Dan Breen and the IRA Read Online Free Page A

arm for Irish Irelanders amongst his audience.’
    Through Gaelic League connections Eamon O’Duibhir had already met the passionate, intense, young Seán Treacy, busy organising Volunteers in Tipperary town – ten miles away from O’Duibhir’s base at Ballagh. It fell to O’Duibhir – a natural leader, educator and organiser – to call a meeting in Ballagh, at the time of the MacDermott visit, at which an Irish National Volunteer company was formed. This company then assisted others in getting units going. Irish language classes arranged by O’Duibhir played a key part in recruiting men and women to parallel organisations like the Irish National Volunteers, the IRB and Sinn Féin. Thomas Ryan – eventually a member of the Second South Tipperary Flying Column under Seán Hogan – said that it was these classes which awakened his interest in Irish history and, by implication, since the two things are rarely separated, in Irish politics.
    Joost Augusteijn says that by 1914 there were 2,000 Volunteers in south Tipperary.
    In those early days Pierce McCan (1882–1919) was as important as Eamon O’Duibhir. McCan was rich, the son of wealthy catholics whose fortune had been made in Australia. The McCan family owned several homes and Pierce grew up on a 1,000 acre estate, complete with a mansion house residence, at Ballyowen, near Cashel. He became a progressive farmer whose methods were admired by his less prosperous neighbours. He formed a Volunteer company from the men working on his land and was able to train and drill them there clandestinely.
    McCan, who was to be involved in nearly every nationalist organisation, was educated like an English gentleman. As a child he had a private tutor, Southendy, who was brought over from England. After that he was sent to Rockwell College and then Clongowes, as if his family was determined to send him on a grand tour of the best catholic boarding schools Ireland had to offer. In 1900, he visited France, before going to Denmark to look into Danish farming methods. By 1909 he was, like the entire revolutionary generation, caught up in Irish language classes. Love of the language caused him to holiday in the west of Ireland where he developed an affinity for the wild windy vistas of the Aran Islands and the highlands of Donegal.
    Through the ubiquitous Gaelic League (by 1908, there were eighteen Gaelic League branches in Tipperary) McCan knew many IRB and revolutionary people in Dublin. In 1914, together with Frank Drohan and Rockwell College Irish teacher, Séamus O’Neill, McCan organised a Volunteer group in Clonmel. Perhaps because of his class background and because he had once shared a platform with Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond, many thought that McCan was more of a Home Ruler than a Sinn Féiner but he was especially close to Arthur Griffith, the founder of Sinn Féin.
    When Redmond urged the Volunteers to join the British army and participate in the Great War – effectively signing the death warrant of the once-illustrious Parliamentary Party – the Volunteer movement split in September 1914. The vast majority supported Redmond and became the National Volunteer organisation. McCan refused to back Redmond and the Doon Volunteers were the only corps in Tipperary whose members refused to join the British army. ‘This was probably because Seán Treacy and Dan Breen were members of it,’ suggests Tipperary historian, John Shelley.
    When the greatly depleted Volunteers regrouped at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in October 1914 – with wary conspiratorial IRB figures like Bulmer Hobson, Tom Clarke and Seán MacDermott playing prominent roles – Pierce McCan and Eamon O’Duibhir led the small Tipperary delegation.
    Two years later, during the 1916 Rising, McCan made every effort to bring the Tipperary Volunteers into the rebellion. He was arrested and sent from his patrician mansion to