On a beautiful end of May evening surrounded by a countryside with every blessed thing in full bloom, a crowd gathered to commemorate the centenary of the murder by Free State forces of Volunteer Jeremiah O’Leary at Hartnett’s gate in May 1923.
The commemoration had several contributors and each one brought their own gifts to the occasion.
People travelled from near and far to be there. Someone said that the beauty of the occasion was that people were there because they wanted to be there and for the right reasons.
There were links in everything you listened to and everywhere you looked. There were family connections stitched in all through the evening.
Creativity Throughout
Volunteer O’Leary’s niece, Hannah Brosnan O’Callaghan, who travelled from California, read from the letter to Éamonn deValera from Volunteer O’Leary’s father after he had lost his only son to the cause for which so many of his equals gave their lives.
From the laying of wreaths, the readings, the writings and the musical gifts of Dónal Cullinane, Séamus Fleming Jnr. and Sarah Brett of the Aftershock Band.
Fr. John Kerin, who blessed the grave and all in attendance, is a native of Scartaglin and it’s on his family’s land that the monument to Volunteer O’Leary stands.
All the elements of the evening were creativly drawn together by event MC Séamus Fleming.
The Hillside Scribbler, Jimmy Cullinane kept his best and finest ink for his tribute poem, penned for the occasion and read just as it should be by Bill O’Leary – the US based photographer who was one of the people who travelled the farthest to be there.
To Scart on Saturday Night
Mr. Fleming also reminded the gathering that they will be reconvening at the O’Leary monument in Scartaglin on Saturday evening at 8pm for the final of the three commemorations.
And there was the powerful presence of Dr. Tim Horgan whose orations at events like this over the past couple of years have been most memorable.
Dr. Horgan kindly sent his oration from Monday evening and it is as follows:
Vol. Jerh O’Leary Centenary Commemoration, May 29th 2023, Kilbanivane Cemetery
By: Dr. Tim Horgan
In the summer of 1798, in County Down, the Great Rebellion had ended, but the killing continued.
General Henry Monro mounted the scaffold. His republican forces had been crushed, his cause defeated, he had become an enemy of the state, betrayed, captured, he was about to die.
His final words were: ‘Tell my country that I deserved better of it’.
Here in Castleisland, 125 years later, the revolution begun in 1916 had just ended. His republican forces had been crushed, his and Monro’s cause had again defeated, Vice Commandant Jer O’Leary too had been betrayed and captured. Jer O’Leary would be executed with little ceremony.
No Family Visit
No legal formalities, being condemned as an enemy of the state would suffice, no final family visit, there would be no last words. But if there had been a final speech, Jer O’Leary may well have echoed Henry Munro’s parting words ‘Tell my country that I deserved better of it’.
To you brave Jer O’Leary, to you of his family, to you of his community, let it be said that this courageous and selfless soldier of Ireland did deserve better of his country.
We are gathered her today on the centenary of his death to right some of that wrong. For we are gathered here today, not in anger, not in sorrow but in pride, proud to remember a young patriot, to remember a soldier whom others have forgotten, whom other would have you forget.
Committed to Stone
This evening we honour with words but these words will be lost in the wind, we honour with floral wreaths but these will wither in weeks, but above all we honour with remembrance for to be remembered is the greatest honour any community can bestow on one of its own.
Over the last century his name has been committed to immortal stone, chiselled on this monument and on that in Scartaglin.
His name and deeds have been committed to paper in the pages of the history books of our county. Above all, Jerh O’Leary still lives in the stories that have been told at fireside and bedside, whispered at a time when such was frowned upon.
Those generations that came before us have deemed that brave Jerh O’Leary should be granted the laurels of remembrance and this they did, and this too we humbly repeat a century after this death.
Land Shorn of Beliefs
Today we live in a land shorn of the beliefs and the traditions that have served our ancient nation well over many dark centuries. We will be told by the ‘Wise Men’ of modern Ireland that having a belief in anything is but a burden.
History is following religion out of the classroom. The sense of community is regarded as obsolete as individualism becomes the creed to follow.
Pragmatism and populism have replaced principle and duty on the mucky path to political power. It is little wonder that the memory of men such as Jer O’Leary have been pushed into the national amnesia, nudged to oblivion. For Jer O’Leary sought neither power or privilege, not fame or fortune, he sought to right a wrong, he fought to free his people, and he counted not the cost.
For the state to remember such a hero would to be an embarrassment, comparisons might be made between what Ireland is and what Ireland should be; better then to forget.
The memory of such idealistic young men was useful for a time to garner votes, but that time passed.
Remembering Became Subversive
Ideals were shed as decades turned and soon even remembering became subversive. Romantic Ireland was dead and gone, it was with another O’Leary in this grave, and there it would be encouraged to stay.
However, while forgetting might be easier, remembering is important. We here today are but what lies between the past and the future.
We are the true guardians of our history and we will not let the memory of Jer O’Leary pass to oblivion. Other generations will know that great men and women acted on an impossible dream so that the Irish people and they alone would have unfettered control of the destiny of the Irish nation.
Our history is dominated by heroes that are imposed from outside, from above. St Patrick, Brian Boru, Patrick Sarsfield, Daniel O’Connell, Parnell and many more that were to be found in the history books of our schools.
Heroes in Our Midst
All great men, they tell us. What we are never told is that the greatest of heroes emerge, not from without, but from within our communities.
