Wounds

by Fergal Keane

  4. Sir Henry Wilson to Malcolm Arnold Robertson, 30 Mar 1921, from Karine Bigand, Ireland and the End of the Empire, in British Decolonisation: 1918–84, edited by Richard Davis, Cambridge, 2013, p. 9.

  5. Peter Hart, Mick: The Real Michael Collins, London, 2005, p. 175.

  6. A. Norman Jeffares, W. B. Yeats: A New Biography, London, 2002, p. 206.

  7. Elizabeth Bowen, The Shelbourne, London, 1951, p. 211.

  8. The Canadian academic Professor David Leeson reported that between 24 February and 1 July 1920 forty-seven prisoners had been shot dead while trying to escape. See The Black and Tans: British Police in the First Irish War, Doctoral Thesis, McMaster University, 2003.

  9. David Lloyd George, Guildhall speech, 9 November 1920.

  10. W. B. Yeats, ‘1919’, Collected Poems, London, 2008.

  11. Ballymena Weekly Telegraph, 29 January 1921.

  12. Ernie O’Malley, The Men Will Talk to Me: Kerry Interviews, edited by Tim Horgan, Cormac O’Malley, Dublin, 2012, pp. 72–3.

  13. J. Anthony Gaughan, The Memoirs of Constable Jeremiah Mee RIC, Dublin, 2012, p. 15.

  14. T. Colville Scott, Connemara after the Famine: Journal of a Survey of the Martin Estate 1853, edited with introduction by Tim Robinson, Dublin, 1995, p. xvii.

  15. Account of James Hack Tuke in The Tourists Gaze: Travellers to Ireland, 1800–2000, edited by Glenn Hooper, Cork, 2001, pp. 129–30.

  16. Peter Hart, The IRA and Its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916–1923, Oxford, 1998, p. 3.

  17. Cited in James H. Murphy, Abject Loyalty, Washington, 2001, p. 286.

  18. In Donal P. Mcracken, Forgotten Protest, Belfast, 2003, p. 57.

  19. Douglas Hyde, ‘On the Necessity of De-Anglicising Ireland’, speech delivered to the National Literary Society in Dublin, 25 Nov 1892.

  20. Cork Examiner, 19 Mar 1895.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Ibid., 8 Oct 1902.

  23. IRA statement, 30 Mar 1920, in Richard Bennett, The Black and Tans, Staplehurst, 2001, p. 37.

  24. Interview with Desiree Flynn, 11 June 2017.

  2: The Ground Beneath Their Feet

  1. Cited in Rosa González, The Unappeasable Hunger for Land in John B. Keane’s The Field, Barcelona, 1992, p. 87

  2. In http://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4666578/4663527/4688866

  3. Lydia Jane Fisher, Letters from the Kingdom of Kerry, Dublin, 1847, p. 20.

  4. James Fraser, Guide Through Ireland, Dublin, 1838, p. 213.

  5. In Work on the Farm, Newtownsandes Online, http://www.geocities.ws/dalyskennelly_2000/farmingnts.html

  6. John B. Keane, The Field, Dublin, 1966, pp. 196–7.

  7. W. R. Le Fanu, Seventy Years of Irish Life, London, 1893, p. 32.

  8. Irish Press, 5 February 1934.

  9. NA: CSO/RP/SC/1821.275.

  10. Thomas Wesley, The Works of Thomas Wesley – Volume IV, London, 1810.

  11. In Peter Beresford Ellis, A History of the Irish Working Class, Worthing, 1972, p. 62.

  12. Cited Richard Gott, Britain’s Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt, London, 2011, p. 50.

  13. Arthur Young, A Tour in Ireland, Cambridge, 1925, originally published 1780, pp. 190–2.

  14. Saunders’s News Letter, 6 April 1786.

  15. Sir Richard Musgrave, Memoirs of the Different Rebellions in Ireland, Dublin, 1801, pp. 4–5.

  16. J. B. Connell, Hanging at the Cross: Where the Streets Meet in Newtownsandes, http://www.reocities.com/dalyskennelly_2000/hang_cross.html

  17. Chute’s Western Herald, 3 December 1921, cited in Gaughan, Listowel and Its Vicinity, p. 142.

  18. NAI:CSO/RP/SC/1821/321.

  19. Niall O’Ciosain, Print and Popular Culture in Ireland, 1750–1850, London, 1997, p. 195.

  20. Cited in Samuel Clarke and James S. Donnelly, Jnr, Irish Peasants: Violence and Political Unrest, 1780–1914, Madison, 1983, p. 114.

