Undercover Irish – Episode 2

Henry Browne Hayes was sentenced to transportation for life.

But exile did not humble him.

In this second part of the series, we follow Hayes from Ireland to Australia — from convict ship to colonial estate — and examine how power adapts even when it is supposedly punished.

Along the way, we encounter Irish political prisoners, Freemasonry in the early colony, the Rum Rebellion, a dramatic shipwreck, and the unfinished legacy of both empire and rebellion.

And at the centre of it all remains Mary Pike.

• The convict ship Atlas and Hayes's bribed passage
• Irish political prisoners transported after 1798
• Tristram Moore and other United Irishmen in New South Wales
• Early Freemasonry in Australia
• The attempted lodge of 1803
• Vaucluse House and its convict origins
• The Rum Rebellion (1808)
• Governor William Bligh and the New South Wales Corps
• Hayes's exile to Newcastle (Coal River)
• The role of Governor Lachlan Macquarie
• The controversial pardon
• The wreck of the Isabella in 1813
• Joseph Holt's account of the disaster
• Hayes's return to Cork
• The long shadow over Mary Pike's life
• Modern-day legacies in Ireland and Australia

Undercover Irish – Episode 1

Undercover Irish | Patreon

Eolan Ryng (@undercoverirish) • Instagram photos and videos

In late 18th-century Cork, a wealthy magistrate named Henry Browne Hayes stood on the quay and watched Irish prisoners being transported to Australia.

A decade later, he would join them.

This episode explores one of the most extraordinary criminal cases in Irish history — the 1797 abduction of Mary Pike, a wealthy Cork heiress, and the fall of a man who believed the law existed to serve him.

Set against the backdrop of the Protestant Ascendancy, the Penal Laws, and the social hierarchy of pre-Union Ireland, this is a story about power, gender, class, and what happened when privilege finally collided with consequence.

• Life in Cork under the Protestant Ascendancy
• Transportation from Ireland to Australia in the 18th century
• The case of Michael Lamb — poverty and exile
• Vernon Mount and the architecture of elite power
• Financial decline and social pressure among Ascendancy families
• The abduction of Mary Pike in 1797
• The culture of "abduction clubs" among wealthy Irish men
• The pursuit led by Cooper Penrose
• The role of barber Coghlan and the Grand Parade reward houses
• The courtroom battle led by John Philpot Curran
• The precedent of Strange & Byrne
• The guilty verdict
• The sentence: transportation for life

Mary Pike was not just any young woman. She was one of the wealthiest heiresses in Cork — connected to powerful mercantile families.

When Henry Browne Hayes abducted her in an attempt to force a marriage, he assumed status would shield him.

He was wrong.

The case electrified Cork society. It raised uncomfortable questions about class, entitlement, and the treatment of women in 18th-century Ireland.

If this could happen to an heiress — what happened to women without wealth or influence?

This episode also explores the wider social order that shaped Hayes:

• Land confiscation and elite control
• The Penal Laws
• The justice system's uneven application
• The intersection of gender and class

Henry Browne Hayes was not simply an individual criminal.

He was a product of a political system that concentrated power — and protected its own.

Long before Hayes became a convict, he oversaw the transportation of others.

Irish prisoners — many convicted for poverty-driven crimes — were sent to New South Wales as part of Britain's expanding penal empire.

In one of history's sharpest ironies, Hayes would later be sentenced to the same fate.

• Vernon Mount, Cork
• Grand Parade (Sráid an Chapaill Buí), Cork
• Christ Church, South Main Street
• Shandon Street
• Early transport ships from Ireland to Australia

This is not just a tale of scandal.

It is a case study in how power behaves when challenged.

It forces us to ask:

• Was the law applied equally?
• Did wealth soften consequences?
• How were working-class women treated in the same society?
• And how much of that logic survives today?

Henry Browne Hayes is found guilty and sentenced to transportation for life.

But exile is not the end of his story.

Next time: Australia, Freemasonry, the Rum Rebellion, a shipwreck in the South Atlantic — and the long shadow of Mary Pike.

If you enjoy Undercover Irish and want to support independent Irish history storytelling, you can support the show on Patreon.

▶️ Watch the full three-part video series on YouTube:

👉 https://youtu.be/0KHrtftADsU?si=XkZpK2x22PEZC0dA

👉 https://youtu.be/Eo55vfTsj0o?si=I_PQd3YT79uo7g3B

👉 https://youtu.be/jeRabeYsImA?si=Uq-mao7MQUzI6UlZ

☕ Support the podcast on Patreon:

👉 Undercover Irish | Podcasts on Irish History, Language, Songs and Story. | Patreon

📸 Follow on Instagram for maps, photos & fieldwork:

👉 https://instagram.com/UndercoverIrish

Courtaparteen was once a living Irish village. Today, it's hidden beneath forestry.

