Remembering The Dark in the Cooley Mountains

By AM Sunday, June 20, 2010

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Today The Pensive Quill carries an article by guest writer, blanketman Thomas 'Dixie' Elliott on the Dark's recent commemoration

As we pulled into the centre of Omeath, my wife, my son and myself, a sense of disappointment gripped me. I saw Hodgkies and one or two others sitting in the sunshine waiting and my first reaction was, I thought more would've turned up.

I needn't have worried because we were early and before long they came and gathered outside the local pub. Mackers, Big Ricky O'Rawe and of course Hodgkies himself. Others mostly with Belfast and Dublin accents soon gathered, waffling away as we waited. Mackers had brought his son and daughter, Ricky's daughter had come along and I had brought my son who is twelve. Those of us who had the honour of knowing the Dark as a leader and a comrade who inspired all who knew him, were bringing our children in the hope they too would be inspired by our memories of this small man who had the strength of a giant. How fitting that his ashes are strewn on the very mountains where the profile of Slieve Foy is said to resemble the sleeping giant, Finn MacCumhaill.

We got into our cars and a bus and in convoy made our way upwards into the Cooleys. On the way up I spotted a wooden house that should have been built in the Swiss Alps and not the mountains above Carlingford Lough. I thought who ever built it should have had the good manners to be standing outside yodelling for passing travellers.

Soon the leading cars came to a halt at a place where the only thing I could see was a very high mountain ridge towering above us with a track leading up in that direction. Jeeze I said I hope the Dark didn't get his ashes scattered away up there. Those who knew otherwise laughed and we followed them on foot up the leafy track. I would say there was about 100 of us who had made the journey and the conversation was about one person An Dorcha, I'm sure he was there somewhere listening as we passed, but I only saw curious sheep.

Just as I was beginning to believe that the old devil had indeed had his ashes scattered on top off that mountain those in front began climbing up a rickety set of steps and over a stone wall. The crumbling walls of an old cottage long ago abandoned by Dark's ancestors stood defiant against nature's advances, sheltered from the winds that swept down the Cooley mountains by ancient trees.

A small area, strangely enough the size of a prison cell, was cleared in the tall grasses that must at one time have been the garden of that crumbling cottage. Here stands a monument that was obviously built by the love of a family for a departed father. It hasn't the grandeur of those in Glasnevin nor Bodenstown but never-the-less it is a monument to a common man who doesn't need his unbreakable spirit or selfless courage engraved in granite, it is engraved in the memories of those of us fortunate enough to have known him.

The Dark's brother, his comrade from D Company, Hodgkies and a comrade from Australia stepped forward to speak and while I listened I looked out over the fields and off into the distant coast line of County Louth and the Irish Sea that faded into the haze of the sunshine. As they told us that Brendan The Dark Hughes was foremost a Socialist and then a Republican I couldn't help but think that someday thousands will gather round this crumbling cottage to be inspired by a man who shines as bright as the sun did today and whose memory will never fade in the hearts and minds of future generations.

It is places like this that will keep the fire of Republicanism burning brightly and not Stormont, Leinster House or Downing Street. I heard Dark's family say those coming each year were growing in numbers and I hope that in years to come others will follow us up that mountain road to remember on the Dark's birthday a man who gave everything for the cause and took nothing in return.