  21. For more on the violence of this period see James S. Donnelly Jnr, Captain Rock: The Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821–24, Madison, 2009.

  22. J. A. Murphy, The Church of Ireland in County Kerry, http://www.Lulu.com, 2012, p. 16.

  3: My Dark Fathers

  1. Brendan Kennelly, Selected Poems, Boston, 1972, p. 15.

  2. Kerry Evening Post, 7 October 1837.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Cited in Gaughan, Listowel, p. 142.

  5. William Makepeace Thackeray, The Irish Sketchbook, London, 1845, p. 184.

  6. Ibid.

  7. John D. Pierse, Teampall Bán: Aspects of the Famine in North Kerry 1845–1852, Listowel, 2014, p. 10.

  8. William Trench, quoted in http://archives.evergreen.edu/webpages/curricular/2006-2007/ireland0607/ireland/eyewitness-accounts-of-the-famine/index.html

  9. Cited in Stuart John McLean, The Event and Its Terrors: Ireland, Famine and Modernity, Stanford, 2004, p. 94.

  10. Cork Examiner, 31 August 1846.

  11. Kerry Evening Post, 28 November 1846.

  12. Immigration Report of 1851 British Parliamentary Papers, 1852 XXXIII (1474).

  13. Cited in Legion Magazine Canada, Kanata, 1 March 2006.

  14. Immigration Report of 1851 British Parliamentary Papers, 1852 XXXIII (1474).

  15. Letter from Father Bernard McGauran to Archbishop Signay of Quebec, Grosse Isle, Quebec, 24 May 1847.

  16. Duchas Collection, http://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4613715/4611581/4658767

  17. Ibid.

  18. John D. Pierse, Teampall Bán, p. 145.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Report of the Listowel Board of Guardians, 12 September 1849, in Kay Moloney Caball, The Kerry Girls: Emigration and the Early Grey Scheme, Dublin, 2014 ebook, Location 650.

  21. Brendan Kennelly, Selected Poems, Boston, 1972, p. 15.

  22. William O’Connor Morris, letter to the Irish Times, October 1869, cited http://www.theirishstory.com

  23. Diary of Sir John Benn Walsh, 1848–55, cited John D. Pierse, Teampall Bán, p. 244.

  24. Joseph O’Connor, Hostage to Fortune, Dublin, 1951, p. 17.

  25. Lord Dufferin in R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972, London, 1988, p. 377.

  26. T. P. O’Connor, MP, cited in Joseph Valente, The Myth of Manliness in Irish National Culture, Chicago, 2011, p. 37.

  27. Cited in Edward H. Judge, Easter in Kishinev: Anatomy of a Pogrom, New York, 1992, p. 87.

  28. Cited in Stephen J. Zipperstein, ‘Inside Kishinev’s Pogrom: Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Michael Davitt, and the Burdens of Truth’, from The Individual in History: Essays in Honour of Jehuda Reinharz, edited by ChaeRan Y. Freeze et al., Waltham, MA, 2015, pp. 365–83.

  29. Cited in Carla King, ‘The Mahdi for an Irish Constituency or at least a Seat in Dublin Town Council – Davitt and Africa’, History Ireland magazine, Issue 4, Jul/Aug 2006.

  30. P. Grousset, Ireland’s Disease, Notes and Impressions, London, 1888, pp. 129–30.

  31. Ibid.

  32. S. M. Hussey, Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent, London, 1902, p. 236.

  33. Cited http://www.igp-web.com/IGPArchives/ire/kerry/newspapers/evictions-1887

  34. Ballybunion Relief Committee to Mansion House Relief Committee, 17 Feb 1880, Mansion House Relief Fund Papers, CH 1/52/320 letter no. 5, Dublin City Archive, cited in doctoral thesis of Donnacha Seán Lucey, Land and Popular Politics in County Kerry, 1872–86, Maynooth, 2007, p. 58.

