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SEAN SOUTH OF GARRYOWEN
(Sean Costelloe)

On Dec. 31, 1956, Sean South was part of an IRA team who attacked the police station of the small village of Brookeborough just a few miles north of the border with the Republic of Ireland. In the battle Sean South and Fergal O'Hanlon were killed. All political arguing aside, the ballad that was written about him became one of the finest examples Irish rebel music ever.

In the Limerick Leader, Ger South, who was the youngest of three boys with two older brothers, Jim and Sean, talked about his brother Sean:

The three boys all became active in St Joseph's Scouts and Sean became assistant scout master. During his time in the scouts, Sean set up an Irish speaking patrol.

"He encouraged quite a number of the patrols to speak Irish. He didn't push it, but encouraged it. Jim was scout master."

Books came into the South household in great numbers as Sean was a voracious reader, spending most of his wages in local bookshops. Although involved in promoting Irish speaking organisations, Ger says that Sean was not one to impose his views.

"At home I would speak in Irish to him. If I couldn't find the Irish for a sentence he would help me. There wasn't any great compulsion on his part to press people to speak Irish."

Most of Sean's reading material concentrated on Irish history and politics and while Ger was aware of Sean's republican views, he didn't realise he was as active as he was in the IRA during the so-called Border campaign at that time. His death in an IRA attack in the North on New Year's Eve, 1956, came as a great shock to the family.

"I heard of his death on the radio. It said two people were killed in the attack on Brookborough barracks and one was from the Limerick area. It was desperate. I knew Sean had left Limerick in early December and I got a letter from him which included another letter which he asked me to pass on to the girlfriend of another lad, Willie Gleeson, who was in the North with him at the time. In his letter, Sean, said basically he was up in the North and he wouldn't be back until Ireland was free. I was very surprised by the letter."

But looking back at Sean's actions, Ger said they were not spur-of-the-moment.

"He had analysed the whole political and economic structures of the country. He did what he did at a point in Irish history when he had felt there was nothing else but to identify with the issues in the North and to re-awaken the awareness of people to the plight of people in the North."

The funeral of Sean South was one of the biggest ever witnessed in Limerick.

You can read the full article here .

In a 1967 recording of the song by the Tinkers on Pye label, there is another verse (before the final one) pertaining tho the funeral, and they synopsized verses 2 and 3, by saying:
He led his gallant band of men up to the barracks door,
and with rifles and the stenguns too,
A hail of death did pour'

Lyrics

It was on a dreary New Year's Eve 
As the shades of night came down
A lorry load of volunteers approached a border town 
There were men from Dublin and from Cork
Fermanagh and Tyrone 
But the leader was a Limerick man -
Sean South from Garryowen.

As they marched along the street
Up to that barrack door
They scorned the danger they would meet
And the fate that lay in store
They were fighting for old Ireland's cause
To claim their very own
And the foremost of that gallant band
Sean South of Garryowen.

But the sergeant foiled their daring plan
As he spied them through the door
With Sten guns and with rifles
A hail of death did pour
When that awful night was passed
Two men lay cold as stone
There was one from near the border
And one from Garryowen

No more he'll hear the seagull's cry
Or the murmuring Shannon tide
For he died beneath a northern sky
O'Hanlon by his side
He has gone to join that gallant band
Of Plunkett, Pearse, and Tone
A martyr for old Ireland
Sean South from Garryowen

Opening poem not recorded by Patsy Watchorn

Sad are the homes 'round Garryowen
Since lost their giant pride.
And the banshee cry links every vale
Around the Shannon side
That city of the ancient walls
The broken Treaty Stone,
undying fame surrounds your name -
Sean South of Garryowen.

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