THE KILTANKIN ROUND-UP
The Bureau of Military History is a wealth of firsthand accounts of witness testimony of experiences during the war for Irish freedom, and the activity in South Tipperary is well-accounted. For scholars and amateurs alike, to read the firsthand accounts from the people who were actually there, on the ground and in the thick of the action, brings the history to life in a way that schoolbooks never can.
One of those vivid accounts is that of Maurice McGrath, previously recounted in an issue of ‘By the Fireside’. In that account, the pub in which both Maurice and his brother Pat lived was identified as the present-day Olde Shanbally. An erroneous identification, as the pub was in fact the public house a short distance away on the other side of the street - Ryan’s Bar.
Ironically, it was the buildings adjacent to the Olde Shanbally that were in fact the RIC Barracks in Burncourt, according to Pat McGrath, Maurice’s grand-nephew.
Ryan’s Bar is still operational, and was until 1999 still in the McGrath family, run by Breeda McGrath. Roger McGrath, Breeda’s father, was running the pub from about 1940 until he handed it over to his daughter in the mid 1970s.
Roger was a nephew of Maurice McGrath, and told the larger family the story of the bullet holes in the bar that were sustained on the night in October 1920, when at about 1am in the morning, Maurice and his brother Pat were roughly awoken before being savagely beaten by officers.
So, while the story of the bullet holes was known in the family, it was only when Maurice’s account came to light through his witness statement in the Bureau of Military History, that they learned the full story.
Maurice McGrath’s account of the Kiltankin Round-Up is detailed and evocative, and was covered in some detail previously. Another man who served alongside Mr McGrath, and gave his own account of the same events, is Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Ryan.
A Ballylooby man, Ryan was a member of the Tipperary football team that faced Dublin on Bloody Sunday.
Before the match, Ryan was advised by Dan Breen not to attend. However, he went to Croke Park to take his place anyway. Just before the violence started, “A penalty had been awarded and I was about to take the free kick when a burst of machine-gun and rifle fire occurred”.
While the crowd immediately stampeded, six players, including Ryan, threw themselves to the ground.
“I think (we were) all Volunteers - I suppose it was our training that prompted us to protect ourselves by lying down rather than rushing around”.
Making a run for it, his teammate Michael ‘Mick’ Hogan was shot.
“Going across to Hogan, I tried to lift him but the blood was spurting from a wound in his back and I knew he was very badly injured. He made the exclamation when I lifted him, ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! I am done!’, and died on the spot. My hands and my jersey were covered with his blood.”
Thomas Ryan was the only man on the Tipperary team wearing the tricolour on his “stockings and knickers”, and felt that this made him conspicuous. Later, the Black and Tans would strip him of these with bayonets, and marched him along the road “quite naked”.
Following his release, Thomas Ryan travelled back to Tipperary for Mick Hogan’s funeral and “from then on, I became a full time Volunteer”, he stated.
Born in Tubrid, Ballylooby in 1897, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Ryan died in 1980, aged 83.