  35. South Western Division monthly police report, 1 Dec 1885, NAI, cited in ibid.

  36. Outrage Report: proceedings at Firies, 26 Jan 1886, NAI, p. 241, cited in ibid.

  37. Cited in Marc Mulholland, Land War Homicides, Uncertain Futures: Essays about the Irish Past for Roy Foster, Oxford, 2016, p. 93.

  38. Outrage Report: proceedings at Firies, 26 Jan 1886, NAI, p. 243, cited in Lucey, Land and Popular Politics in County Kerry, 1872–86.

  39. Freeman’s Journal, 11 Feb 1886.

  40. Freeman’s Journal, 1 Aug 1888.

  41. Kerry Sentinel, 1 Aug 1888.


  42. Michael Davitt, Speech in Defence of the Land League, London, 1890.

  43. Freeman’s Journal, 7 Mar 1902.

  4: Revolution

  1. Interview with Gerry Brosnan, 23 March 2016.

  2. Gabriel Fitzmaurice, My Own Place, cited in The Middle Plain, http://www.moyvane.com/people/gabriel-fitzmaurice/

  3. Message sent to Belfast and read to crowds by Sir Edward Carson on 12 July 1913.

  4. Kerryman and Kerry Evening Post, 20 Dec 1913, cited in Gaughan, Listowel and Its Vicinity, p. 436.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Kerry Sentinel, 2 Jun 1909.

  7. Ibid.

  8. The National Volunteer, cited in ‘An Abundance of First Class Recruits’: The GAA and the Irish Volunteers 1913–15,’ http://www.theirishstory.com/

  9. Belfast Telegraph, 24 Apr 1914.

  10. Speech by John Redmond MP at Woodenbridge, Co. Wicklow, 20 Sep 1914.

  11. Cyril Kelly, ‘The Bibles, the Brotherhood & the Booze: A Listowel Family’s Divisive 1916 Experience’, Irish Independent, 30 April 2016.

  12. Thomas Carmody, Witness Statement 996, BMH.

  13. Ibid.

  14. House of Commons Debates 11 May 1916, Hansard, Vol. 82 cc935–70.

  15. Judge Charles Wyse-Power, Witness Statement 420, BMH.

  16. Statement of Thomas Collins, company commander, to Military Service Pensions Board, 19 May 1940.

  17. Mary Colum, Life and the Dream, London, 1947.

  18. Ernie O’Malley, Raids and Rallies: Ireland’s War of Independence, Dublin, 2012, p. 11.

  19. Cornelius Brosnan, Witness Statement 1,123, BMH.

  20. WO 35 098/30, TNA.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Statement of the Catholic Hierarchy, 9 April 1918.

  24. Thomas Carmody, Witness Statement 996, BMH.

  25. ‘The Condition of Ireland’, Hansard, 6 May 1920.

  26. Seamus O’Connor, Tomorrow Was Another Day, Dublin, 1970, p. 38.

  27. Diarmaid Ferriter, A Nation and Not a Rabble, London, 2015, p. 344.

  28. Edward J. Walsh, Witness Statement 1,170, BMH.

  29. Brian O’Concubhair (ed.), Kerry’s Fighting Story, Dublin, 2009, p. 208.

  30. James Collins, Witness Statement 1,272, BMH.

  31. Ibid.

  32. L. Fogarty (ed.), James Fintan Lalor, Patriot & Political Essayist (1807–49), Dublin, 1919, cited in Tactics, Politics and Propaganda in the Irish War of Independence, 1917–1921, Master’s thesis by Mike Rast, Atlanta, 2011, p. 73.

