wealth of landowners and distributed it to the less-fortunate. One story of Brennan that's told concerns the time he held up the under-agent of the Earl of Mount Cashel. The agent had been collecting rents, and told Brennan that if were robbed, he would have to make up the funds from his own poor resources, or lose his position. Brennan gave him back his rents, and in return, the agent gave Brennan shelter at his house in Kilworth.

“Brennan on the Moor.”-I am not aware that in any catalogue of Waterford “worthies” (or “unworthies”) the name of William Brennan, outlaw and popular hero, finds mention. “Bold Brennan” of local song and story was a Co. Wateriord native, though the scenes of his adventures and escapades lay mainly in Cork and Tipperary. Brennan was born at Raspberry Hill, a frontier townland of Co. Waterford, on the north bank of The Blackwater. An old newspaper cutting (name of newspaper not recorded) before me tells that “Brennan was captured in County Tipperary, and tried and executed in Clonmel Gaol, and that his remains were, as was usual in .those days, handed over to his relatives for interment. There seems to be no doubt that. in common with many others of his class in those troubled times, he was looked on in the light of a popular hero, as the long cavalcade, up to two miles in length, that followed his remains to their last resting place in Kilcrumper—midway between Kilworth and Fermoy—testified.” His grave is still pointed out beneath a little niche in the only existing wall of the old church of Kilcrumper. I heard the story and many of his wild adventures nearly forty years ago from the lips of an old man who witnessed his funeral. I could never ascertain what first induced him to “run the outlaws wild career.” Among many other stories recorded of him is that on one occasion he held up an under-agent of the then Earl of Mountcashel, who was returning from collecting rent from his lordship’s County Tipperary tenants, and relieved him of the proceeds of his day’s collection. On ascertaining from the agent, who was at heart a kindly-disposed gentleman, that he was a comparatively poor man and should make good the amount from his own resources or lose his situation, he returned him the money, and it is recorded of him that in return he repeatedly sheltered Brennan at his residence in Kilworth, in the house now occupied by the parish priest.” As boys in Waterford we often heard (and heard I regret to say-with pride and pleasure) how Brennan and his wife robbed the Mayor of Cashel “a mile outside that town.” Also, how the daring outlaw caught a tartar when “One night he robbed a packman by the name of Pedlar Bawn ; They travelled on together Till the day began to dawn. When the pedlar missed his money gone, Besides his watch and chain He at once encountered Brennan And robbed him back again.” —Rev. Power in: Journal of the Waterford and South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society, Vol. 14 (1911), p. 191/2 The noted eighteenth-century highwayman, Willie Brennan, made the Kilworth mountains near Fermoy in County Cork his preserve. Like Robin Hood, Brennan shared his loot with the poor, and, again like Robin Hood, recruited his confederates from men who had beaten him at his own game. His career ended on the gallows in 1804. Irish broadsides, copied by the London ballad press, were taken up by folk singers in Ireland, England, and America.... Albert B. Friedman, The Penguin Book of Folk Ballads, New York, 1977, p. 372.