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Cork City & County Archives: Through War and Rebellion: Cork 1912-1918
SP1912-18, 1913 Irish Volunteers
©Cork City and County Archives 2015
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Cork City & County Archives: Through War and Rebellion: Cork 1912-1918
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Cork City & County Archives: Through War and Rebellion: Cork 1912-1918
Year: 1913 U156/1 14 December 1913 [1914] Formation of Irish Volunteers in Cork
Background:
Riobaird Langford was born in 1896 in Cork. His father was Charles Lankford, who worked as a
printer in the Cork Examiner newspaper. He was a member of Conradh na Gaeilge (Gaelic League).
Riobaird served an apprenticeship in the Cork Examiner and his printing business (Lee Press) started
in 1913 with the purchase of St. Josephs Press, off South Terrace, Cork,. His first wife died in
childbirth. He had 20 children with his second wife, Catherine O'Callaghan, of Blarney Street.
Riobárd’s grandfather was possibly a Protestant minister. His brother Seamus and his sister-in-law
Siobhán Langford were prominent in the IRA in Cork city and Mallow. During 1916 he was involved
guarding the Volunteer Headquarters in Sheares Street and protecting the leaders Tomás
MacCurtain and Terence MacSwiney.
In this document Riobaird Langford is writing about the founding of the Cork branch of the Irish
Volunteers on 14 December 1913. They were set up to support the passage of Home Rule for Ireland
against Ulster Unionist resistance. However, the original committee of the Irish Volunteers had been
dominated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) who secretly wanted to use the organisation to
start a rebellion against British rule. When the British Army, stationed at the Curragh Camp in county
Kildare ‘mutinied’ in March 1914 and the Ulster Unionists landed 25,000 rifles and a million bullets
at Larne on 24 April 1914 the leadership of the Irish Parliamentary Party, under John Redmond,
demanded (and got) control of the Irish Volunteers so that all nationalists working for Home Rule
would be under his control. If Irish Volunteers started fighting Ulster Volunteers this might delay
Home Rule which was due to become law in the Autumn. Despite this, on 26 July 1914 the Irish
Volunteers landed 900 rifles and 29,000 bullets at Howth, County Dublin and it really looked as if a
civil war would start in Ireland.
Just at this moment war in Europe broke out and the history of Ireland and Britain took a different
path. When the Great War (First World War) broke out, on 4 August 1914, Redmond committed the
Irish Volunteers to fight for Britain in a speech at Woodenbridge Co. Wexford on 20 September
1914. The Home Rule bill had become law two days earlier, but was suspended for the length of the
war. Nobody expected the war to last until 1918 and most of the soldiers expected to be ‘home by
Christmas’, 1914. Redmond’s ‘off the cuff’ speech led to a split in the movement when Eoin MacNeill
rejected Redmond’s call to war on 24 September, but the vast majority (175,000) supported
Redmond who set up the National Volunteers. This left a rump of 13,500 in the Irish Volunteers. It
was this group that was involved in the Easter Rising of 1916.
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Cork City & County Archives: Through War and Rebellion: Cork 1912-1918
The Document:
The document is an eyewitness description by Riobaird Langford after the event which describes
what happened on the night when Eoin MacNeill and Roger Casement came to address a public
meeting in Cork City Hall to set up a branch of the Irish Volunteers.
Instructions:
1. Read through the document.
2. Highlight the names of people, sentences, or words you do not understand.
3. Highlight any words you cannot read.
4. Fill in the recording sheet supplied and attach it to the document.
5. Optional: There is a second document by Diarmuid Fawcitt which describes the same events. Read
through it and decide which of the two documents you find the more interesting. Pick out four
quotes from either or both documents to tell the story. Fill in the recording sheet supplied and
attach it to the document.
6. Optional: The Langford and Fawcitt documents mention groups such as the ‘AOH’, ‘Molly
Maguires’, ‘Gaelic Leaguers’ and ‘the Redmondite party’. Look up and explain what each group was
and discuss divisions in Irish nationalism in the period c1900-1915
7. Store the completed work as directed by your teacher.
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Cork City & County Archives: Through War and Rebellion: Cork 1912-1918
Ref: U156/1, Collection U156 Riobárd Lankford Papers
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Cork City & County Archives: Through War and Rebellion: Cork 1912-1918
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Cork City & County Archives: Through War and Rebellion: Cork 1912-1918
Further research and sources:
CORK CITY & COUNTY ARCHIVES CATALOGUE
This item is from collection U156 Riobárd Langford Papers
http://www.corkarchives.ie/media/U156web.pdf
Diaries and papers of Liam de Roiste, and some papers of JJ Walsh, are also at the Archives:
http://catalogue.corkarchives.ie/Details/archive/110000722;
http://catalogue.corkarchives.ie/Details/archive/110000805
The Fawcitt letter comes from a small collection. Fawcitt was a civil servant and later a judge:
http://catalogue.corkarchives.ie/Details/archive/110000351
Extract from Fawcitt’s letter regarding the meeting is here
Also held are AOH (Ancient Order of Hibernians) records, for Cork area (U389) and Crosshaven:
http://catalogue.corkarchives.ie/Details/archive/110023024
On Irish nationalism before 1916, see eg PR25 papers of Sophie O’Brien, wife of William O’Brien MP,
and PR40, papers relating to DD Sheehan MP, a colleague of O’Brien, who served in WWI:
http://catalogue.corkarchives.ie/Details/archive/110000332
http://catalogue.corkarchives.ie/Details/archive/110004864
CORK CITY & COUNTY ARCHIVES WEBSITE
List of Irish Volunteers Cork Corps:
http://www.corkarchives.ie/collections/onlinedigitalarchive/irishvolunteerscorkcorpsmembershiplis
t1913-1914/
Includes date of enlistment and address with all those who joined at the meeting included
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Is your family on the list?
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How would you find out?
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How do you contact the Archives?
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How can you look at the original?
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Who could you ask?
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Cork City & County Archives: Through War and Rebellion: Cork 1912-1918
ELSEWHERE AND ONLINE:
Sources about some of the background events and about what happened on the night.
PATHE NEWS Redmond and Carson volunteers 1912-1914
History Ireland: The Larne gun-running of 1914
Text and pictures
RTE NEWS The extraordinary story of the Asgard and the Howth gun-running 100 years on
Text, pictures and video
Links to other videos including contemporary news footage
RTE John Redmond Woodenbridge Speech 20 September 1914
Text and pictures and video clip
UCD ARCHIVE Irish Volunteer Statement rejecting Redmond 24 September 1914
Text pictures and PDF of document
This statement signed by most of the 1916 leaders
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF IRELAND The 1916 Rising: Personalities & Perspectives
Online exhibition covering all the individuals involved in the Rising including MacNeill and Casement
Excellent for project work and self-directed learning
RTE Chaotic scenes at Cork Volunteers launch
Newspaper reports of the happenings on the night, pictures and video with Bulmer Hobson about
Ulster influence on these events.
LEARN 1916 EASTER 1916 SCHOOLS SECONDARY
Excellent resource for teachers including lesson plans, Worksheets, activities, scrapbooks, and links
Book White, Gerry, and O’Shea, Brendan, ‘Baptised in Blood’, the formation of the Cork Brigade of
the Irish Volunteers 1913-16, Mercier Press, Cork, 2005
Full history of the Cork Brigade’s early years by two fine local historians.
This Project is made possible through the support of the Heritage Council Grants Programme 2015