  33. T. Ryle Dwyer, Kerry’s Real Fighting Story, Dublin, 2001, p. 130.

  34. Denis Quille in O’Malley, The Men Will Talk, Location 500.

  35. May Ahern interview with Military Service Pensions Board, 24 May 1940.

  36. Statement of Thomas Collins to Military Service Pensions Board, 15 May 1935.

  37. Rory O’Connor, Tomorrow Was Another Day, Dublin, 1970, p. 38.

  38. John O’Riordan, Witness Statement 1,117, BMH.

  39. Ibid.

  40. Ibid.

  41. Seamus O’Connor, Tomorrow Was Another Day, Dublin, 1970, p. 89.

  42. Ibid., p. 84.

  43. William McCabe, Witness Statement 1,212, BMH.

  44. Cornelius Dee file, Military Service Pensions Board 34REF26352.

  45. Jeremiah Mee, Witness Statement 379, BMH.

  46. Patrick McElligott, Witness Statement 1,013, BMH.

  47. May Ahern Witness Statement, Military Service Pensions Board, 24 May 1940.

  48. Liam McCabe, Witness Statement 1,212, BMH.

  49. Ibid.

  5: Tans

  1. Tape number 6720, interview with Private Arthur Robinson, IWM.

  2. Tape number 8990, interview with Private Thomas Henry Flower, IWM.

  3. Tape number 6048, interview with Private Horace Todman, IWM.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Tape number 10699, interview with Brigadier John Rymer-Jones, IWM.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Statement of John McNamara, 7 Mar 1921, American Commission on Conditions Ireland, 1921.

  8. Jeremiah Mee, Witness Statement 379, BMH.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Richard Bennett, The Black and Tans, Staplehurst, 2001, p. 57.

  13. Cited in Peter Cottrell, The Anglo-Irish War: the Troubles of 1913–22, Oxford, 2006, p. 48.

  14. House of Commons Debates, 14 Jul 1920, Hansard, Vol. 131, cc2385–91.

  15. Ibid.

  16. John M. Regan, ‘A Catholic Officer in the RIC and RUC, 1909–48’, cited in History Ireland magazine, Jan/Feb 2008.

  17. James Collins, Witness Statement 1,271, BMH.

  18. Weekly Summary, 1 Oct 1920, cited in D. M. Leeson, The Black and Tans, Oxford, 2011, p. 213.

  6: The Abode of Wolves

  1. Aubrey de Vere, in Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes, Bartleby.com, 2011.

  2. Richard Berleth, The Twilight Lords, Lanham, MD, 2002, p. 77.

  3. Annals of the Four Masters, M1571.4, CELT collection, University College Cork, p. 1655.

  4. James Joyce, Gas from a Burner, in Pomes Penyeach, Paris, 1927.

  5. Rev Samuel Hayman (ed.), Unpublished Geraldine Documents, Dublin, 1870, p. 55.

  6. Cited in Mainichin Seoige, ‘The Story of Kilmallock’, Kilmallock Historical Society, 1987.

  7. Patience Pollard Adams, cited in History Ireland, 18th–19th-Century History, Issue 1 (Spring 2003), News, Vol. 11.

  8. Seoighe, The Story of Kilmallock.

  9. Tomas O’Maoileoin, Witness Statement 845, BMH.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Cited by Lt Col J. M. MacCathy, With the IRA in the Fight for Freedom: The Red Path to Glory, Dublin, 2010, p. 52.

  12. Tomas O’Maoileoin, Witness Statement 845, BMH.

  13. Edmund Tobin, Witness Statement 1,451, BMH.

  14. Belfast Telegraph, 29 May 1920.

  15. Lieutenant M.Guirke, Raid on Kilmallock RIC Barracks, reprinted from An t-Oglach, in Terence Kelly (ed.), Our Struggle for Independence: Eyewitness Accounts from the pages of An Cosantoir, Cork, 2009, p. 83.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Ruan O’Donnell (ed.), Limerick’s Fighting Story, Cork, 2009, p. 159.

  18. Ibid., p. 90.

  19. Seán Moylan, Witness Statement 838, BMH.

  20. Seán ‘Bertie’ Scully, Witness Statement 788, BMH.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Seán Moylan, Witness Statement 838, BMH.