In the darkest of times, they kept our culture and our national dreams alive, in the worse of times they defied the conqueror against all odds, men and women who defiantly refused to submit, who doggedly refused to be British, who denied the right of foreigner to rule our land, men and women whose names are shamefully lost, whose graves are often unmarked, whose stories are now never told.
But we are here this evening to remember, to honour, to commemorate one of such hero who emerged from our community and from your family, one who dreamed, one who fought, one who fell, Brave Jer O’Leary. Kerry No.1 Brigade Vice Commandant, Jeremiah O’Leary, was the most senior Irish soldier to be killed in Kerry during those revolutionary years, and, yet alas, in the county’s official commemorations, he was judged to be unworthy of inclusion.
Loyal to the Cause
In 1916, he had declared for a republic and in 1923 he was still loyal to that cause. That was his crime, that is why they killed him and that is why they would have you forget him. But forget we will not, for to forget would be to betray and Jer O’Leary had suffered sufficient betrayal in his short life.
Jer O’Leary was not born destined to enter our nation’s narrative. He was a farmer’s only son, his lot would be to toil in the land, marry his fiancée, rear a family and read his books. But he was of yet another Irish generation born into a land that for over seven centuries had not known freedom. Jer O’Leary was the unwilling subject of a foreign king.
In 1916, his country called, and he answered. Ireland had summoned her children to her flag to strike for her freedom and they would attempt the impossible as the brave men had vainly done in generations past.
Heads on Pikes in Castleisland
But how could it have been otherwise. Jer O’Leary had heard of the stories of the Great Earl of Desmond, hunted and killed in these mountains above us. He was told of the heads placed on pikes in Castleisland streets when the rebels of 1798 were cruelly killed; he learned of Bob Finn and his Fenians, of the hangings of John Twiss and Poff and Barrett, of the deeds of the Moonlighters of Lisheenbawn Cross. Jer O’Leary was born into a tradition of resistance, and he too would be a soldier in Ireland’s cause.
When Dan O’Mahony led his little army to Dysert at Easter 1916, Jer O’Leary would march amongst them. The torch had been handed on and would brightly blaze once again. And so, for Vol Jer O’Leary began a long journey of heroism and courage, of suffering and pain, of hunger and hope, a journey where victory turned to defeat, a road to sadness and betrayal and eventually death at Hartnett’s Hotel one hundred years ago today.
After seven years of fighting in the cause of Ireland’s freedom Jer O’Leary would end his journey on that well-trodden patriot’s path to death, still loyal to the cause that called him in 1916.
Living Suffer the Most
In all wars, it is the dead that are counted, and, of them, only the fortunate few are remembered. Never recalled are those of the living who are sentenced to suffer the most and to suffer the longest; they are those who are left behind to mourn, their grief is lifelong, their loss unending. Jer O’Leary, an only son, left a mother and father, he had sisters, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles and they too would mourn all their lives.
An ungrateful state moved on, a pittance of a pension reluctantly granted, a mass-produced medal, and little else.
Politicians would find it easy to sleep on other men’s wounds, there was little use in remembering the families of the fallen, votes could be more cheaply bought elsewhere, and old loyalties exploited at ballot boxes. Jer O’Leary was engaged to Kathleen Hickey, an active Cumann na mBan member whose name should have entered the history books such was her role in the defence of the Republic.
Grief not Recorded
But her loss at her fiancé’s death is never recalled, her mourning not recorded, her grief perhaps being the greatest of all. At Kilbannivane, a century ago, ten thousand tears were shed but soon the bereaved would mourn in silence even as the decades passed.
We, the people of Ireland, we owe a great debt to the O’Leary family and to Kathleen Hickey, for they too paid the tariff for our liberty, they too suffered for Ireland’s freedom. Let these few words be but a small acknowledgement of what we, as a nation, owe to these, the forgotten victims.
In this sacred place lie the mortal remains of generations from Castleisland and beyond. All indeed are equal in death. All have died of something but within this little black railing lie men who died for something.
They died for Ireland’s freedom, they died for your liberty. This limestone cross was erected by your people and has been faithfully maintained by the few who regard remembering the nation’s patriot dead as a duty, by those who will not let these men who fought and who died for Ireland’s Cause to be forgotten.
Symbols of Faith and Nationhood
Elsewhere in the world it would be the state who would maintain the resting places of its fallen soldiers, but here in Ireland, there is a difference between the nation and the state. Jer O’Leary and those that lie here knew that difference and yet, alas, century later, to our shame, Ireland, the nation,
remains divided into two states to the detriment of both and to the benefit of whom? To the British certainly and to politicians, perhaps.
But on this limestone Celtic cross, decorated with symbols of faith and nationhood, are inscribed no fine words nor epitaphs, just the names of those who lie here. They served in an ‘army without banners’ and sought neither renown or reward, gold or glory.
Unchangeable, in his Fidelity
They would have been happy with a simple cross and to lie amongst their people. And so, to conclude, I will borrow the words from another headstone, from that of a United Irishman of 1798, Jemmy Hope of Antrim, and will say these words of Jer O’Leary.
‘In the best era of his country’s history, he was a soldier in her cause, and in the worst of times, he was still faithful to it; ever true to himself and to that [en]trusted in him. He remained until the last, unchanged, and unchangeable, in his fidelity.’
God grant you rest, brave Jer O’Leary, and would that all of Ireland’s sons were thus.
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