by Joe Ambrose
In the course of the conversation he took ill and had to return to his bed but kept on talking as he still had things to say: ‘The world owes me nothing. I had a rough time, but I have no regrets in life for anything I did. I might have messed up a few things or I might not have done as much as I should have but to the best of my ability I did all I could.’
In retirement he moved into a nursing home, St John of God’s, at Kilcroney, Co Wicklow. His time there was much taken up with visitors; researchers, writers, painters, TV crews, all wanting a final slice of an authentic Irish rebel. He found himself, nevertheless, with time on his hands. The days of dropping into pubs to enjoy a hero’s welcome or seeing old pals in the homes of Tipperary were over. Like all old people, he really was living within himself now. In addition to writing letters he kept a diary of sorts containing meditations on what was happening in the world he was leaving behind.
On 23 May 1966, he turned to two pet hates, the catholic hierarchy and the Labour Party: ‘I read in today’s papers about the plaque that President De Valera unveiled to John and Ned Daly in Limerick yesterday. I took special notice that the catholic high priest attended. Old John Daly died as he had lived, outside the church. The bishops kicked the dear old fenians out of the church. The Kerry bishop stated in his banishment that hell was not hot enough or eternity long enough to punish them. If there is such a place as an afterlife, I hope he is in it. Heaping on the coal, gas, oil, or electric power, whichever is best used for heating the place.
‘The new men in the Labour Party are a very poor type of manhood. They are one and all a gang of chancers with no interest in Ireland or the Irish people. They want a plaque put up by that crowd to the great James Connolly. What an insult to a great man and what he stood for! Connolly was FIRST Irish and he wanted his country free from the slave chains of England. When that job was done he wanted a social system set up for the benefit of all our people – not for the benefit of one section, one party.’
He’d started a love affair with Dublin before he’d settled there. Now that he was living on the city’s perimeter, he had caustic things to say about it in his journal: ‘Dublin is Dublin and it is still the Pale. The Anglo blood is hard to change. You may change one or two of them but the great majority will always be anti-Irish. They tasted the ways of empire and served it for a way of life – so they can’t ever change. The Castle catholic is far worse than the Anglo type. The crown servants are at heart loyal to the English. The bishops and clergy were ninety-nine per cent on the side of the enslavers.’
Diarmuid Crowley, a Provisional IRA activist in the 1980s, visited the old gunfighter as a child: ‘My dad was a civil servant in the department of finance and his dad had been in the IRA during the Tan War. Dad was active in Fianna Fáil and was all in favour of anything to do with Irish Ireland … he’d known Dan Breen since he was a kid. When Dan ended up out in Kilcroney he was pretty close to our home – we lived in Killiney – so dad would go out to visit pretty regularly. To bring him books and to chew the fat, usually on a Sunday afternoon. I’d have been about eight or nine at the time and dad wanted me to meet what he called “this great man”. Dan always made time for me; he was kind of like a teacher, really. He’d want to explain things. It might be a little lesson on Irish history or something about one of the shrubs growing in the grounds of Kilcroney. In a way, I think, he was more comfortable with me than he was with dad. Possibly because there was something innocent about Dan for all that he had done when he was fighting. I was too young to understand how “famous” he was. To me he was just an elderly man and I loved going to see him on that level. When I got old enough I read My Fight for Irish Freedom. It was all right … Dan had an influence on me as a human being … brave and dignified sitting there in his room in a nursing home. Waiting for death, I suppose. This big old man who’d seen and done more than I could ever hope to see or do.’
Donagh MacDonagh, the son of 1916 leader Thomás MacDonagh, was one of Breen’s most frequent visitors at Kilcroney. A talented poet, playwright and balladeer, MacDonagh was a district court judge whose best known work was the 1946 comic verse drama, Happy as Larry. Through MacDonagh, Breen came into contact with diverse circles of artists and intellectuals. Wexford historian, Nicky Furlong, recalls sculptor John Behan, poet Patrick Kavanagh and movie director John Huston, as people who visited Breen via MacDonagh.
