Hidden Ireland

Congal · Hidden Ireland

Source.......From the Sunday Independant

IF YOU have want an insight into the intimacies of Irish history, into how the foul deeds of the past are only a few fields away, into how hard it is to tell the truth that sets us free, then I have a tale to tell. It started a few weeks ago when I got a phone call from an old school friend, Robert Kearney, whom I had not seen for over 50 years.

Robert had read my column about how The Wind that Shakes the Barley - in which, by some serendipity, his son Damien plays the Flying Column commander - had stirred memories of the April massacres of 13 West Cork
Protestants in the Bandon Valley in 1922. Robert wondered if I would be interested in his researches into Ballygroman House, where he had lived from 1991-98, and which had featured in a prelude to that hard history.

We met at a fine pub in Innishannon, perfect for lunch, apart from the Wolfe Tones on the music track. After they changed the track we consumed the best bacon and cabbage outside the Sibin in Rath and Annie May's in
Skibbereen. But Robert and I still kept our voices low as we reviewed the history of Ballygroman House, which stood between between Cork and Bandon, overlooking the beautiful valley of the River Bride.

Robert was not aware of the history of Ballygroman House when he bought it, but he later did some local research. What he found out largely tallies with what the historian Peter Hart learned from IRA veterans in the Seventies. Needless to say, Robert is not responsible for my account and the commentary on the atrocity which follows.

At about 2.30am, on the night of April 26, 1922, a party of anti-Treaty IRA officers from the Bandon Battalion, under the command of Michael O'Neill, broke into Ballygroman House, the home of Thomas Hornibrook, his son Samuel, and daughter Matilda, members of a respected family of Cork Protestant merchants. Also in the house was Matilda's husband, Captain Herbert Woods, a Bandon Protestant.

Given that this was the dead of night, in the middle of a civil war, with no police to call and armed men raiding Protestant farms far and wide, it was not surprising that armed intruders should strike fear into the family huddled upstairs, or that Captain Woods should have fired a shot to frighten them off - a shot which fatally wounded Michael O'Neill who was carried away by acting commander Charlie Donoghue and his men.

In the words of Peter Hart, "Revenge was swift and complete. Charlie Donoghue drove back to Bandon and returned with reinforcements - and rope." The reinforced republicans laid siege to the house until eight o'clock the next morning, when the two Hornibrooks and Captain Wood agreed to surrender on condition their lives were spared.

Charles O'Donoghue and Michael O'Neill's two brothers confronted the helpless men and asked who had fired the fatal shot. Captain Woods without ado, admitted responsibility. "I fired it." He was beaten badly - the details are dire - and the three men were taken by car towards the hilly country of Templemartin. On the way, Woods was tied to the car and dragged a few miles along the road until he died.

The next day the two Hornibrooks were told they were to be shot and were forced to dig their graves. Thomas Hornibrook threw his stick into the grave, drew himself up to face the firing squad, and told them to go ahead.

The bodies of the three men were buried secretly - but of course the location was no secret to the the large number of men from Bandon and Kilbrittain who took part - or indeed to some of their descendants today.

Neither was there much secrecy about the share-out of the spoils. Ballygroman House was looted, then burned, the plantation of trees was cut down for sale, the fences flattened and the land seized. In sum, scores of people took part in the atrocity or the aftermath.

Now for the frightening part. Nothing about the murders appeared in any Irish newspaper. No attempt was made then, or later, to look into the murders. It was as if the three men had been taken away by aliens.

And no attempt has ever been made to find the three bodies and give them a Christian burial.

It must not be assumed that the families of the three men had no feelings about what happened. But the smears about "spies" and the muddying of the waters by republican apologists which always followed such sectarian murders - and which still go on - created a climate of secrecy and shame that would have made itdifficult to go digging inthat area.

Even so, I was astounded to learn from Robert that Daniel Corkery, author of The Hidden Ireland, had moved into Ballygroman house in 1931, only nine years after the murders. How did he live so happily with that other Hidden Ireland? How did any of us live with it?

The answer is that there is a amnesia about the atrocities against Irish Protestants, mostly in provincial Ireland, in the period 1920/21. Apart from the propaganda of republican apologists, the silence of Irish Protestants has also protected us from some terrible truths. West Cork Protestants have told me many stories of severe suffering. But none of them is prepared to go public.

Dublin Protestants and Catholics listen to these stories with disbelief. How could such things have been hushed up, they ask.

Clearly they have no idea of how vulnerable a Methodist family can feel in the middle of remote rural area. Or how reluctant to raise the murder of a relative when the descendants of his murderers might now be good neighbours.

The amnesia has also been assisted by Irish Protestants in three other areas. First, the Church of Ireland, in the name of an empty ecumenism, has failed to call for a full accounting of what happened to southern Protestants in 1921/22.

Second, those who call themselves Protestant republicans have also played a part in the cover-up. Anytime I write about these events I can be sure that some Protestant republican will surface and tell me that he is perfectly happy, and that "it doesn't help the peace process" to look back at these things.

Finally, some Irish Protestants put the soft life before their duty to the dead. On previous form, my mailbag next week is sure to bring anonymous letters from Dublin Protestant blow-ins to West Cork telling me how well they get on with their RC neighbours and signed Blissfully Happy.

Let me make something clear to empty ecumenists, Protestant republicans and blissfully happies alike. This has nothing to do with you. Most of us digging for truth are from Roman Catholic republican backgrounds. We are digging because justice must be done even if the heavens fall.

Right now, the unholy alliance of Protestant republicans and republican apologists is keeping the Hornibrooks buried. But, as Yeats said:

Though grave-digger's toil is long,/Sharp their spades, their muscles
strong,/ They but thrust their buried men/ Back in the human mind again.