In this episode of Undercover Irish, I explore the lost village of Courtaparteen — tracing it through historic maps, satellite imagery, and on-the-ground exploration to understand how an entire settlement could disappear from view.

This episode brings together three strands of investigation:

• Mapping Courtaparteen on historic Ordnance Survey maps and comparing them with modern satellite imagery
• Walking the abandoned village, church ruins, holy wells, and graveyard hidden within woodland
• Analysing how Courtaparteen fits into the wider social, political, and economic history of rural Ireland

Rather than vanishing in a single dramatic moment, Courtaparteen faded quietly — shaped by depopulation, land use change, and the slow erosion of rural communities. Its story is not unique, but it is revealing.

This episode looks at what remains in the landscape, what survives in records, and what happens when places are no longer seen.

🎥 This story is also available as a three-part video series on YouTube, with maps, satellite imagery, and on-location footage from Courtaparteen itself.

☕ If you'd like to support long-form Irish history, research trips, and field recordings, you can do so on Patreon.

👉 Support the show on Patreon: patreon.com/undercoverirish

📸 Follow on Instagram: @undercoverirish

"Last night as I lay dreaming of pleasant days gone by…"

That opening line has echoed for more than a century — from kitchens and pubs to ships, emigrant halls, and even the stands of Celtic Park. In this episode of Undercover Irish, we explore Spancil Hill, one of the most powerful emigrant ballads in the Irish tradition — not just as a song, but as a piece of living history. Ballads like this are history from the ground up. They preserve emotion, memory, and ordinary lives that never made it into official records. Using Spancil Hill as our guide, this episode looks at the aisling (dream-vision) tradition in Irish culture, the reality of forced economic emigration under colonial rule, and the folk process that turned one young man's private grief into a song known across the world. Along the way, we uncover the real story behind the lyrics: how "Johnny" was really Michael Considine how "Ned the farmer's daughter" was actually Mary MacNamara and how a dream of home became the only return an emigrant ever made Michael Considine left County Clare in the 1870s and died in California at just 23 years old — never returning home. But his song did. This episode is about longing, loss, and why some histories survive not in books, but in music. 🔎 In This Episode Why ballads matter as cultural memory Songs as oral history and emotional archives The aisling tradition in Irish storytelling Emigration as a product of colonial and economic pressure The real people behind Spancil Hill How folk songs change — and what gets lost along the way 🎶 Recommended Listening Spancil Hill — traditional versions Recordings by The Dubliners, Christy Moore... Not every emigrant got a monument. Some got a melody.

Pic: Of The Green Brigade TIFO at Celtic Park.

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Support the podcast, and help keep Undercover Irish independent

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What do Roy Keane and Bishop Brennan have in common?

More than you might think.

In this episode of Undercover Irish, we use two of Ireland's most recognisable voices — one real, one fictional — to explore how the Irish language is undercover inside the English we speak every day.

From the rhythm of Roy Keane's interviews to Bishop Brennan's iconic delivery, this episode shows how Gaeilge shapes our English — in grammar, sentence structure, sound, and social meaning.

This is Guerilla Gaeilge.

This episode builds on the idea that Hiberno-English is not broken or incorrect English, but English shaped by centuries of Irish speakers carrying Gaeilge with them.

We look at:

These features aren't mistakes.

They aren't laziness.

They aren't "bad English".

They are the result of language survival under pressure — Irish adapting, hiding, and persisting inside English during centuries of suppression, ridicule, and internalised shame.

That's why this episode argues for a specific term:

Not the whole of Hiberno-English — but the parts that come directly from Gaeilge.

Hunger, Gorta, Troscadh: Cultural Memory, Political Resistance, and Brehon Law

Hunger in Irish history is rarely just about food.

In this episode, we explore three words — hunger, gorta, and troscadh — and what they reveal about power, memory, and justice in Ireland. From the cultural weight of An Gorta Mór, to fasting as a recognised act within early Irish law, to hunger as a form of political resistance, this episode traces how deprivation could be imposed — and how it could also be chosen.

Drawing on language, law, and tradition, this episode asks how hunger moved from catastrophe to weapon, and why these ideas still echo in modern Irish history.

Topics include:

• The difference between hunger and gorta
• Fasting (troscadh) in early Irish legal tradition
• Hunger as moral and political pressure
• Cultural memory and responsibility
• How language preserves power and resistance

Eolan Ryng (@undercoverirish) • Instagram photos and videos Follow Here

Undercover Irish | Patreon Support Here

Huge GRMMA to Grace!

🔗 https://youtu.be/BJyO6xRL5KA?si=8dUh09AjWVaT78Ow

Christmas in Ireland — Am na Nollag — is not a single tradition.