‘Donagh never told me anything about his past life, which must have been harrowing,’ said Furlong. ‘Dan did. Donagh had been born into this world a physical wreck. His spine was so bad, his intestines so twisted, that no insurance company would take him on.
‘Dan told me that after the execution of his father, Thomás MacDonagh, various republicans got together and formed the Green Cross, an organisation which looked after the widows and orphans of executed men and men who were killed in active service.
‘It was through the Green Cross that Dan came to know Donagh and Donagh became friendly with him. For Donagh, you must remember, every day was a new life. He arrived on the scene full of stories and ideas, the life of the party. He did an immense amount of good for people. He looked after Dan extremely well.
‘Donagh used to bring Dan out for some wonderful get-togethers. He was always going to see him in Kilcroney, urging people to go out to see him, filling him in on the affairs of the day.
‘A favourite topic was fellows who were doing well and fellows who should be shot. One man for whom they had a particular dislike was Ernest Blythe.* MacDonagh used to report every slide from esteem, statement, abuse, and jeer relating to Blythe with great relish and Dan always enjoyed this, responding with seeming knowledge of the background. Of course he may have been greatly amused at MacDonagh’s power of invective. I remember poor Dan laughing one day in the Glen of the Downs until it hurt. MacDonagh was brilliantly able to mimic Blythe, his accent, facial expression and hand gestures.
‘I remember Donagh and himself being completely antagonistic to Christmas, the sending of Christmas cards and the whole idea of Christ’s birth being celebrated when the whole thing was a fairytale. The interesting point about Dan Breen was that, despite his attitude, he was a puritanical man; a stern father figure who might not let his children mix with undesirables. He was not a loose-living deviant type. He thought deeply about proper behaviour and how it should be enforced.
‘Donagh went off to Spain for a holiday. While there he contracted some bug, he came home and in a short time was dead. He died on 1 January 1968. The bottom fell out of our lives. Dan was shattered in as much as a man already broken could be shattered. We made all the arrangements to go to the funeral. My wife and I went to communion and Dan expressed his surprise at people going to communion at night. Years ago, he said, people had to fast before going to the rails. I explained about Vatican II and he said, “I suppose so.”
‘The next day we went to the burial at Glasnevin. I’ll always remember the sight of the three of us, lonely people, with a great friend and a national figure dead and being buried. All the government ministers were around the grave. We kept away because we didn’t want to be dragging Dan over headstones and kerbs. Nevertheless – he was there – a giant of the national struggle known the world over. A pitiful sight with the two of us standing there linking him. He was seen, known and recognised by several government ministers and not one of them came over to shake his hand, to say, “Hello, how are you?”, “Good Luck” or anything else. We just brought him out for a meal. That was the last satisfactory day out I had with Dan because whenever I went out to see him again, there was always the great absence and the great sorrow – Donagh MacDonagh not there.’
Towards the end of his life Breen returned publicly to the catholic church. He’d always attended church ceremonies (funerals, commemorative masses, etc.) and some priests were close friends but he was a notoriously forceful anti-clerical creature. Peadar O’Donnell recalled visiting him in hospital one day when a senior bishop came to pay his respects. A nurse came into the
room to tell Breen that the bishop was outside. ‘Ah, just tell him to fuck off!’ Breen told her.
In a press interview announcing his return to religion he said, ‘A canon – I forget his name right now – an old clergyman came here and we had a long chat for hours. So I decided to resume. Well, I didn’t resume to accept everything … most things in reason, believing in God and that Christ was here …’
He argued that he’d always believed in God, ‘but not in the God that was put up by some clerics … a God that was terrifying, but a God who was charitable and lovable and that cared for the children of the world and didn’t put them there for the pleasure of seeing them damned.’
