SIVE O’LEARY
Howling Wolves, Thunder of Horses
ISBN 0951941577
Paperback. 370 pages. Published December 2003. First Edition.
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‘This is an epic Irish adventure story of the later half of the eighteenth century and is written as ‘tense dramatic fiction’. Well researched and brimming with atmospheric detail, it has been described as a ‘substantial and marvellous work’, ‘an epic story of Ireland during the Land wars’ and ‘a possible Irish classic’.
The main character is portrayed as a kind of female Robin Hood who, at the head of a band of renegades rides through the countryside robbing the rich and helping the poor. When she is eventually captured, Sive is condemned to life in the penal colony of New South Wales. She escapes and lives with the aborigines for some time before securing passage to France.
The story will take the reader through most of the province of Munster (where the renegades known as the Whiteboys roamed), St. Malo and Brittany, New South Wales and the Australian outback, the Carolinas and the Caribbean.
The name Whiteboy derives from the white smock and white peaked hood which they wore over their faces. This garb originated in Spain during the Inquisition and was adopted by the Irish militias who raided the English settlements in the south after the American war of independence. Later, despite its religious connotation it was taken up by the K.K.K.
The story is broadly based on the exploits of one of his ancestors called ‘Long Johnny Carroll’ who was a leader of the Whiteboy movement in West Cork and who ended up fighting in the American War of Independence with Moylan’s(Cork) Dragoons.