My fight for Irish freedom

by Dan Breen

But if Molly was a brick the priest was a thousand bricks. Like Molly, he never counted the cost of “harbouring outlaws.” We were welcome to his roof and to his table as long as we cared to stay, and everything that his house held, or that he could command, was at our service. We certainly enjoyed our stay at ⸺, and would have liked to prolong it, but it was not safe to stay over-long in the same district, and we felt it was not fair to our host. Moreover, we wanted to be on the move to try what we could be doing to put more life into the cause. After a stay of a few weeks in this place we went on to Rathkeale.

Here for the first time I met Sean Finn—as fine a type of brave and chivalrous Irishman as ever lived. He was then but a mere youth, but he had been elected Commandant of his Battalion. Imbued with a passionate desire to strike a blow for the old land he was brave almost to rashness. But, alas! for Ireland, he fell in his first battle with the enemy about a year and a half later. My highest tribute to the memory of this gallant soldier of Ireland!

We did not stay long in Rathkeale. We were restless, and longing for action. We were anxious, too, to know how Sean Treacy and Seumas Robinson were faring in Dublin. At this time we saw the newspapers every day, and we knew that they had so far escaped. At last, we got into communication with them and arranged to meet them again. We felt that the fates would have the four of us joined hands again, and stand or fall together. So Sean Hogan and I worked our way from West Limerick back towards the eastern end of the county, to the borders of South Tipperary. Once more we found ourselves in a place where we had already received shelter and hospitality—at Lackelly, near Emly. We were thus within six or seven miles of Soloheadbeg again, and within a few miles of the spot where a few weeks later we were to have our next most exciting and dramatic adventure—Knocklong.

At Lackelly we met Treacy and Robinson once more. We felt like a group of schoolboys on a holiday. Somehow when the four of us were together all the dark clouds seemed to scatter. We forgot we were hunted outlaws with a heavy price on our heads, and when we met we talked and joked long into the night, and exchanged our experiences and our adventures since we had parted. Treacy and Robinson had gone about Dublin freely and openly, and had quite a pleasant time. We, on our part, tried to make them jealous by telling them of our great time at the priest’s house, and were able to boast of being helped by the British soldiers on our way to that place.

Seumas was able to retort with an equally amusing experience. It seems that on their way from Tipperary to Dublin the car broke down just at Maryboro’ Jail, and immediately several soldiers rushed to their assistance to get it started again. In Dublin, too, they had many adventures, but these I cannot go into.

Meantime, the police and military were still busy searching the whole county of Tipperary for us, and digging up gardens and bogs in search of the missing explosives. They watched our haunts, and raided every place we were ever known to frequent. In spite of the difficulties this state of things created, the four of us determined that it was useless to remain inactive. The encounter at Soloheadbeg stirred the country, and showed the Volunteers what could be done, but our absence might nullify these effects. The three months that had passed since then seemed to us to have been wasted. The I.R.A. was still only a name. In theory there was a fairly good organisation. Every county had its Brigade and its Battalions, and arms were not altogether lacking, but of what use, we asked ourselves, are men who are soldiers only in name, and of guns that are oiled and cleaned but never fired? The men were not wanting in courage, but they needed more initiative. At that time all they could do was go to jail. All over the country men were allowing themselves to be arrested and imprisoned for drilling or carrying arms, but they never seemed to think of using the arms rather than go to jail.

We made up our minds when we met at Lackelly that this business of going to jail and becoming cheap heroes must stop. We wanted a real army, not a hollow mockery. Even if such an army numbered a few score only, it would be far better than the present organisation. We thought Soloheadbeg would have been followed by active operations all over the country, but now it was becoming a mere memory.

In this frame of mind, and with these resolutions we procured four bicycles and headed straight for Donohill—back to the very scene of our first battle, back into the middle of the military net that martial law had drawn round the whole county. Donohill is about two miles north of the Soloheadbeg quarry, and our route took us by the very road where we waited so long for the enemy, and where we at last met them. It was our first journey past the scene since January 21st, and you can picture our feelings as we saw the familiar hill once more and the turn of the road where the peelers appeared. We dismounted and lingered for a while in the neighbourhood. I am sure many of the people around never expected to lay eyes on us again, for in the old days the usual thing for men in our position to do was to clear away to America. But our work was in Ireland, and we were going to see it through to the end.

At Donohill we appeared to the Horan family like men who had come back from the grave. When they realised we were not ghosts, they gave us a typical Irish welcome, and we joked and laughed long into the night. They didn’t forget to keep somebody on the look-out by the road to make sure we would not be surprised. With the Horans we stayed till the following night.