AS ANOTHER Béal na mBláth commemoration approaches, spare a thought for someone else who is remembered for his bravery during Easter Week, 1916 and his tragic death during the Civil War in the summer of 1922.
Cathal Brugha was born Charles Burgess at Richmond Avenue, Dublin on July 18th, 1874. He attended the Colmcille schools in Dublin and later Belvedere College. His sporting interests included swimming, cricket, hurling, football, rope-climbing, shooting, cycling, athletics, boxing and gymnastics.
His brother Alfred recalled that Cathal was an expert swimmer by the age of five, and that he later became a member of several Dublin swimming clubs, winning several prizes. At the age of 17, accompanied by a boat, he swam from Howth Pier to Ireland's Eye.
His sporting prowess also extended to gymnastics, in which he represented Ireland for three years in a contest which pitted him against top athletes from England, Scotland and Wales. He began cricketing at Belvedere and went on to act as first bowler for Pembroke Cricket Club. He also played as a rugby half-back for Belvedere, Clontarf and Santry.
Cathal left school at the age of 16 to work as a clerk in a church supplies firm and later co-founded Lalor Ltd, which manufactured and sold church candles. Although he came late to the Irish language, he quickly became a fluent speaker and changed his name to Cathal Brugha in 1910. Visiting schools where the Irish language was taught, he would congratulate both teachers and pupils for the time and effort they were taking to teach and learn the native tongue and award them generous prizes, paid for out of his own salary.
Brugha later became president of the Keating Branch of the Gaelic League, and steadfastly promoted the Language and Industrial Revival Movement until his death. He married Kathleen Kingston of Birr, Co Offaly, in 1912, someone who fully shared his nationalist vision.
During the Easter Rising in 1916, he served under Eamon Ceannt in the South Dublin Union area. He was so badly wounded that it was thought he would not survive. Although he made an extraordinary recovery, he was lame for life.
He was elected MP for Waterford in the 1918 general election, and presided at the first meeting of Dáil Éireann on January 21st, 1919. Appointed Minister for Defence that April, he served in this post until the Dáil split over the signing of the Treaty in January 1922. In August 1919, he successfully put forward a Dáil motion that all serving deputies and Irish Volunteers should take an oath of allegiance to the Irish Republic and the Dáil. He continued in his occupation as a director of Lalor Ltd, ran the Department of Defence from his business office, and waived his ministerial salary.
Ernie O'Malley recalled that Cathal's green tie was "the symbol of his nationality in a hostile country". The volatile relationship between Brugha and Michael Collins began as far back as 1916, when Collins found him "strange and oddly remote". Frank O'Connor memorably described Brugha as "the North Pole to Collins's Equator", noting that while Collins was prone to fiery displays of anger, Brugha "dwelt amid ice-floes and fogs".
On at least one occasion, however, Collins's kindness prompted Brugha's icy exterior to melt a little. When Collins dispatched someone to inquire of Brugha about the health of a sick relative, Brugha tearfully remarked: "Mick is so kind. He thinks of everybody."
A remark by one of Brugha's friends, Brian O'Higgins, highlights his lasting attachment to Irish. O'Higgins remembered that often when Brugha "was in the thick of a heated debate or in the middle of a speech in English on a public platform, it was noticed that if suddenly confronted with a question or an interruption, he would reply at once and quite easily and naturally in Irish, without seeming to notice that he had done so". O'Higgins surmised that "the love that was in his heart for the language, and for everything it stood for, kept it for ever uppermost in his thoughts and nearest to his tongue".
After the Dáil vote in favour of the Treaty, Brugha's last act as Minister for Defence was to assure the assembled deputies that discipline would be maintained in the Army. Unfortunately, the IRA mirrored the Dáil and also split into pro- and anti-Treaty groupings. As soon as the Civil War broke out, Brugha joined the Republican forces in Dublin. He died tragically - as he had feared - from bullets fired by Irishmen.
An Army officer lamented many years later that the soldiers who waited for Brugha were not his former comrades in arms, as such men "would have held their fire until his ammunition was exhausted and then taken him", but young and inexperienced men and such "fellows are very quick on the draw".
Collins wept uncontrollably on hearing the news, saying, "There was one brave man amongst them".
Eoin MacNeill later paid a fine tribute, declaring: "Cathal Brugha, in all that I ever knew of him, was an honest, honourable, brave and unselfish man. I have no doubt at all that he was a man who in his conscience acknowledged the law to be supreme in everything, and with that in mind gave his whole-hearted allegiance to Ireland, setting his duty to Ireland above life, and all the claims and ties and affections that he found in life."