CHAPTER XVII.FROM TARA TO TIPPERARY.
At the opening of 1920 I had plenty of leisure, while my wound was healing, to review the year that had passed.
Soloheadbeg had borne fruit. The best tribute was that contained in the official statistics that were now issued from time to time by the British Government regarding “Crime in Ireland.” Crime as such was, of course, almost unknown in Ireland until the arrival of the Black and Tans. When the British Government used the word “crime” in reference to Ireland it generally meant active operations against the Army of Occupation. So it was solemnly announced to the world at the beginning of 1920 that during 1919 scores of attacks had been made on British troops or police, hundreds of raids for arms had been carried out and a dozen policemen (that is, armed spies) had been shot dead. If the British Government thought the publication of these statistics would make us repent of our actions and shed our patriotism it had miscalculated.The only effect was to make us more determined that there would be a much bigger record of such “crimes” to be compiled at the end of 1920. And we kept our resolution!
In these statistics England took good care not to record her own acts of warfare against the civilian population in the same period. She did not tell that Dail Eireann, the elected representative Government of Ireland, had been proclaimed an illegal assembly, and its schemes for developing the country’s industries declared criminal activities. She did not tell the world that the Gaelic League, Cumann na mBan, the Irish Volunteers and Fianna Eireann (the Irish Boy Scouts) had been similarly declared illegal bodies. Nor did she tell of the midnight raids and robberies officially carried out against peaceable citizens by her troops. In a word, to quote an expression used by Arthur Griffith at the time, she had “proclaimed the whole Irish nation as an illegal assembly.”
But lest I should give an unfair picture of the time to the reader unacquainted with Irish events, I must in fairness mention a few things that the English forces in Ireland had notyetdone. They had not imposed curfew; they had not murdered men in their beds; they had not burned and bombed towns and villages; they had not shot prisoners “for attempting to escape”; they had notexecuted prisoners of war, murdered priests and outraged women.
I emphasise the fact that they had not done these things in 1919, because they were guilty of every one of these crimes during the year that was now beginning. In order to follow my narrative it is well to bear this fact in mind, for I may not have occasion to mention these developments of British policy unless they directly bear upon my story.
Indeed while I was yet in Dublin in the home of the Malones, the first Curfew Order was issued. In an encounter with a few I.R.A. men after midnight in February, 1920, a policeman was shot dead in Grafton Street. The British at once issued an order making it a criminal offence for any civilian to be out-of-doors between midnight and 5 a.m. Within a few months that Order was extended to most towns and cities in the south of Ireland; not only extended but made more severe. For instance at one time no one was allowed to leave his house in Limerick after 7 p.m. In Cork the hour was 4 p.m. for a while. It then became customary for the British to clear the streets with volley after volley of rifle fire, scores of men, women and children being murdered in this way during 1920 and 1921. Incidently these curfew regulations gave the Government’s murder gang a free field, for no civilian would be about to see them shooting or looting during the Curfew hours.
In the early spring of 1920 I dragged myself away from my pleasant surroundings in Grantham Street, and traversing the fair plains of Fingal. I went to spend a month in royal Meath, at the foot of the Hill of Tara. It was my first stay in royal Meath, the garden of Ireland’s kings in the days of her greatness. The first day I climbed the hill—I stayed for an hour on its summit, living in the past, in spiritual association with the warriors of old, and wondering if ever again our land would see the day when her sons and daughters would have shaken the shackles of slavery from their limbs and have flung their flag proudly to the breeze, defiant and free. There is little now on the Hill to tell of those days of our greatness. No men crowd its summit; tradition says that the curse of a saint from my own county brought about the ruin and decay of Tara. But the great Banquet Hall could still be traced where the High Kings received homage from their vassals and bestowed hospitality upon their subjects. But a little cross on the summit marks the “Croppies’ Grave,” where “many a Saxon foeman fell, and many an Irish soldier true”—the last resting place of the dauntless few who struck a blow for Ireland in ’98, and fell with their face to the enemy. And I knelt on the green sward of the deserted palace and prayed that the Croppies’ sacrifice might not be in vain; that their dream might come true even in ourgeneration, and that I might be given strength and courage to speed the day.
