Roddy McCorley

Roddy McCorley (died 28 February 1800) was an Irish nationalist from the civil parish of Duneane, County Antrim, Ireland. Following the publication of the Ethna Carbery poem bearing his name in 1902, where he is associated with events around the Battle of Antrim, he is alleged to have been a member of the United Irishmen and claimed as a participant in their rebellion of 1798.

Early years and the 1798 rebellion Roddy McCorley was the son of a miller and was born near Toome in the parish of Duneane, County Antrim. A few years before the 1798 rebellion, McCorley's father is believed to have been executed for stealing sheep. These charges may have been politically motivated in an attempt to remove a troublesome agitator at a time of great social unrest.

There is uncertainty as to whether McCorley was actually actively involved with the predominantly Presbyterian United Irishmen or the predominantly Catholic Defenders. A letter published in the Belfast Newsletter a few days after McCorley's execution gave an account of the execution and how McCorley was viewed by some. In it, he is called Roger McCorley, which may be his proper Christian name.

Upon Friday last, a most awful procession took place here, namely the execution of Roger McCorley who was lately convicted at a court-martial, to the place of execution, Toome Bridge, the unfortunate man having been born in that neighbourhood.

As a warning to others, it is proper to observe that the whole of his life was devoted to disorderly proceedings of every kind, for many years past, scarcely a Quarter-sessions occurred but what the name of Roger McCorley appeared in a variety of criminal cases.

His body was given up to dissection and afterwards buried under the gallows…thus of late we have got rid of six of those nefarious wretches who have kept this neighbourhood in the greatest misery for some time past, namely, Stewart, Dunn, Ryan, McCorley, Caskey and the notorious Dr. Linn. The noted Archer will soon be in our Guard-room.

In popular culture and commemoration

Despite a lack of contemporary evidence of McCorley's actual involvement in the United Irishmen rebellion, he became a major figure in nationalist-republican martyrology due to a poem and song by Ethna Carbery called "Roddy McCorley", written in the 1890s. Historian Guy Beiner uncovered earlier references to Roddy McCorley in Presbyterian folklore, which he showed to have been repeatedly forgotten and obscured on the background of mainstream Presbyterian identification with Unionism.

An account of McCorley's career compiled in the early twentieth century from local traditions and correspondence with his descendants, Who Fears to Speak of '98?, was written by the Belfast antiquary and nationalist Francis Joseph Bigger. It contains an edited version of an early 19th-century ballad about Roddy McCorley's fate.