I was looking at an obituary of my grandmother’s cousin in the Irish Press. One of the nine survivors of the Cork Prison hunger strike in 1920, he died in 1965 at the age of sixty-eight. The hunger strike of Terence McSwiney, in particular, was watched with interest by the world’s media, as it was not known at the time how long a person could survive without food. McSwiney, Mick Fitzgerald and Joseph Murphy all died on the strike. The Press clipping says that the survivors lasted 94 days on hungerstrike, and incidentally that figure was also given in the Guinness Book of Records. Of course this figure is absolute nonsense. While the hunger strike itself lasted for that length of time it is impossible that any single one of them went without food for the entire length of the hunger strike, let alone all nine. For comparison, Terenece McSwiney died after 74 days and in 1981 Bobby Sands died after 66 days. (By “hunger strike” in this instance, I mean a successful refusal of food. A woman has maintained her hunger strike for several years, but she is force fed.)
I recall my mother saying something about 78 days in relation to her mother’s cousin, who she describes as cranky and obsessed with greyhounds. There’s also a mention by someone in Uinseann MacEoin’s Survivors who was in Cork Prison at the time that he knew someone there who had survived nearly 80 days. These are more realistic figures, I think. This is something I’ve intended to look into for some time, and I’m hopeful someone from the Cork perspective can point me in the right direction. Though Limerick and national newspapers haven’t yielded any useful results, family histories and local historians may help. Like three of the other hunger strikers, my grandmother’s cousin was from the Ballylanders area.
Incidentally, his uncle, my great-grandfather, was born 147 years ago yesterday.
To commemorate our entry into a decade that will see celebrations of the centenary of the Easter Rising and the establishment of the Irish Republic and First Dáil, I am reproducing a paean to one of history’s forgotten heroes.
THE GENTLE BLACK AND TAN
Breandán Ó hEithir
Come all you staunch revisionists
And listen to my song,
It’s short and it’s unusual
And it won’t detain you long.
It’s all about a soldier
Who has carried history’s can,
Who dodged Tom Barry and Dan Breen
The gentle Black and Tan.
‘Twas the curse of unemployment
That drove him to our shore.
His jacket black and trousers tan
Like a badge of shame he wore.
“Subdue the rebel Irish
And shoot them when you can!”
“May God forgive me if I do,”
Prayed the gentle Black and Tan.
The burning of Cork city
Was indeed a mighty blaze.
The jewellers’ shops were gutted
Not before the spoils were shared.
Gold and silver ornaments,
Rings and watches for each man,
“But I only struck the matches,”
Said the gentle Black and Tan.
Croke Park and Bloody Sunday
Was our hero’s greatest test.
The spectators on the terraces
Nigh impossible to miss.
With salt tears his eyes were blinded
And down his cheeks they ran,
So he only shot Mick Hogan
The gentle Black and Tan.
So take heed you blinkered Nationalists
Fair warning take from me.
If you want to live in safety
And keep this land at sea.
Take heed of our three heroes
Murphy, Edwards and Yer Man,
Who will sing the fame and clear the name
Of the gentle Black and Tan.
The Galtee Mountain Boy, by Patsy O’Halloran (fourth verse by Christy Moore)
I joined the Flying Column in 1916
In Cork with Seán Moylan, Tipperary with Dan Breen
Arrested by Free Staters and sentenced for to die
Farewell to Tipperary said the Galtee Mountain Boy
We crossed the pleasant valleys and over the hilltops green
Where we met with Dinny Lacey, Seán Hogan and Dan Breen
Seán Moylan and his gallant band they kept the flag flying high
Farewell to Tipperary said the Galtee Mountain Boy
We crossed the Dublin mountains, we were rebels on the run
Though hunted night and morning, we were outlawed but free men
We tracked the Wicklow mountains as the sun was shining high
Farewell to Tipperary said the Galtee Mountain Boy
I’m bidding farewell to old Clonmel that I never more will see
And to the Galtee mountains that oft times sheltered me
To the men who fought for liberty and died without a sigh
May the cause be ne’er forgotten said the Galtee Mountain Boy
This song is written from the point of view of a Tipperary Volunteer during the War of Independence and Civil War. In the latter conflict he is an anti-treaty soldier. He laments his fate as a captive of the Free State army and awaits his summary execution.
When I visited this site last year, I learned that some people found the lyrics of the third verse unusual: surely a band from Tipperary would cross the Wicklow mountains before the Dublin mountains, presuming that they were on the way from Tipperary to Dublin?
However, assuming the song is intended to make logical sense, there were only a few specific occasions on which a band of Tipperary soldiers went from Tipperary to Dublin during the period referred to.
One such occasion occurred in the Spring of 1922, when group went to assist in the takeover of the Four Courts (see Ernie O’Malley, The Singing Flame).
Two months later, at the beginning of the Civil War, Harry Boland called for reinforcements from Tipperary for the Dublin anti-treaty garrison. Commandant Michael Sheehan led a flying column to Dublin, but they arrived after the fall of the Four Courts and too late to be of any help. However, they did head, first to the Dublin and then to the Wicklow hills, where the remnants of Dublin anti-treatyites were continuing the fight. Harry Boland took part in these battles, while Éamon de Valera travelled directly to Field General Headquarters in Clonmel.
The Tipperary column, bolstered by some Four Courts refugees, then went to Enniscorthy where they took part in the fighting, and from there headed back to FGHQ, Clonmel via Carlow and Kilkenny. Thus, the (presumably fictional) Galtee Mountain Boy would have crossed the Dublin and Wicklow mountains on his way back to Tipperary.
The author seems knowledgeable about the leaders of the 3rd Tipperary Brigade, who were all based around the general vicinity of Tipperary town – Seán Treacy, Seán Hogan, Seán Fitzpatrick, Seamus Robinson, Dinny Lacey and Dan Breen.
The references to Seán Moylan possibly refer to the occasional co-operation between the Cork No. 2 Brigade (of which Moylan was commandant), the East Limerick Brigade and the 3rd Tipperary Brigade, such as the Glencurrane ambush of December 19 1920, in which companies from all three brigades took part.
Tipperary hurler Pat Kerwick famously sang The Galtee Mountain Boy after Tipperary’s All-Ireland hurling final win of 2010:
Galty Mountain Boy refers to Paddy Davern who died about 14 years ago. He worked as a labourer for most of his life. He was illiterate. Recruited one day as he worked with his father he fought in the war of independence and civil war. He was arrested by both British and Free state and sentenced to death by both… he escaped his first death sentence by escaping and the second – as I recall – by reprieve at the ending of the civil war.
Davern was an associate of George Plant, who was in Michael Sheehan’s flying column (Michael Moroney, ‘George Plant and the Rule of Law – The Devereux Affair 1940-1942’ , Tipperary Historical Journal, 1988). Plant and Davern continued in the IRA after the Civil War and were both convicted of the 1941 killing of their IRA colleague, Michael Devereux, who they wrongly believed to be a Garda informer. Davern’s sentence of death was commuted to a prison sentence, but Plant was executed by firing squad. His killing was probably unconstitutional, and created long-lasting bitterness against the Irish government among republicans.
"Tipperary so far away..." 