There on the sod hallowed by the footsteps of Ireland’s warrior saints and kings of peace I realised for the first time the full meaning of that little poem of Moore’s, with its pathetic appeal that always grips the Irish heart and dims the patriot’s eye.
“Let Erin remember the days of oldEre her faithless sons betrayed her!”
“Let Erin remember the days of oldEre her faithless sons betrayed her!”
“Let Erin remember the days of oldEre her faithless sons betrayed her!”
“Let Erin remember the days of old
Ere her faithless sons betrayed her!”
And then my eyes wandered over the plains at my feet—richer than my own Golden Vale. Here and there I saw a stately mansion or a castle; but I knew that these were not the homes of the clansmen of our kings, but the fortresses of those who had deprived them of their heritage. Of farm houses there were none; a labourer’s cottage here and there marked the home of the Gaels who had survived—to be the hewers of wood and drawers of water. I searched the countryside for the men that this fair land should have raised; but the roads were deserted; the bullock had replaced the king and the peasant. And I asked myself did Providence ordain that Meath should be the home of the bullock to feed the conquering Saxon. No! It could not be. It was the old curse, the old blight of the foreigner.
Many a day afterwards I wandered along the plains of Meath, thinking and planning anddreaming of the happy land it might be if only we were allowed to work out our own destiny as God would have us. I often walked for three or four hours without meeting a human being. Here and there a lovely mansion; around it the gatelodge of the serf, the winding avenue, the silent trees and the green fields with the bullock as their ruler. Landlordism, worked as the willing instrument of English rule, had wrought this desolation. And I renewed my resolve to do my share in bringing about the change that must come.
I spent pleasant, if uneventful days, with Joseph Dardis and with Dr. Lynch and Tom Carton, of Stamullen, and also with Vincent Purfield, of Balbriggan. From them all I received the same genial hospitality that so many had already shown me. Thank God, England has not yet deprived us of our spirit of kindness and hospitality.
The summer was now approaching. I was feeling strong and fit again. I was anxious to be doing something. The war was developing and I could not be idle. I felt I had no right to remain any longer out of the fray. Some of the things I had read in the papers had made my blood boil again. Tom MacCurtain, Lord Mayor of Cork, who had been with us but five or six months previously lying in wait for Lord French, had been murdered in his home in the presence of his wife. In Thurles two or three similar murders had been committed bythe British. They were but the first of a hundred such murders to be committed within a year by British forces, all connived at or directly inspired by the highest officials in the land.
I resolved to be up and doing. I returned to Dublin. There I met some of the boys and urged an intensive guerilla campaign. Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy enthusiastically supported my views and favoured my “on with the war” policy.
As I have already explained, our own policy was all the time “unofficial.” Neither Dail Eireann nor General Headquarters of the I.R.A. had sanctioned it or accepted responsibility. Mick Collins, I must say, seemed to favour it. He always promised to continue to push our war policy in the “proper quarters,” and it must be remembered that he was then not only on the G.H.Q. staff but was Finance Minister in Dail Eireann. I have already recounted how he was with us on one occasion towards the end of 1919, when we had prepared to ambush Lord French, but the Lord Lieutenant disappointed us.
The truth is that our war policy was not popular. The military authorities did not seem to want it. The political wing certainly did not want it, and more than one T.D. strongly denounced it in private; though it was part of our good fortune to be able always to conceal our differences from the enemy—until after the Truce. The Press, ofcourse, denounced our campaign, though since a lesson had been taught theIndependentthe newspapers had learned that “discretion was the better part of valour,” especially in the use of certain words like “murder,” and “outrage.” The words “shootings” and “tragedies” became very popular with the newspapers after the attack on theIndependent.
