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Charles Joseph Kickham was born and educated at Mullinahone,
County Tipperary. At thirteen he was involved in a gunpowder accident
which permanently injured his sight and hearing. Soon after he founded
the Young Ireland Confederate Club in Mullinahone. Kickham contributed
articles to James Stephens' The Irish People and later became that
paper's editor in which capacity he was arrested in 1865 for writing
'treasonous' articles. Kickham, nearly blind and almost completely deaf,
was tried and sentenced to fourteen years penal servitude. He was
imprisoned in Portland and Woking prisons where he wrote his first
novel Sally Kavanagh (1869). Kickham was released, due to ill-health,
in 1870 and lived in Blackrock, County Dublin where he continued to
write poetry and novels. His Knocknagow; or The Homes of
Tipperary (1879) was a phenomenal success, making Kickham the
most popular Irish novelist of the 19th century.
Kickham's funeral procession was one of the largest ever witnessed in
Ireland when he died in 1882 with over 150,000 mourners in attendance.
A novel For the Old Land (1886) and Poems of Charles J Kickham
(1931) were published posthumously.
Sliabh Na mBan
by Charles J. Kickham 1828 -1882
Alone, all alone, by the wave-washed strand
All alone in the crowded hall,
The hall it is gay and the waves they are grand
But my heart is not there at all,
It flies far away,
By night and by day To the times and the joys that are gone
But I never can forget
The sweet maiden I met
In the valley of Slievenamon.
It was not the grace of her queenly air
Nor the cheeks of the roses glow
Her soft dark eyes or her curly hair, Nor was it her lily white brow,
'Twas the soul of truth And of melting ruth,
And a smile like the summer's day,
That stole my heart away
On that bright summer's day
In the valley of sweet Slievenamon.
In the festive hall and the wave-washed shore
My restless spirit cries
- "My land, oh my land, shall I never see you more,
My country will you never uprise.
" By night and by day I will ever, ever pray,
As darkly my life it rolls on,
To see our flag unrolled
And my true love unfold In the valley near Slievenamon.