Trials run for Limerick

Growing up in Granagh, Co Limerick, theatre director Joan Sheehy, was always fascinated with the story of Ellen Hanly, known as ’The Colleen Bawn’, from Granagh, who was immortalised in literature, drama, film and opera.

But what Sheehy couldn’t comprehend was why the tragic story of 15-year-old Hanly lent itself to so much comedy.

The best known story of ‘The Colleen Bawn’ was written as a comic melodrama by Boucicault. He wrote his play 20 years after the murder of Hanly in 1819. A beautiful peasant girl, she was secretly married to the aristocratic John Scanlan from Croom. But when his family put pressure on him to marry a woman of good financial standing, he felt trapped and had his young lover murdered by his loyal servant, Stephen Sullivan.

Sheehy is directing The Colleen Bawn Trials which tells the story of Hanly. It is being presented in promenade style in the Shannon Rowing Club as part of the Limerick City of Culture programme.

As Sheehy says, the story has got all the elements of a great yarn. “There’s the young beautiful peasant, the aristocratic lover and a murder. While people always loved the outline of the story, they didn’t want to go into the tragedy of it. Hanly fell completely under the spell of Scanlan and they started having romantic trysts which nobody knew anything about. They married in a secret ceremony and moved to Glin where Scanlan had a cottage on the Shannon estuary. His mother, who knew nothing about the girl, wanted her son to marry someone with a dowry. Suddenly, he realised he was in a bind. Hanly was going around saying she was married. In having her murdered, you wonder if class came into it, the idea that certain people are expendable. Sullivan and Scanlan fled but were apprehended and a celebrity trial unfolded.”

The famous lawyer, Daniel O’Connell, defended Scanlan in a trial that caused a public sensation in 1820. “Everybody thought Scanlan would get off. In one of the anecdotes from the time, it was said there was a carriage outside the courthouse, ready to bring Scanlan to a party after the trial because his family thought he’d be acquitted.” But it was not to be. Scanlan was hanged as was his servant who confessed.

There is no Colleen Bawn character in the show. “We think it would be almost impossible to represent her but what we do have is four members of Limerick Youth Theatre giving a sense of young people who are the same age as Hanly.”

The Colleen Bawn Trials runs from August 14-23 at the Shannon Rowing Club.