My fight for Irish freedom

by Dan Breen

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 our generation, 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 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 and dreaming 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 by the 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.