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Ancestry

It is Oireachtas week in Galway, 1913. The capital of Connaught is gay and full of colour in the July sunshine. The narrow streets are busy with movement, for the city is thronged with visitors. Most of them have come for the annual Ard-Fheis of the Gaelic League, at which there would be a stocktaking of past progress and a programme laid down for future action. Youth predominates. There is animated conversation, joyous greeting, keen rivalry. In the distance is heard the rousing skirl of the war pipes, well suited to this historic environment. The music comes nearer, echoing through old byways and arches of the Spanish-Norman-Gaelic city. The kilted pipers emerge from Shop Street, swing past Lynch's Castle, march up Williamsgate Street. The crowds part before them as they come into full view, their standard floating in the breeze, a great black raven on a cream-coloured background. There is a martial rhythm in their movement as they advance towards Eyre Square to the throbbing beat of the drums and the pulsating rhythm of the pipes. Amongst that fine body of kilted players their leader is conspicuous. Striding at their head, six feet in height, well formed, well knit, with blue eyes and classical features topped by a shock of auburn wavy hair, he looks every inch a patrician. The onlookers murmur appraisingly. His name is caught. Thomas Ashe, leader of the Black Raven Pipe Band of Lusk, County Dublin. Yes, he is prominent in the Gaelic League.

The music pauses. There is a sharp word of command, the players stand easy, dismiss and mix with the crowds. Friends press around Thomas Ashe. Some are gay, blithe, exuberant; some grave and serious; they are all young. Seán Mac Diarmada, The O'Rahilly, Seán T. O'Kelly, Éamonn Ceannt, Piaras Béaslaí, George Nichols and many others are there. What time holds for them nobody knows. They are met only for the business in hand.

Later, at a public meeting in Eyre Square, Thomas Ashe addresses the crowd. His fine voice carries full across the square, his earnest manner wins approval and applause. Calm and dignified (his description by his colleague Éamonn Ceannt), Thomas Ashe means what he says.

Four years go by. The scene changes to Dublin, on a mild Sunday afternoon in September 1917. A hearse bears the body of Thomas Ashe through the central streets of the city to Glasnevin cemetery. Dense crowds pack the route. There is deep silence as the cortege passes. The coffin is draped in the colours of the Irish Republic. All Ireland is represented. Church and civic dignitaries follow in procession. Trade, craft and cultural organisations, Volunteers and Citizen Army men, men from forgotten Dublin streets and from remote country parishes accompany their dead comrade to the graveside. A group of schoolchildren carries a banner with the words: 'In Memory of Thomas Ashe who died for Ireland'. Men in khaki look on, wondering, puzzled. Everything is orderly, peaceful, disciplined. The quiet, the silence, the vast throngs, the loving homage are impressive and strangely disturbing. This is a nation in obvious revolt.

Dead at thirty-two, Thomas Ashe was laid to rest in Glasnevin. His end was unexpected, poignant, tragic. It stirred Ireland more profoundly, according to observers of long experience, than the executions of the previous year or than any event since the hanging of Allen, Larkin and O'Brien at Salford jail in 1867.

Who was this man whose death so deeply moved and influenced Ireland? Who were his forebears and what were his origins? What were the influences that moulded him into the resolute, stubborn, uncompromising man whose spirit refused to bend or break? What did he believe and do that brought him to his death?

Thomas Ashe was born in the townland and parish of Kinard, near Dingle, in the Corkaguiney peninsula. This region, at the southwest extremity of Ireland, reaches out into the Atlantic Ocean, a mountainous, cliff-bound, rugged rib of country, forty miles from Tralee in the east to Dunquin in the west. Towards the east is the lofty fortress of Caherconree, further west the dominating pile of Mount Brandon, the one dedicated to pagan tradition, the other hallowed by the Christian, symbolic of the diverse wealth of legend, romance and history comprised within the borders of this half-isolated promontory. On the flank of Slieve Mish was buried Scotia, the Milesian queen, so legend says, after some great battle of prehistory. At its western tip, challenging the fury of the Atlantic, is Sybil Head, named after Sybil Lynch, betrothed lady of Pierce Ferriter, poet and chieftain. Here she was drowned by the rising tide while battle was joined for her cause and a minor Troy was enacted on Ballysibele Strand. Her gallant suitor fought Cromwell and was hanged by the Puritan soldiery at Killarney, but his stately poems are recited in his native territory to this day.