‘I hate the creepy crawling thing,’ he said. ‘God doesn’t want us to crawl or He doesn’t want you to humble yourself beyond what is dignified. There was no softness in Christ. He was a hard man. He gave the people what they deserved. He gave them a kick in the backside and told them not to be crying and grumbling and hypocritical. When we were young we were very much afraid of the priests. They were terribly bossy in my young days – they’d give you a clip on the ear for very little. What sins could a boy of that age have except that he stole a few apples out of an orchard? And I don’t see that as a sin.
‘I see such a lot of shrines all over the country. I don’t believe in shrines being put up to Christ or the Blessed Virgin on the roadside because people are not worthy of it. You have to be very spiritual and very holy before you put up shrines. They’re too precious, too sacred and most of the shrines are shocking monstrosities.’
Dan Breen was preparing for death. He tended sapling trees he’d planted in the grounds of Kilcroney. These trees, he believed, contained the spirits of those who had gone before him to the grave. He got into trouble with the authorities for smuggling rat poison into Kilcroney; squirrels were killing his saplings and had to be eradicated. He arranged to have a silver tea service, a wedding present, melted down and formed into a chalice for the altar in the Kilcroney chapel.
He died on 27 December 1969. The Northern Ireland troubles were about to erupt. In his last letter to Clonmel Fianna Fáil man, Frank Loughman, he asked, ‘When are we going to the north?’
In a final interview he talked about his own death.
‘Do you look forward to spring?’ he was asked.
‘Ah, yes, when the buds and flowers come out and the birds start singing,’ he replied. ‘Nature is marvellous. We’ll have a great chorus of songsters here in a few weeks. There are a couple of great thrushes and they’ll be trying to best each other with the singing.’
‘And, after spring, what do you look forward to?’
‘The long, long sleep. That’s the only ambition I have left. The long, long sleep.’
‘It will be a happy one?’
‘It will be a happy one.’
Appendix 1 – Third Tipperary Brigade anti-Treaty Proclamation
POBLACHT NA hÉIREANN
Whereas: The Irish Republican Army was established to maintain the Irish Republic and, having sworn allegiance to the Republic, is determined to resist every power, foreign and domestic, inimical thereto and
Whereas: The setting up of the Free State government is inimical to the established Republic, and the majority of the dáil having contrived at the creation of the Free State government, have by that act forfeited the allegiance of all citizens of the Republic, soldier and civilian alike, and
Whereas: The present dáil cabinet and the majority of general headquarters staff are avowed supporters of the ‘Articles of Agreement to the Treaty’ signed in London on 6 December 1921, and are using the army which is the mainstay of the Republic to protect the Provisional Government which is determined to subvert the Republic.
– The attempt to set up the government of the Free State is illegal and immoral.
– All their orders, decrees, and acts have no binding force on the people of the south Tipperary Brigade area, or any other part of Ireland, and as such are to be resisted by every citizen of the Republic living in the area by every means in his power.
Séamus Robinson, Denis Lacey, Seán Fitzpatrick
Michael Sheehan, Jerome Davin, Patrick Ryan
Tadgh O’Dwyer, Brian Shanahan.
Appendix 2 – The Galtee Mountain Boy
I joined the flying column in 1916,
In Cork with Seán Moylan,
In Tipperary with Dan Breen,
Arrested by Free Staters
And sentenced for to die,
Farewell to Tipperary
Said the Galtee Mountain Boy.
We crossed the pleasant valleys
And over the hilltops green
Where we met with Dinny Lacey,
Seán Hogan and Dan Breen
Seán Moylan and his gallant crew,
They kept the flag flying high.
Farewell to Tipperary
Said the Galtee Mountain Boy.
We crossed the Dublin Mountains,
We were rebels on the run.
Though hunted night and morning,
We were outlaws but free men.
We tracked the Wicklow Mountains
As the sun was shining high.
Farewell to Tipperary
Said the Galtee Mountain Boy.
I’ll bid farewell to old Clonmel
That I ne’er will see no more
And to the Galtee Mountains
Where oft I have been before.