  24. Nicholas O’Dwyer, Witness Statement 680, BMH.

  25. Ibid.

  7: Sunshine Elsewhere

  1. Elizabeth Bowen, Bowenscourt, Dublin, 1998, p. 160.

  2. Will and Probate of Sir Arthur Vicars, 1922, NAI.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Michael Murphy, Witness Statement 1,081, BMH.

  5. Irene O’Keefe and Laura Doran, Presentation Convent Yearbook, 1988.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Charles Smith, The Ancient and Present State of the County of Kerry, London, 1756.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Arthur Young, A Tour in Ireland, Belfast, 1983, p. 120.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Bertha Beatty, Kerry Memories, Listowel, 2007, p. 27.

  12. William Makepeace Thackeray, The Irish Sketchbook, 1842, p. 180.

  13. Beatty, Kerry Memories, p. 30.

  14. Arthur E. McGuinness, George Fitzmaurice, Lewisburg, 1975, p. 18.

  15. Cyril Kelly, ‘The Bibles, the Brotherhood & the Booze: A Listowel Family’s Divisive 1916 Experience’, Irish Independent, 30 April 2016.

  16. Henry Grey Bennet, Thoughts on the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, London, 1805, pp. 82–4.

  17. J. A. Murphy, The Church of Ireland in County Kerry, Dublin, 2016, p. 176.

  18. Sir George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, New York, 2007, orig. published 1920, p. 2.

  19. PRO 30/57/108, TNA.

  20. Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September, London, 1929, p. 146.


  8: Assassins

  1. Kuno Meyer, ‘The Tryst After Death’, in Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry, London, 1911, p. 20.

  2. Inspector O’Sullivan – The Philosophy of a Murdered Officer, Yorkshire Post, 25 Jan 1921.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Hugh Martin, Insurrection in Ireland, London, 1921, p. 122.

  5. Ibid., pp. 128–9.

  6. Peter Hart (ed.), British Intelligence in Ireland: The Final Reports, Cork, 2002, p. 87.

  7. Gaughan, Memoirs, p. 143.

  8. Ibid., p. 144.

  9. Ibid., p. 149.

  10. Martin, Insurrection in Ireland, p. 145.

  11. Weekly Freeman’s Journal, 6 Nov 1920.

  12. Martin, Insurrection in Ireland, p. 149.

  13. James Houlihan, Witness Statement 1,118, BMH.

  14. Statement of Michael Kelly, 7 Mar 1921, American Commission on Conditions in Ireland, 1921.

  15. Houlihan, Witness Statement 1,118, BMH.

  16. Brian O’Grady, Witness Statement 1,390, BMH.

  17. Dr A. A. Hargrave, cited in T. Ryle Dwyer, Tans, Terror and Troubles: Kerry’s Real Fighting Story 1913–23, Cork, 2001, p. 239.

  18. Summarised findings of Military Court of Inquiry (William Muir), January 1921. NA: CO 904/189, cited in D. M. Leeson, doctoral thesis, The Black and Tans: British Police in the First Irish War, 1920–21, McMaster University, 2003, p. 203.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Thomas Carmody, Witness Statement 996, BMH.

  21. Brian O’Grady, Witness Statement 1,390, BMH.

  22. A majority of the dead were working in some intelligence capacity for the army. Most were shot at point-blank range in execution-style killings.

  23. Tomas O’Maileoin, alias Seán Forde, Witness Statement 845, BMH.

  24. Ibid.

  25. House of Commons Debates, 21 Oct 1920, Vol. 133 c1111W.

  26. House of Commons Debates, 20 Oct 1920, Vol. 133 cc925–1039.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Interview with the author.

  29. Jack Ahern, Witness Statement 970, BMH.

  30. Eoghan Corry, The History of Gaelic Football: The Definitive History of Gaelic Football from 1873, Dublin, 2011.

  31. Edmund Walsh, Witness Statement 1,170, BMH.

  32. WO 35/153A/25, TNA.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Ibid.

  37. Ibid.

  38. Ibid.

  39. Con Brosnan, Witness Statement 1,123, BMH.

  40. Patrick McElligott, Witness Statement 1,013, BMH.

  41. Jack Ahern, Witness Statement 970, BMH.