Five miles off Sybil Head are the Ferriter Islands, now the Blaskets, once occupied by people, inhabited today only by rabbits and sea fowl. From the foot of Brandon Mountain in the sixth century Saint Brendan set out in a frail bark and explored new lands across the Atlantic in a journey that has ever since puzzled and fascinated. To confirm legend, the peninsula is richly endowed with antiquarian remains, Christian and pre-Christian. There are cairns, souterrains, megaliths, dolmens, cahers, ancient oratories, cells, termons, castles and churches by the dozen. The pages of the excellent Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland bear witness to the wealth of interest which archaeologists have found in this remote segment of Ireland. The savage legions of the Tudor monarchs left their mark on this territory so that not the lowing of a cow nor the voice of a human being was heard throughout its extent to the farthest verge of Dunquin, a fate it shared with the rest of Munster. Within the memory of living people the majority of its inhabitants spoke or understood Irish, and the Gaelic ethos retained its vigorous and expressive being. How expressive and vigorous it could be we can infer from the autobiography of Tomás Ó Crohan, who recorded the life of his beloved Blaskets in prose powerful and gaunt as the crags that surrounded his home.

The land has given its characteristics to the people who live on it. They are a rugged, intelligent, sturdy and versatile race. Between the mountains are sheltered valleys where the land is surprisingly good and fertile. There is much bog, which gives fuel for a pleasant fire. There are mountain lakes, of unfathomable depth, teeming with silver trout. Along the coast, where the cliffs do not intervene, tracts of fertile land slope towards the sea. The people till the land, save the peat from the bogs and fish the sea in craft that make life a gamble. The Atlantic has claimed an impressive toll. There was much congestion and much, far too much, emigration. Corkaguiney is a pattern of small fields and villages, clusters of houses nestling in valleys or perched on hillsides, cruachs and lofty passes, lonely cottages sheltering coyly in remote coums. In Thomas Ashe's boyhood the people lived on holdings of ten or twenty to fifty acres of mixed-quality soil, part hill, part bog, part arable. Possessions were modest, ranging from one to a dozen cows, some sheep, a goat or two to ward off animal disease, a pony, mule, horse or donkey and a collie dog. Twenty cows was affluence. Every cow had a name, so had every field. Not everyone had a plough. Mowing machines, by McCormack of Chicago as like as not, were owned by the select few. There was neighbourly co-operation and cohesion. There were patriarchal family loyalties. There was courtesy to the stranger and an extraordinary interest in his business. In field and fair snatches of old sagas became mixed with talk of the price of cattle or the prowess of O'Brien and Parnell. Speech might be salty and down-to-earth or exquisite with subtle sophistications, but unfailingly rich in phrase, proverb, turn and idiom. A good speaker was much appreciated, a keen discussion loved. Here was a Gaelic Arcadia. The soul of this country was born into Thomas Ashe.

The Ashe (originally D'Esse) family came from France at the time of the Norman conquest and settled in Devon, from where they crossed over to Ireland, various individuals or families probably at various times. MacLysaght in his Irish Families (p. 288) tells us that the Ashes were domiciled in Kildare and Meath since the fourteenth century and are recorded in the sixteenth century as among the leading gentry there. Branches dispersed to various parts of Ireland and are found in Limerick, Cavan, Louth, Derry and Antrim. It is not improbable that the Captain Thomas Ash who defended Derry for King William in 1689 came from the same roots as Commandant Thomas Ashe, who occupied North County Dublin at Easter 1916 for the Irish Republic. One of the family mottoes was 'Fight'. Fight they did, for whatever cause their convictions upheld. The motto, however, by which the family is particularly identified, Non nobis sed omnibus - Not for ourselves but for all - is nowhere made more manifest than in the life and death of Thomas Ashe of Kinard.

Tradition has it that the Ashes of West Kerry came from Kildare, where, in a time of turmoil, a stubborn Ashe, loyal to his conscience, was hanged for being a rebel, and other members of the family, refusing to renounce their Catholic faith, had their lands confiscated and were forced to leave. Moving south, as did many other midland families in similar circumstances, they settled at Murreagh near the shores of Smerwick harbour in the extreme west of Dingle peninsula, not far from the ancient oratory of Gallarus. A country of surpassing beauty, it was not without its...