Dan Keating (b. 1902)

I have had the pleasure of knowing Dan Keating for many years and because I had recorded his recollections in the past, I was aware that he was a mine of information on events in this country during the early days of the 20th century. I travelled to Dan’s home in March 2005 and immediately we settled ourselves, it became obvious that he was anxious to return in memory to the turbulent days of his early youth in rural Kerry. Dan was born in January 1902 and at the age of 14 years, he remembers hearing about a large contingent of Volunteers which had gathered at the Rink in Tralee on Easter Sunday 1916. One of the organisers was Paddy Cahill, who was later to be involved in the Lispole Ambush. In 1921 Dan Keating joined the IRA Boherbee B Company. He named for me the different IRA divisions in Tralee and their respective leaders. He spoke about the several British Regiments occupying the Barracks in the town – The Scottish Borderers, the Essex Regiment and the Lancashire Regiment (“The Lancs”) – and he maintained that “The Lancs” treated the people more humanely than some of their counterparts. Dan was involved in the Castlemaine Ambush in June 1921 where five RIC men were killed and several others wounded and spoke of his memories of that day. The previous April Denny O’Loughlin had been shot by the IRA in Knightley’s Bar in Lower Bridge Street, Tralee, and Dan says that he and Jimmy “Nuts” O’Connor and Percy Hanafin were “fingered” for this and went on the run. They spent a lot of their time in safe houses around Firies where there was always a welcome for them. While the famed Kerry footballer, John Joe Sheehy of Tralee was still on the run in 1924, his friend from North Kerry, Con Brosnan, a Free State Army Officer, went to Dublin to plead with headquarters to allow him a week without capture before and after the All-Ireland Final. The Kerry team which went on to win the Final that year was captained by one John Joe Sheehy.