It is a layering of customs: Christian belief laid gently over practices far older than Christianity itself. In this episode of Undercover Irish, we explore how Irish Christmas traditions preserve ideas of survival, fire, hunger, and renewal — stretching back to the solstice and the rebirth of the sun.

Using material from the Dúchas Schools' Collection, traditional song, and Irish folklore, this episode traces how Ireland kept not old gods or new gods — but the instructions that worked.

At the heart of the episode are two constants:

• The Kerry Christmas Carol, a song of preparation and fire-keeping
• An Spideog, the robin — a winter bird spared in Irish tradition

Together, they reveal how Irish Christmas still carries the memory of darker winters, lived hunger, and the careful keeping of life.

• Why Christmas in Ireland is both Christian and pre-Christian
• The tradition of leaving doors unlocked and candles lit for Mary
• The older belief in midwinter as "the birthday of the sun"
• Yule, fire rituals, and survival through darkness
• Why the robin is protected — and the wren is carried out
• How famine and hunger shaped Irish ritual language
• What Irish Christmas customs tell us about continuity, not belief

Accounts of leaving the door open and a candle in the window on Christmas Night so that Mary might find shelter and leave her blessing on the house.

🔗 https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4427957

A Schools' Collection account recording local belief that midwinter was once known as "the birthday of our sun".

🔗 https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4490871

An accompanying entry stating plainly that "Yule meant the feast of the Sun", and describing midwinter fire customs.

🔗 https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4490873

The Kerry Christmas Carol

Traditional Irish Christmas song emphasising preparation, hearth-keeping, and survival through winter.

▶️ Watch / listen on YouTube:

If you enjoy deep dives into Irish history, folklore, language, and tradition, you can support the podcast and access bonus material on Patreon.

🔗Undercover Irish | Patreon

Huge GRMMA to Grace!

🔗 https://youtu.be/BJyO6xRL5KA?si=8dUh09AjWVaT78Ow

Undercover Irish Podcast

In this episode of Undercover Irish, we explore how Hiberno-English contains hidden grammar, structures, and ways of thinking that come directly from Gaeilge. From phrases like "I do be" and "I'm after doing" to "ye / yiz / youse" and the Irish habit of answering questions without yes or no, this episode argues that Irish is hiding in plain sight inside English.

This is not just a linguistic curiosity. It's a story of survival, resistance, mockery, and internalised shame, stretching from colonial schools and the bata scóir to the caricature of the Stage Irishman on the English stage.

• Why "no one I know speaks Irish" isn't actually true
• What Hiberno-English is — and why it has many influences
• Why the Gaeilge-derived parts deserve their own name: Guerilla Gaeilge
• The ember metaphor: Irish as a language that smouldered, not died
• Grammar features in Irish English that come straight from Gaeilge:
  • "I do be…" (habitual present from bíonn)
  • "I'm after doing…" (after-perfect from tar éis)
  • "Ye / yiz / youse" (plural you from sibh)
  • Verb-echo answers instead of yes/no
• How Irish speech was mocked through Stage Irish stereotypes
• Early examples like The Irish Hudibras (1689)
• How ridicule and punishment created internalised shame
• Why recognising Guerilla Gaeilge changes how we teach and talk about Irish

"Hiberno-English" is the broad academic term for English as spoken in Ireland, shaped by many influences — English, Scottish, global English, class, and migration.

But Guerilla Gaeilge is the name given in this episode to something more specific:

It's not broken English.

It's camouflaged Irish.

If you want to go deeper into Hiberno-English and Irish-English linguistics, these are excellent starting points:

• Raymond Hickey – Irish English: History and Present-Day Forms
• Markku Filppula – The Grammar of Irish English
• Terence Dolan – A Dictionary of Hiberno-English
• Jeffrey Kallen – Irish English: Volume 1 & 2
• Tomás de Bhaldraithe – works on Irish influence on English syntax
• P.W. Joyce – English As We Speak It in Ireland (classic 19th-century source)

For accessible Irish language learning and everyday usage:

• Gaeilge Guide with Mollie – practical, modern Gaeilge for real life

If you enjoy the podcast and want to support independent Irish history and language content:

• Patreon – bonus episodes, early access, behind-the-scenes content
• 👉 patreon.com/undercoverirish
• Instagram – clips, language examples, visuals, and episode updates
• 👉 @undercoverirish

Sharing the episode, leaving a review, or rating the podcast helps more than you might think — it keeps these stories alive and visible.

🎄 A Christmas special episode — seasonal, strange, and very Irish

🔎 A five-part true crime mini-series, rooted in Irish history, silence, and power

Stay tuned.

If you listen closely to how people speak in Ireland,

you'll hear it.

The embers.

Still glowing.

Still alive.

Guerilla Gaeilge.