The old green, white and gold

A LONG-hidden green, white and gold tricolour dating from the War of Independence has been discovered in West Clare. It was concealed for over 90 years in a sealed-up recess in the chimney breast of an old house in Mount Scott, near Mullagh.
Built in the 1880s, the house is the ancestral home of the Lynch family and the flag was discovered by Jim Lynch during recent interior refurbishments. There had been some speculation within the family over the years that the flag might be hidden somewhere in the walls of the house but the subject was never discussed by the older generation and its emergence from the secret hiding place caused great surprise and excitement.
Its reemergence from a 92-year-old concealment has revived long-lost memories of the War of Independence in the local area and the Lynch family’s involvement in it. The central character in the history of the flag is Matthew Lynch, around whose coffin it was draped when he was buried with full Republican ceremony in August 1920.
Matthew Lynch was born in Mount Scott in August 1897. He was the fourth child of Matthew Lynch and his wife Honor, the former Honor Cleary of Illane, Miltown Malbay. Matthew and Honor had 13 children, of whom 12 survived to adulthood. They were Tom (born 1894), Maria (born 1895), Jim (born 1896), Matthew (born 1897), Katie (born 1899), Joe (born 1902), Paddy (born 1903), Mick (born 1904), Sean (born 1906), Annie (born 1910), Bridie (born 1911) and Nora (born 1913). Most of them were to emigrate to the USA. All are now dead.
Like his brothers and sisters, as soon as he was able, Matthew made his way ‘up across the fields’ and round the road to Coore National School. He started there in July 1902 and finished in 1910, when he was 13.
As far as is known, and in common with many children in Ireland at the time, he did not go to secondary school. Instead, after finishing school in Coore, he went to work as a shop assistant at Thomas Burke’s hardware shop on the Ennis Road in Miltown Malbay. He is recorded as resident there in April 1911, living ‘above the shop’ with the Burke family.
While working in Miltown, he would undoubtedly have been in touch with and influenced by his namesake and relative, Matthew Lynch, the harness-maker of Main Street. That Matthew was heavily involved in the Republican movement in Miltown and was later to become an Officer of the Sinn Féin Court in the Miltown area. The young Matthew Lynch would have seen at close quarters the beginning of the Republican movement that was to culminate in the Easter Rising and the War of Independence.
He may well have taken part in the early meetings, drills and parades of the Irish Volunteers in Miltown. The Irish Volunteers were formed in Dublin in November 1913, under the leadership of Eoin McNeill, partly in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in January of that year but primarily to ensure the implementation of Home Rule for Ireland, despite strenuous unionist opposition.
The stated objective of the Irish Volunteers was ‘to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland’. This was to be done by training, arming and equipping themselves for their purpose ‘while uniting Irishmen of every creed, party and class’.
The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 led to a split in the ranks of the Volunteers. The great majority joining the newly-formed Irish National Volunteers, which supported John Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party in their demands for Home Rule.
The remnant group of Irish Volunteers then came under the effective control of the avowedly-Republican Irish Republican Brotherhood and thereafter they became closely allied to Sinn Féin, the political organisation established by Arthur Griffith in 1905. Reflecting the latter links, the Irish Volunteers were often referred to as Sinn Féin Volunteers.
The split in the Volunteers at national level was reflected in the state of the movement in West Clare, with a near-collapse in organisation and activities there after the outbreak of the war in 1914. However, the ongoing threat of conscription boosted membership and the Easter Rising of 1916, with its aftermath of executions and the imprisonment of Volunteers, swelled the ranks of the organisation.
The Irish Volunteers in Clare played no significant role in the Easter Rising but afterwards, 11 of the leading Volunteers in the county were arrested and interned. Their release later in 1916 was greeted with an outpouring of public enthusiasm and they resumed their activities with renewed energy and commitment.
Early in 1917, all of County Clare was formed into a single Volunteer Brigade area with eight battalions. They were to play an important role in helping Éamon de Valera to his dramatic victory in the East Clare by-election in July 1917. They trained, drilled and paraded openly in defiance of the army and police.
It was at this time that Matthew Lynch, along with his brother, Jim, joined their local company. Their membership cards still survive. Matthew Lynch’s membership card was No. 31314.
