A newish stamp with a picture of an old stamp is not at all unusual. Ireland was using British stamps in 1867 but that doesn’t mean the imagination can’t conjure up what a newly independent stamp issue of 1867 would have looked like. If the Fenian rebellion succeeded. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and st back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Since this stamp is an Irish fantasy lets examine how they did. Not so bad. Most new countries start with a coat of arms, even one where the independence was achieved from violent chaos. One can note a pretty giant difference between this would be issue and the later real issues of the Irish Free State. They aren’t all about the Catholic church. The Fenians were rough men, whose struggle was routed in class not in intricacies of interpreting scripture. Their independent Ireland would have been different than what came later. Kudos to the stamp designer, S. Allen Taylor, for picking up on that. By 1967, Irish stamp issues were becoming way more secular. On some of the real early stamps, Ireland could be mistaken for a caliphate.
Todays stamp is issue A62, a 5 penny stamp issued by Irish Republic on October 23rd, 1967. The stamp recognized the 100th anniversary of the failed Fenian Irish rebellion of 1867. It was a two stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents used.
The class situation was serious in 19th century Ireland. The landowning class was largely British and the available land was often used for cattle raising, so the beef could be exported to feed the insatiable English desire for corned beef, that was newly cheap and available to the masses of industrial workers. This left the Irish short of food and money. Thus there were frequent rebellions against British rule. There were also many Irish leaving for the USA, Canada, and factory work in England. The situation eventually corrected with corn beef resourced from Uruguay. See https://the-philatelist.com/2018/11/07/uruguay-1889-we-will-grow-by-immigration-merino-wool-and-corned-beef/
Several leaders of a 1848 uprising were in Paris and in contact with Irish in the USA. After the American Civil War there were many Irish born veterans that had been paid to fight for the North. Taking inspiration from the Irish Fianna of the middle ages. They hoped their armed arrival in Ireland and Canada would lead to an uprising that would end British rule. Fianna were sons of Ireland in the middle ages that were landless and had to scratch out a living as armed bands. There were several Fenian attacks in Ireland, England and Canada that were mainly hoping to seize weapons. The attacks failed and so the leaders were not able to lead an uprising of the Irish people.
That does not mean the Irish people did not remember and appreciate the effort. After the rebellion was put down there was a massive outpouring of wishes than the Fenians not be hung as traitors but instead given amnesty. Some were and some weren’t. The old Fianna mottos were. We have purity in our hearts, we have strength in our limbs and our actions match are speech. The modern Fenians added that they were deeming better to manfully die in the struggle for freedom than continue an existence of utter serfdom. A movement needs some martyrs and these were better than most. In England, they were seen differently of course, see the cartoon below.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another of Irish Whiskey to toast stamp designer S. Allen Taylor. Stamp collectors like to remember an old stamp, but it goes the extra mile to imagine what an old stamp would have looked like if things had gone differently. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.