To the men who fought for liberty
And died without a cry,
May their cause be ne’er forgotten
Said the Galtee Mountain Boy.
Appendix 3 – Dan Breen’s 1927 Policy Statement
TO THE ELECTORS OF TIPPERARY,
I offer myself as an independent republican candidate at the coming general election and I am prepared, if elected, to sit in the dáil. In taking this course I feel that I owe some explanation of my apparent change of attitude to those who supported me in the past.
Never since 1923 a convinced supporter of the policy of abstention, I did all in my power to prevent the disastrous consequences of Civil War. When the decision to fight was taken I was forced to submit my judgement to that of the majority of republicans, to take my stand with them in the conflict that followed and to abide by its result. The end of this struggle left me with no illusions as to what should be the future policy of intelligent republicans.
I saw, as all of you have seen, a national movement which had written the most glorious pages in the history of our country broken and robbed of its force and of its sanctity. I saw the men who since 1916 had united for the attainment of a common ideal shedding the blood and blackening the fame of former comrades in a quarrel as to the method of that attainment. I saw the imperial and anti-national forces rising to power by means of that unfortunate division and influencing the counsels of a government that had turned to them for support. On the other hand I saw republicanism beaten in the field and debarred from voicing in effective form the national aspirations of the people.
Faced with such a situation one thing and one thing alone could retrieve our position nationally: THE UNION OF ALL WHOSE IDEAL WAS STILL THE IDEAL OF 1916 TO 1921 AND THE DETERMINATION TO FORCE THE RECOGNITION OF THAT UNION AND THAT IDEAL ON THE NOTICE OF OUR PRESENT RULERS.
Appendix 4 – George Bernard Shaw’s Letter to Dan Breen
An undated letter from George Bernard Shaw to Dan Breen appears in some editions of My Fight for Irish Freedom. It concerns Breen’s attempts to organise with an Irish film production company, S.A. Ltd, the filming of Shaw’s plays in Ireland.
Shaw’s filmic collaborator was producer Gabriel Pascal, one of the most extravagant figures of his time. In 1938, Time magazine listed him, alongside Adolf Hitler, as one of the world’s most famous men. Pascal wrote the line, ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain’ for Shaw’s Pygmalion. It subsequently went into the musical version of the play, My Fair Lady.
Breen is said to have met with Pascal
to discuss the Irish proposal, but Breen seemed to have met an awful lot of the newsreel/Time superstars of his epoch. Shaw’s biographer, Michael Holroyd, couldn’t recall any reference to the affair in Shaw’s archive, but the letter does have a Shavian authenticity about it:
Dear Dan,
Get all this sentimental rubbish out of your blessed old noodle. I have no feeling in business. You can’t humbug me; and it grieves me that you have humbugged yourself to the tune of £1,000.
I have given you time to do your damnedest to raise Irish capital. The result is £40,000. For film purposes it might as well be 40 brass farthings. A million and a half is the least we could start with; and it would barely see us through two big feature films.
The simplest and perhaps the honestest thing for the S.A. Ltd would be to wind up and pocket its losses. But after the company has been advertised as it has been its failure would be a failure for Ireland. What is the available alternative? First to get rid of me and Pascal. The protestant capitalists will not back me because I am on talking terms with you, and do not believe that you will go to hell when you die. The clergy, now that they know that I will not write up the saints for them, will not back a notorious free-thinker. The catholic laity will not back a bloody protestant. The capitalists who have no religion and no politics except money-making rule me out as a highbrow in whom there is no money. All of them object to Pascal because he is a foreigner who throws away millions as if they were threepenny bits. So out we go with our contracts torn up.
Next, S.A. must cut film production out of its programme and become a studio building company raising capital wherever it can get it, from Rank, Korda, Hollywood, Belfast, Ballsbridge, Paddy Murphy, John Bull and Solomon Isaacs. It is true that the studios will cost two millions in two years; but when they are ready the company will be an Irish landlord gathering rent from all the producing companies on earth.