Henry Brereton Code

Life
?-1830 [var. Cody], The Patriot, or Hermit of Saxellan, mus. drama (2nd ed. Dublin 1811); also said to have been a govt. spy in ’98; edited the Tory journal, The Warder; he is subject of abuse in Furlong’s ‘Plagues of Ireland’; also attacked by Watty Cox [see IBL infra]; lived in Eccles St.; John Stevenson set his airs to music; a poem of his is quoted in W. J. Fitzpatrick’s Lady Morgan. The Russian Sacrifice, or Burning of Moscow (1813); wrote official Ode, on the birthday of George IV, to be performed at the Castle on 23 April 1821; music by Sir John Stevenson (1821); also ‘A Sprig of Shillelagh’, which appears in his Russian Sacrifice, erroneously attributed to Lysaght; did not however write ‘Donnybrook Fair’ properly by Charles O’Flaherty (d. c.1830), sometimes attributed to him; a commentary on Code appears in The New Irish Magazine and National Advocate (Oct. 1822, pp.133-34). PI GBI RAF OCIL FDA

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Criticism
Séamus Ó Casaidhe in ‘Henry B Code’, IBL, III, p.72; also IBL XXVII, 4, p. 90, Ó Casaidhe cites a vitriolic review of Code’s Russian Sacrifice (1813), in Walter Cox’s Irish Monthly Magazine (Mar 1813) [‘heap of nonsense, dullness and plagiarism’]. And see Irish Book Lover 14, 17; note a reference in Furlong’s Plagues of Ireland.

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Commentary
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850, Vol. 1 (1980): ‘H. B. Code, a particularly detested character, spy and informer placed by Furlong among the sores that give The Plagues of Ireland its name; author of an official ode to George IV on his Irish visit of 1812, to music by Sir John Stevenson (p.27). [Note: There is no Code bibl. in Rafroidi, op. cit., Vol. 2.]

Bryan Coleborne, ‘“They Sate in Counterview”, Anglo-Irish Verse in the Eighteenth Century’, in Hyland and Sammells, Irish Writing, Exile and Subversion (1991), pp.45-63, The stereotype emerging in Boys of Kilkenny becomes the stuff of entertainment in Henry Brereton Code’s musical drama The Russian Sacrifice, or the Burning of Moscow (1813); his separate verses include ‘The Song-Sprig of Shillella’, romanticising national character, ‘Who has e’er had the luck to see Donnybrook fair? / An Irishman all in his glory is there, / With his sprig of Shillela and shamrock so green: His clothes spick and span new, without e’er a speck, / A nice barcelona tied round his neat neck; / He goes to a tent, and he spends half a crown, / Comes out, meets a friend, and for love knocks him down. / With his sprig of Shillela and shamrock so green.’ (p.55)

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Quotations
Insurrection of the 23rd of July 1803 (1803), being a report of the trial. ‘The warning voice of the unfortunate Emmet, who might have been a support, and an ornament to society, that voice which spoke almost from the grave and seemed assimilating to the energy and inspiration of eternal truth [will teach us] to appreciate the character of the enemy whose abandoned emissaries would seduce them from their King, their Country and their God.’

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Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University of America 1904) selects ‘A Sprig’.

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1: little is known, &c.; worked for government. RAF, ‘ a widely detested character..’; he notes that Russian Sacrifice (1813) appeared at C[row] S[treet], and The Patriot (?1810) at Peter St. [No entry ODNB].

Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre (Tralee 1946), H. B. Code fl.1812; three musical dramas, mus. by Sir John Stevenson, The Spanish Patriot of A Thousand years Ago (Lyceum 22 Sept. 1812); The Patriot, or Hermit of Saxellan (Peter St. Theatre, Dublin, c.1810) 1811, written ‘to inculcate a loyal and patriotic union of all descriptions of Irishmen against an invading enemy’ (pref.); The Russian Sacrifice or The Burning of Moscow (Crow St. Dublin 1813) 1813, includes a stage-Irishman, Barney Mulhuddart.

Belfast Public Library holds Insurrection of the 23rd of July, 1803 (portraits).

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