Click to Enlarge
Fake Banana Sandwiches and Hidden History – The Story of Peadar McNulty
by Gary Rutherford
Format: Hardback
Publication date: 25th January 2012
ISBN: 978-1-908477-75-0
Price: €20.00
A chance question the day after the Michael Collins episode aired of the documentary series “Who is Ireland’s Greatest”, gradually took a hold on me and drove me to research the life of my wife’s grandfather, Peadar McNulty. Peadar was a veteran of the 1916 Rising and War of Independence. I found Peadar had written several journal and chronological accounts about these years including a detailed account of the Collinstown Aerodrome raid. I found them both fascinating and detailed, reflective of Peadar’s main career as one of Ireland’s best known auctioneers during his lifetime.
The book traces the course of my research process and places Peadar’s writings centre stage. I tried to demystify this process and encourage others to do likewise to show that when you research and learn about your family history, you learn about your country’s history.
About the Author
Gary Rutherford lives in Balrothery, North Dublin. Gary is married to Peadar’s grand-daughter Gráinne and they have seven schoolgoing children. He returned to college after twenty years to complete a BA Hons in Social Care. Active in community development, in recent years he has established the local tennis club, developed two local heritage/tourism projects and founded the donorconsent.com initiative on organ donation consent.
Preface
I am fortunate, some twenty years ago, to have met my wife Gráinne McNulty. For me, it was love at first sight; I did say to her on our first date that I would marry her. When I held her hand it felt like I was coming home, I had marked her dance card as full. I know she thought I was a bit crazy at the time, but I am glad she picked me in the end. My first contact with Gra’s family was when her father, Dermot McNulty, approached me to tell me not to be meeting his daughter in a local pub, and instead to welcome me to his home. In Ireland, you will hear the phrase “he didn’t lick it off the ground” referring to someone’s character traits which percolate down and are evident through the generations. This initial welcome was an insight, though not apparent to me at that time, into one of the McNulty family traits. I have always felt welcome in the McNulty household and I am glad to say, we have managed some twenty years later, to replicate both our original families with seven children of our own.
Recently, a chance question from Gráinne’s mother led me on this adventure. In Autumn 2010 RTE Television, one of Ireland’s national broadcasters, ran a series entitled “Who is Ireland’s Greatest”. The final five were derived from a series of polls on the Joe Duffy Radio programme. In the first programme, barrister and former Minister Michael McDowell presented the case for Michael Collins to be named as Ireland’s greatest.
In the course of this episode, a photograph of approximately eighteen men on a prison landing was shown. Therese McNulty, my mother in law, showed me a copy of this photo and wondered if it would be possible to identify the men pictured. She remembered seeing a larger version of this photo in 16 Royse Road, Phibsboro which was Dermot’s family home as a child. Dermot’s father, Peadar McNulty (1890-1948) had taken part in the 1916 Rising and the fight for Irish Independence. Whether Peadar was one of the men in the picture was still a mystery, but like many mystery stories, the more questions that were answered, the more questions we had to answer.
This volume is an attempt to draw all the available threads together to give us a picture of Peadar, who was an ordinary man, a miller’s son, who took part in some of the events that shaped our nation’s emergence from British rule in the early part of the 20th Century. We include detailed accounts and chronologies that Peadar authored about the period leading up to the 1916 Rising and the Civil War. Some of these accounts are available in the Bureau of Military History and are published here for the first time.
Our research had not just been about these events, but to show the human side, the sacrifices made and the foresight of people like Peadar to leave eyewitness record of these events in his writings. Readers will see detailed accounts of the development of the Irish Volunteer movement, their operations and activities and most importantly, the people involved through the eyes of Peadar. They offer us an insight into the training, planning and dedication that marked the lives of Peadar and his compatriots had for the cause of Irish freedom.
Inside Peadar’s story there is intrigue, passion, love, tragedy and heroism. Peadar has not got a unique story, but a story that illustrates the notion that when one trawls the harvest of one’s own family history, there is a rich and textured story that may touch us all on a very human level. When one thinks about it, but for the missed trajectory of a bullet or a cancelled active service operation, a whole thread of history would have been dissolved. I may be standing on McNulty Street, outside a building, station or park named in his honour, but I wouldn’t be standing there with my beautiful wife or seven children as they would not exist.
Peadar has a story that I believe will resonate with many people, both here in Ireland and abroad. He experienced hardship and sacrifice, imprisonment and ostracism, but like many men, stayed resolute to his cause, showing freedom is both universal and paramount to us all, and that a country is its people, not land, resources and money. It is people that matter most. Peadar fought for a civic republic and recent events in Ireland have left our nation in a state of flux, as all manner of relationships are being renegotiated. Perhaps, as the centenary of 1916 draws closer, we can rediscover that civic republic that values its people the most, as the real and true wealth of our nation.
This is our best guess now, based on the writings of Peadar, public documents and most importantly family anecdotes. They show the colour, depth and texture in Peadar’s life. In many ways, this is a selfish venture as I would like my children and their children in the future to understand and value their history by looking through the prism of their family history. Perhaps new material will emerge in the future, but this volume will serve as a good start.
“We are told that if Irishmen go by the thousand to die, not for Ireland, but for Flanders, for Belgium, for a patch of sand in the deserts of Mesopotamia, or a rocky trench on the heights of Gallipoli, they are winning selfgovernment for Ireland. But if they dare to lay down their lives on their native soil, if they dare to dream even that freedom can be won only at home by men resolved to fight for it there, then they are traitors to their country, and their dream and their deaths are phases of a dishonourable fantasy”.
Roger Casement, 1916
