“The object of Na Fianna Eireann is to train the boys of Ireland to fight Ireland’s battle when they are men . . . we hope to train Irish boys from their earliest years to be soldiers, not only to know the trade of a soldier — drilling, marching, camping, signalling, scouting, and (when they are old enough) shooting — but also, what is far more important, to understand and prize military discipline and to have a MILITARY SPIRIT.”

 

— Pádraic Pearse, “To the Boys of Ireland”, in Political Writings and Speeches, published in 1924.

 

 

“I was a member of Fianna Phadraig, a scout unit organized on similar lines to Fianna Eireann. The unit was founded by Father Pat Flanagan, C.C., Ringsend. We were if anything better trained from the military point of view than Fianna Eireann . . . Fr. Flanagan spoke often of the hope he had that an armed rising would come in our Lifetime and that we should be prepared to help when the time came.”

 

— Sean O’Shea, Bureau of Military History Witness Statement 129.

 

 

Fr Paddy Flanagan is notorious on several accounts. Born in Dublin on 7 April 1883, Flanagan served as a curate in Ringsend, County Dublin, from 1909 to 1918. Sean O’Shea, one of Flanagan’s proteges, recalled in his statement to the Bureau of Military History how the unusual priest enthusiastically trained the young men of his parish in military tactics:

 

“He had a definite military outlook. He took the Fianna on winter’s evenings, through the history of the Boer War, and showed us how that war had been imposed on a peaceful people by a bullying empire. He told us how the Boers fought and how they could have won. He understood guerrilla warfare and passed his knowledge on to us. . . He borrowed .22 rifles from all quarters so we could march.”

 

In another anecdote O’Shea credits the priest with inventing one of the most recognisable firearms of the 20^th century:

 

“Would it be indiscreet to mention that he was the inventor of the sawn-off shotgun? I know he conveyed the idea to I.R.A., G.H.Q., complete with tapes inside the greatcoat so that the arms could be swung and suspicion of carrying the other kind of arms avoided!”

 

Flanagan then was something of a character in his own time. Of course, O’Shea’s claim that he invented the sawn-off shotgun was erroneous, even if his method of concealing it inside a coat showed remarkable ingenuity. The sawn-off shotgun originated in Italy in the 19^th century, used by both hunters and shepherds to drive off wolves. They called it the “lupara”, which translates as “for the wolf”. Owing to its size the lupara later became popular among the Sicilian mafia.

 

 

Prior to the 1916 Easter Rising, Flanagan liaised with “D” Company, 3rd Battalion, the local Volunteer unit, and members of his Fianna group were at the Company’s service for despatch work. Aside from Flanagan himself, Sean O’Shea states that he was the only member of the priest’s Fianna outfit to fight in the Rising. However, we know little of Flanagan’s deeds that week other than a Monsignor M. Curran noting the following in his diary of the Rising for 2 May 1916: “Some fighting is still proceeding in the Ringsend district on a small scale. Fr. Paddy Flanagan was asked by the military to try and stop it.”

 

Flanagan was the only cleric from Dublin imprisoned after the Rising. This incarceration was brief — Flanagan spent at most five days in Richmond Barracks following his arrest on 5/6 May.

 

But what of Fr Paddy Flanagan after the revolutionary period? Aside from inventing the sawn-off shotgun O’Shea claimed that his old mentor “succeeded in stamping out drunkenness and loutishness from Ringsend” without ever once raising his voice from the pulpit. Flanagan later became a canon and served as parish priest in Booterstown, County Dublin, from 1939 to 1956. But the last word on the rebel priest goes to Sean O’Shea: “I should like that Fr. Pat Flanagan’s name and Fianna Phadraig should not be forgotten . . . He was a fine man.”