In Memory of a Guardian scribe and rebel

A TIPPERARY man who was involved in the attack and burning of the Royal Irish Constabulary barracks in Rearcross a century ago this month was a regular contributor to this newspaper.

Paddy Walsh, a native of Camas, Cashel, used to write regularly for 'The Nenagh Guardian' in the 1920s under the pen-name, 'An Fanuidhe Aerach'.
Paddy, who preferred to by called by his Irish language surname, Breathnach - and was also known, when on the run, as Paddy Dwyer - was one of the snipers in a group of up to 200 men who attacked and burned the barracks in Rearcross in the early morning of July 11th 1920.
In the issue of this newspaper published days after the incident, The Guardian reported that the attack lasted over six hours and resulted in the shooting dead of one of the officers in the barracks, Sergeant J.J. Stockes, an ex-army officer who had previously fought in the First World War.
 

BUILDING IN FLAMES

According to this newspaper, the attackers threw petrol and peat sods saturated in paraffin on the barrack roof, leaving the building in flames.
The fierce and prolonged battle between RIC men holed up inside the smoke-filled building and the attackers also resulted, according to an RIC claim, in the death of one of the attacking party and injuries to three of his comrades.
An RIC constable on sentry duty outside the building about two hours after the battle was also injured in the leg after a bomb, which had earlier been thrown onto the roof during the attack, fell into the debris and exploded.
Paddy Breathnach subsequenty wrote a ballad to commorate the attack called, 'The Battle of Réidh'.
Paddy, who was said to be "crazy about Irish", preferred to refer to Rearcross by its Irish language derivative, "The Cross of Réidh". In one of his articles he dismissively described the name Rearcross as the "English nomenclature" of that place.
Among the comrades who joined Paddy Breathnach in the attack on the barracks was Paddy Ryan 'Lacken' of Knockfune, Newport. Lacken, who one of the most wanted rebels in Tipperary during the War of Independence, was subsequently elected a TD in the 1923 General Election.
 

SEÁN TREACY

Also among the attackers on the night was Seán Treacy, one of the leaders of the Third Tipperary Brigade of the old IRA who was killed the following October in a shoot-out with British troops and spies in Talbot Street in Dublin.
Paddy Breathnach remembered his great friend three years after his death in an appreciation he wrote for The Guardian. In a word scene of the raid on the house that Treacy occupied in Talbot Street, Breathnach wrote that "poor Seán had not long to wait for the Reaper's Call . . . A modest gentle soul was Seán, with a remarkable clear vision for a youth reared on a farm in Solohead parish."
In the appreciation Breathnach recalled first meeting Treacy in January 1919 in a farmhouse in Curreeny, not long after the "Solohead business", which presumably refers to the famous Solohead Ambush of that same month, and which resulted in the killing of two RIC officers, for which Treacy, among others, was implicated.
Local Historian Seamus J King of Lorrha, who has done quite a bit of research on Breathnach's life, says the latter actually wrote a ballad dedicated to Treacy's life, titled 'Tipperary Far Away'.
King, who has written an extensive article on Breathnach, says he was born in 1890 in Camas, Cashel, and had two brothers and four sisters. He became a fluent Irish speaker and later worked in the British Civil Service in from 1906 to 1916.
He was then conscripted into the British Army following the outbreak of the First World War two years earlier. But he contracted malaria and was hospitalised for some time in Malta before being shipped home to England.
Ultimately, he deserted the British army and went on the run, taking the name Paddy Dwyer, by which, according to Seamus King, "many people in the Upperchurch-Kilcommon area were to know him."
 

TEACHING RIFLE SKILLS

King states that Paddy found refuge in the area around Keeper Hill where he used his army experience to teach rifle skills to some of the locals.
Like many suspected rebels at the time, he later spent time incarcerated in Wormwood Scrubbs Prison in England.
Seamus King says that Breathnach took the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War. He wrote a piece in The Guardian in support of Paddy Ryan Lacken's candidature in the run-up to the1923 General Election. In that article Breathnach, under his pen-name "An Fanuidhe Aerach", wrote: "The Republican ideal embodies the immortal principle of Irish Independence, that is, that England has no right to dictate to us in any way whatsoever. This country is ours from Antrim to Cape Clear and from Dundalk to Achill. What business then has the English here?"
Seamus King recalls that Breathnach, naturally, did not endear himself to the Free State Government of the day. "He failed to be re-deployed in the Civil Service because of his refusal to sign the necessary declaration of allegiance to the Irish Government."
He instead turned his attention to writing and to teaching Irish. King recalls: "From 1923 to 1929 he wrote intermittently in the 'Nenagh Guardian' under the pen-name Fanuidhe Aerach. His themes were mostly Gaelic and republican, but he touched on other things as well."
In one article in the issue of November 10th 1923, Breathnach wrote: "The dearth of good books and clean literature on the whole is truly lamentable in the Ireland of to-day."
King also recounts that Breathnach wrote a series on the War of Independence in County Tipperary and was a very good friend of Jerry Ryan, the Editor of The Nenagh Guardian.
 

FRIENDSHIP

He gave expression to that friendship in an editorial on Ryan's untimely death in November 1928, writing: "How shall I begin to talk about one of nature's gentlemen, one of an exalted turn of mind, one high of soul and lofty of purpose, one who possessed a sense of charity to all, with ill-feeling to none, industrious, manly and God-fearing."
King recalls that Breathnach was employed as a teacher by the County Council in the 1920s, teaching Irish to children after normal school hours. He gave classes in places like Kilcommon and Rearcross and in 1929 went to Wicklow where he spent two years in a similar teaching role.
He married an Upperchurch native, Maggie Purcell, and they had two children, Cait and Diarmuid.
After living for some time in Cashel, Paddy was eventually re-established as a civil servant in 1931. Seamus King says the family moved to live in Bray and Paddy worked in the Department of Defence until his death in 1939 at the age of 49.
"Paddy Walsh was a medium sized man, quite spoken, almost in a whisper," writes King. "He was gentlemanly and popular and, as one acquaintace put it, 'crazy on the Irish'."
In an article in this newspaper published on September 29th 1945, Paddy Breathnach was described as "a fine writer of prose and poetry in Irish and English".
In his Guardian reports he covered issues such as the "political excitement" in Upperchurch at the setting up of a branch of the new party, Fianna Fáil. He wrote about the arrival of the timber by rail in Thurles for the new church that was to be built in Upperchuch, and about the death toll of workers on the Shannon Scheme that was being developed in the late 1920s.
 

REBELS SHOOTING

He also wrote about the shooting dead by rebels of the RIC District Inspector Michael Hunt in Liberty Square, Thurles, on June 23rd 1919, referring to Hunt as one of the "local RIC tyrants", and describing the Sligo native as "a loyal British servant...far more officious than the British Officers of the time."
Other subjects he touched on in his writings for The Guardian included a journey he took to Galway, "cycling along the Coast Road for ten miles", to Spiddal College to see an Irish play. Breathnach also wrote about a long yearned holiday he went on to the Gaelteacht in Ring in County Waterford to indulge in his love of the Irish language.
Seven years after the burning of Rearcross Barracks, he touched on the subject of that attack in the columns of the newspaper.
He never gave away anything of the central part he himself played as a sniper on that fateful night.
"The Civic Guard barracks in Réidh looks a very modest structure as compared to how it looked in July 1920," he wrote, with a hint of triumphalism, before ending on a doubtful note: "Whitewashed it was then, and bullet-swept, too. Men of the old days often ask themselves was it all in vain."