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8 2 20 20120411 20 ~ Seanchas ~ NOTES ON THE WEXFORD GENTLEMAN PIPER LARRY GROGAN (1702–1728/9) PART 3 Seán Donnelly The Limerick Hell Fire Club (1735–6) N O DEPICTION OF LARRY GROGAN is known to survive, but Pierce Creagh and Edward Croker, and doubtless oth- ers he associated with in Limerick, appear in the picture reproduced here, The Limerick Hell Fire Club, painted in 1735–6 by the English artist James Worsdale (1692–1767) for Edward Croker. It remained at Ballynagarde until sold in 1959, and was one of a number of paintings bequeathed to the National Gallery of Ireland in 1986 by the folklorist Máire MacNeill in memory of her husband, John Sweeney (NGI 4523). In 1734 Worsdale had painted some members of the Dublin Hell Fire Club, of which he was a founder member, a painting also in the National Gallery (NGI 134). 1 Eight of the fourteen sitters in the Limerick painting were named on a tablet later attached to its frame, but of those named only Windham Quin (1717–89) of Adare can be identified un- ambiguously. Though not named, the woman is certainly Celinda Blennerhasset of Rid- dlestown, co. Limerick, unique in being a fe- male member of a Hell Fire Club, and the man holding her would have been her husband, Arthur (d.1775). The boy with the hunting horn was probably Edward Croker’s son, John (1730–95). Croker himself could be the ges- turing man in the centre, or the man to the right smoking a pipe. In the painting of the Dublin club, Lord Santry, who commissioned the pic- ture, appears on the right of the group. The two men between these figures, one sitting and one standing, show a family resemblance and could be Pierce Creagh senior and junior. 2 Edward Croker’s capacity for wine – his crest was three fleurs-de-lys over a two-handled drinking cup – is celebrated in a poem by Daniel Hayes (also in the painting), ‘Eclogue III’, dedicated to Celinda Blennerhasset: But if in endless Drinking you delight, C––––r will ply you till you sink outright; C––––r for swilling Floods of Wine renown’d, Whose matchless Board with various Plenty’s crown’d; Eternal Scenes of Riot, Mirth and Noise, With all the Thunder of the Nenagh boys; We laugh, we roar, the ceaseless Bumpers fly ’Till the Sun purples o’er the Morning Sky; And if unruly Passions chance to rise, A willing Wench the Fir-grove still supplies. 3 Clearly the Fir Grove was a brothel and ‘Moll Whealon’s’, a similar establishment in Wex- ford town–a ‘watlin’ shop’ was once the local term 4 – is mentioned in the song ‘Larry Gro- gan’ (p. 46). 5 Did Larry Grogan write ‘Ally Croker’? The song ‘Ally Croker’ becomes immensely popular from the early 1750s, when it begins

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2012-04-21T00:00:00

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