Matthew joined the Mullagh Company, which, along with companies in Coore, Doolough, Quilty, Craggaknock and Kilmurry, formed the 4th Battalion of the West Clare Brigade area. The West Clare Brigade area encompasses a large area of South-West Clare, from the northern and eastern boundaries of the parish of Kilmurry Ibrickane down past The Hand and Doolough, as far as Kildysart and from there out to Loop Head. Art O’Donnell from Tullycrine was Commandant of the Brigade and he was succeeded by Sean Liddy of Cooraclare. Christy McCarthy from Cloonlaheen was Commanding Officer of the 4th Battalion and, as such, he was Matthew Lynch’s immediate superior officer. He was later murdered by the British Army after being taken prisoner following the ambush at Meelick in East Clare in June 1921.
In a remarkable example of the local Catholic Church’s involvement in the Republican movement, the Vice-Commanding Officer of the 4th Battalion was none other than the local curate, Fr Michael McKenna, of Mullagh. The other Mullagh curate, Fr Pat Gaynor, was in control of the Sinn Féin organisation in the area.
There was wide overlap, both in membership and objectives, both locally and nationally between the Volunteers and Sinn Féin. The average size of Clare companies was 72 and it is assumed that this was about the size of the Mullagh Company. Despite his relative youth – he was only 20 when he joined the Volunteers – Matthew soon showed his competence, initiative, intelligence, organisational and training skills.
The Mullagh Company grew rapidly and it was soon necessary to split it into two companies for operational reasons. In recognition of his abilities, Matthew Lynch was promoted to Captain of the Mullagh No. 2 Company.
He was now heavily involved in all aspects of the Republican movement in the Mullagh area. The company’s activities included providing secure meeting places for the illegal Sinn Féin Courts, the parallel legal system established by Sinn Féin to subvert the operation of the British justice system, enforcing the decisions of the Sinn Féin Courts, disrupting the communications and transport of the Crown forces by blocking and trenching roads and raiding for guns and ammunition, which were in perennially short supply among the Volunteers.
In the autumn of 1917, after  De Valera’s election in Clare, the police and the courts clamped down heavily on public displays of drilling and marching by the Volunteers. Large numbers of them were arrested and imprisoned. Several of the Volunteers, including 17 from Clare, went on hunger strike for political status but after the death of Thomas Ashe due to force feeding, the British released the remaining prisoners to avoid creating more martyrs for the Republican cause.
The funeral in September 1917 of Thomas Ashe, a hero of the 1916 Rising, was marked by full military honours and a massive show of public support for the Republican movement. That event was to serve as a model for later funerals of Republicans who died on active service during the War of Independence, including Terence MacSwiney and Tomás MacCurtain in Cork, Martin Devitt in Inagh (February 1920), Sean Breen in Kilmihil (April 1920) and Matthew Lynch in Mount Scott (August 1920).
The War of Independence is usually regarded as having commenced in January 1919, the same month in which the first Dáil met. From that time, the Irish Volunteers came to be called the Irish Republican Army or simply the IRA and the Volunteers also became known as IRA Volunteers.
After the outbreak of the war, the Volunteers in West Clare were more intensively involved in raiding for guns and ammunition, planning, organising and participating in ambushes and protecting homes and villages against the threat of night raids by the Crown forces. The Mullagh Volunteers, like most others at the time, continued to be severely handicapped by a lack of guns and ammunition. This, in turn, greatly limited the military actions they could undertake.
The RIC, who before the war, were ‘the eyes and ears of the British Government’, also had a network of local informers.
As the war went on, the Crown forces in West Clare were reinforced by the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries and they developed more aggressive counter-insurgency and reprisal tactics. Increasingly, they took the offensive against the Volunteers, raiding the homes of known Republicans at all hours of the day and night and forcing many of them, including Matthew Lynch, to go on the run for their lives and liberty.
Towards the end of 1919, Matthew decided to move to Dublin. It is thought that the move was simply in order to make a better living for himself but he did not abandon his republican goals. One of his first actions on arriving was to join the local battalion of the Dublin Brigade of Volunteers. He took up residence in Camden Street, where he commenced employment as a draper’s assistant.
In January 1920, he joined The Irish Drapers’ Assistants’ Association, the pioneering trade union that represented that category of workers and its affiliated health-insurance arm, The Irish Drapers’ Assistants’ Benefit and Protection Association.
