Two-act drama – An Irishman’s Diary about the life and death of Alexander ‘Baby’ Gray

At Fairyhouse on Monday, I was reminded of the unfortunate fate of Alexander “Baby” Gray, a man whose life might be entirely forgotten in Ireland now but for two forays he made into the national psyche, with starkly contrasting results.

Folklore

It was apt that he should be remembered at a racecourse (in an exhibition on the 1916 Battle of Ashbourne), because he first entered Irish folklore on horseback, although that event too might be lost to memory had it not been for a teenage witness who grew up to write a famous memoir.

Her name was Peig Sayers.  And in the late-1880s, as a servant in Dingle, she saw Gray in all his glory.

Born in Tyrone, the son of a Presbyterian minister, he had moved to Kerry a few years before as a young RIC officer, rising quickly to become district inspector.

Riot

The Land War was raging and, on the occasion in question, he was responding to a riot, begun in a pub but said to have been motivated by a recent eviction. In any case, he made a big impression on Peig as, on “a black horse [with] a white star on its forehead”, he rode into town: “As soon as he got to the bridge, he blew a horn, but when he did a huge roar erupted from the crowd. I looked towards the bridge and saw this young brave man, dressed in uniform, [with] fierce anger in his eyes, which did not augur well for the crowd above on the street.

“He had a long lance in his hand and you would think from the sight of him and the music of the little bells and the noise of the horse’s hooves that it was the devil himself.

“As he passed me […] it was clear that he had only own purpose in mind.

“He blew the horn again and this time there was a massive scattering […] Within five minutes there was not a single person to be seen on the street, except three men who had been collared by the police.  [He] rode up and down the street a couple of times, and it would have been a brave man who would not have been afraid of him.”

Nickname

Gray (the “Baby” nickname derived from his boyish looks) did not have it all his own way in Dingle, however.

As Prof Terry Dooley wrote in a feature for the history journal Ríocht na Midhe some years ago, his zeal for upholding law there during the land agitation provoked accusations that he was the head of a "little Orange clique" in the town.

He vehemently denied any “orange proclivities”, and counter-complained of a different clique – one of “bankrupt publicans and needy shopkeepers” – who he claimed were using the cover of the Land League for their own ends.

But he survived Dingle, and it him. And the Land War had faded into history by the time, some 25 years later, he was appointed county inspector of Meath. It was 1912 then, and a different issue was dominating the political agenda – home rule – although even that seemed to be causing little excitement in his new surrounds.

Barracks

Or so he thought until Easter 1916, on the Friday after which he received word from Ashbourne that the local RIC barracks was under attack.

He quickly assembled a force of around 60 officers in Slane – from where, in a large fleet of cars, they drove south to relieve the siege.

Thus it was with horsepower of a different kind that Gray, now 58, made his second, and this time fatal, charge into the national consciousness.

As Dooley writes, it suited the survivors of both sides afterwards to claim that what happened just north of Ashbourne was an ambush. In fact, the ambushers were at least as surprised by the arrival of the convoy as the men in the cars were by the attack.

But aided by some luck and cool leadership (mainly from Richard Mulcahy, second-in-command of the Fingal volunteers), they turned the situation into the most decisive victory of Easter Week, even as the GPO was abandoned.

Exhibition

There is no space here to do justice to the Fairyhouse exhibition’s fine reconstruction of events, which was courtesy of the Ashbourne Historical Society. Suffice to say that among the RIC men killed was Gray.

It seems double portentous that the overall commander of the rebels was from Dingle, and that his name – Thomas Ashe – so oddly chimed with the scene of the denouement.