The public did not want the war. They forgot that it was their vote at the 1918 General Election that had led to the formal establishment of the Republic. They only knew that attacks on police meant more severe martial law, worse curfew, more arrests and compensation for policemen’s widows. Evidently many thought at that time that liberty was a thing to be got for nothing. I must say, however, that as the war developed in intensity towards the end of 1920 and the beginning of 1921 the vast majority of the people stood with us, and cheerfully took their share of the risks and hardships.
I did not intend to stay long in Dublin. I wanted to get back to Tipperary. I felt that things were too quiet there. The boys were all right, they were game for anything; all they wanted was to be told what to do. So Sean Treacy and I once more cycled that hundred miles journey, and I found myself back in Tipperary after an absence of nearly twelve months.
This time we had a new plan. We decided to embark upon a campaign of a kind then scarcely known in the struggle, but one that was soon to show the world that there was no longer any doubt that Ireland was in a state of open war.
(In the next chapter I shall describe that new campaign.)
Before dealing with the events which followed my return to Tipperary I must tell of an incident that almost ended my career as a gunman.
Seumas Robinson and I had been spending a few days with Vincent Purfield at Balbriggan, where I had often had such a happy time. That was during Holy Week, 1920, and we decided to go to Dublin for Easter. We started from Balbriggan in a motor driven by Vincent himself on Good Friday, April 2nd, 1920.
Now the British authorities in Ireland were always under the impression that the Sinn Feiners would always do something every Easter to celebrate the anniversary of the 1916 Insurrection. As a matter of fact we usually did, but we were always disobliging enough to do just the thing they never expected, and at that time they were taken most by surprise. Anyhow, in preparation for the “annual rising,” as people sarcastically spoke of the thing which the Government expected, the military always let usknow that they were not to be taken by surprise. For years they used to erect barricades at all the roads leading into Dublin, and place military outposts who searched every car and pedestrian passing in or out of the city during the few days before and after Easter. Having thus done their duty by the Empire they usually removed their barricades after a few days.
When we left Balbriggan that morning we forgot all about this annual manœuvre of the British, otherwise I need hardly say we should have spent Easter with Vincent in Balbriggan. We had a pleasant journey until we arrived within a few miles of the city, about half a mile beyond the tram terminus at Whitehall. On rounding a corner we suddenly came face to face with a military lorry travelling towards us. The lorry slowed down apparently to pull up and search our car, but we looked so innocent and harmless that the officer ordered his car to proceed. We proceeded on our way and laughed heartily, while congratulating ourselves on our good luck. But our good fortune was short-lived. The noise of the military lorry had scarcely died away when half a mile further on towards the city we heard a sharp order to “Halt!”
Straight ahead of us, just at the tramway terminus was a military barricade, a score of soldiers, with their rifles gripped in a business-like way, while an officer was stepping towards us,dangling his revolver. Now, I thought, my hour had come. There is no escape this time.
Vincent kept as cool as a cucumber; not one of us betrayed the slightest concern and the car drove right to the barricade before it slowed down.
I stepped out of the car and walked straight to the officer with an angry scowl and demanded the meaning of this.
“I must search your car,” was the curt reply.
Then I thought it was better to try civility. I told him we had no objection to being searched, but assured him that any delay would be serious to us, as we were in a hurry to reach the city on important business. He hesitated for a moment. Then he waved to the soldiers to clear the way.
“Very well!” he said, “you may go ahead.”
“Thank you,” I nodded to him, entered the car and we drove on.
I could not have afforded to allow either the car or ourselves to be searched. Had he attempted to do so, it would have been his last piece of military activity. Probably we would never have escaped ourselves had he forced me to pull my gun, but there was no other way out of it.
Our motor car was the only vehicle that entered or left Dublin without being searched during those five days.
The same bluff as had carried Sean Hogan and myself out of a similar difficulty near Limerick ayear before now proved successful at Whitehall, within a few hundred yards of the house where, seven months later, I was to have my biggest fight for life—at Drumcondra.