The life of a draper’s assistant at the time was far from an easy one. They were poorly paid and many of them were required to ‘live in’ as part of their working conditions. This often meant living in over-crowded and unsanitary houses and dormitories in unsafe, damp and draughty buildings. Communal living like this also brought with it serious health risks, notably the danger of contracting tuberculosis (TB), which was endemic in the population at the time, from other infected residents.
Despite such primitive and hazardous living conditions, drapers’ assistants were obliged by their employers to be immaculately dressed for work. It was said at the time that they had to “dress like dukes on the wages of a dustman” and to “maintain the polish of a Cabinet minister on the salary of a footman”. The well-dressed Matthew Lynch shown in photographs exemplifies these descriptions.
However, he was not long in Dublin when his health began to fail. He had contracted the dreaded TB. By April 1920, he was obliged to return to his home in Mount Scott, where his illness progressed alarmingly, in spite of the best medical attention and the care of his family. He died there, surrounded by his family and fortified by the last rites of the Church, on August 15, 1920. He was just under 23-years-old.
On the day after he died, his coffin was draped in a green, white and gold tricolour for removal to the church in Mullagh. It was raised on the shoulders of Volunteers and up to 500 of them carried it in relays all the way from the family home to the church, a distance of almost three miles. Huge crowds followed the coffin. It was the largest funeral ever seen in the district.
The following day, August 17, solemn requiem mass was celebrated by Fr Michael McKenna, the leader of the local Volunteers, for the repose of his soul. After the mass and final prayers, the Volunteers again raised the tricolour-draped coffin on their shoulders and carried it to the family grave at Kilbridget, just west of the village. A guard of honour of other Volunteers lined the route. As the cortege made its way to the graveyard, the church bell tolled slowly.
At the graveside, Fr McKenna again officiated, chanting the Benediction and De Profundis, after which the coffin was lowered into the grave. The flag that had draped the coffin was presented to the dead Volunteer’s parents.
When the burial was over, the Volunteers took up positions at the graveside and fired three volleys of shots into the air in honour of their dead comrade. There was no military or police presence at the funeral and afterwards the crowd dispersed peacefully.
The tricolour was brought back to the Lynch family home in Mount Scott. Aware that even the sight of it could be enough pretext for the Crown forces to burn down the house, or worse, the flag was safely hidden away. Its first hiding place was a temporary one but later a decision was made to seal it away permanently within the walls of the house.
It was placed in a small recess behind the chimney breast and the opening was plastered over, making the hiding place completely undetectable. There it was to rest for almost 92 years rarely, if ever, spoken of and over the years becoming almost entirely forgotten.
By a curious coincidence, one of the favourite songs of Nonie Lynch, who lived in the house from the time of her marriage to Paddy Lynch in 1942 until a few years before she died last year, was White Orange and Green about an incident, which was probably anecdotal, during the War of Independence when a “maid of 16” refused to surrender the tricolour (by then known as ‘the flag of Sinn Féin’) to a member of the Crown forces.
The flag itself is unusual in its design and construction. It is unusually large, measuring 7ft 4in by 3ft 4in. Its length-to-width ratio is significantly greater than the 2:1 ratio of the modern Irish tricolour. The green is dark in shade and the gold is a deep golden yellow, as distinct from the orange of the modern flag.
The green, white and gold colours, instead of being positioned vertically as in modern flags, run horizontally along the length. It is edged with a 2in wide black border and has a black cross, of similar cloth to the flag, sewn into the centre.
The hand-cut cloth cross, measuring 18in by 11in has unusual, serrated edges. It is apparent that the flag was designed or specifically adapted to be ceremonially draped over a coffin at a funeral.
The tricolour was seen by all sides during the War of Independence as symbolising the hoped-for and emergent Republic. That perception was well expressed by none other than Fr Pat Gaynor of Mullagh in a pamphlet published in 1917, in which he characterised the flag of ‘green, white and gold’ as emblematic of a new Irish Republic and the ascendancy of Sinn Féin over the old and discredited Home Rule movement.
It is that perception and characterisation, along with the personal courage and tragedy involved, which gives the recently discovered tricolour its very special significance. The flag will now be conserved, as advised by experts from the National Museum and the Clare County Museum, and given a place of honour in the Lynch family, in keeping with the fraught and tragic circumstances in which it was first seen.