BY JOHN FITZGERALD
(Part One)
1920 was a black year for Kilkenny. As autumn leaves fell, a sinister new force arrived in the county to quell the tide of nationalism. A spate of IRA ambushes had demonstrated the capacity and willingness of the rebel army to resist the forces of occupation countywide.
On September 17th, the dreaded Black and Tans drove menacingly through the City. They were dressed for combat, with machine guns mounted on their lorries. As they drove past bemused citizens, the Tans shouted abuse and one officer mockingly waved a captured Irish tri-colour, the flag of the Republic, alongside a placard that said: “This rag was taken from rebel bastards.”
To make their presence felt, and strike fear into the hearts of would-be insurrectionists, the black and khaki clad troops sprayed machine gun fire over the heads of people on the sidewalks. Panic-stricken women and children ran for cover, while some of the men returned insult for insult.
Brave Dunnamaggin and Ned Egan’s pub
A few days later, The Tans drove into Thomastown, with two bound and gagged prisoners on a lorry, their heads covered with sacks. This was part of a psychological war waged by the British to sap enemy morale. But it had the opposite effect, creating a deeper resentment in the county and fanning the flames of rebellion.
Dunnamaggin had a proud Republican tradition. To the Tans, the village was like a red rag to a bull. Information about a plan by the local IRA Company to attack Kilmoganny Courthouse had leaked to the British. The Tans responded by raiding a pub owned by Ned Egan of Baurscoobe, the Dunnamaggin IRA’s intelligence officer.
Several IRA members were present when a loud banging on the door startled them. Among the volunteers were Denis Treacy, Pat Mulrooney, Robert Cody, Pat Holden, and Pat Walsh. Luckily for them the Tans were unaware of their involvement in the guerrilla war.
Even so, they had to endure some rough treatment. The Tans used rope and the strings of Mrs. Egan’s violin to tie them up. The house and pub were guarded while other troops headed for Kilmoganny to protect the Courthouse. The Tans wrecked Ned Egan’s pub, drinking what they could and smashing every bottle that remained. (Incidentally, this publican man was the father of poet/writer Ned Egan who died a few months ago. He wrote some lovely articles for the Kilkenny Observer.)
Next morning, they dragged the men- who were still tied up- out of the pub and took them to Baurscoobe Cross. Drunk and swearing, the Tans sped off down the road, leaving the men to untie themselves.
On October 25th, the Tricolour flew at half-mast over City Hall as a tribute to Terrance McSweeney, the Lord Mayor of Cork who had died on hunger strike. Infuriated by this gesture, the Tans stormed into the hall and removed the flag. To add insult to injury, they paraded through the city streets playing “Rule Britannia” on mouth organs.
On November 20th, the Tans moved into the Kilkenny village of Hugginstown where the local police station had been attacked a few months earlier. They raided the home of Joe Halloran and demanded to know where his two rebel sons were. Not getting any answers, they blinded-folded Joe and his other son, Josie, and performed a mock execution on them outside the house.
They returned a week later to repeat the harassment and ransacked the Jackman home in a search for rebels. Two pubs in Hugginstown, Clearys and Holdens, were also raided.
On the lighter side, there were some touching acts of defiance. In Inistioge, eight-year-old Ned Brennan was humming a song to himself in a pub along with a few adults when a group of Tans barged in. Hearing his musical voice, a Tan officer raised Ned up and put him sitting on the bar counter. Sing US a song, young fellow! he challenged.
Young Ned obliged, but the song he offered was not to their liking: He gave them a rousing chorus of “Wrap the Green Flag Round Me Boys! delighting the other drinkers in the pub and making the Tans see red. They smashed up the pub and made off with a plentiful of whiskey and porter.
Ned Brennan, better known in his later years as the “The Wedger”, was at one point voted the most popular man in Inistioge and elected “Mayor” of the village.
Susie Bowers and the Lewis gun …
In Callan, another colourful person, who probably never met or heard of Ned, was lucky to escape with her life after her defiance of the Tans. Susie Bowers worked at a shop in West Street for a Mrs. Griffin and could never resist the temptation to annoy and taunt the soldiers as they hung around the street near the shop.
Susie was a flamboyant character. She dressed in red from head to foot, except for her snow-white shoes, and took a serious dislike to the sour-faced men in dark uniforms who wanted to tell the locals how to live their lives.
One morning, she was cleaning the upstairs bedroom window of Mrs. Griffin’s house when she spotted a dozen or more Tans lounging about on the other side of the street. They were partly obscured from her vision by a horse-drawn cart packed with a consignment of colm, a cheap coal substitute. Mrs. Griffin cautioned her not to say anything offensive to them.
But Susie opened the window and commenced to shout every insulting word she could think of, and possibly a few more she made up herself. She must have hit a raw nerve somewhere, because the Tans opened fire on the house with a Lewis gun and rifles, shattering the bedroom windows, riddling the walls and the load of colm with bullets, and sending the two women-who anticipated such a response- scurrying for cover under the bed.
After the firing subsided and the Tans went away, Mrs Griffin rose to her feet in a cloud of dust and a room full of broken glass and said: “Susie, please, don’t EVER do that again!”
(To be continued…)
