A lengthy trek in 1916 by a 100-strong group of Volunteers planned to help distribute arms to be taken from The Aud ship in Co Kerry has been re-enacted.
The walk, known as an tSiúlóid Mór, saw the Volunteers plod overnight in pouring rain and wind in west Kerry and up the steep Conor Pass.
Among the walkers who set out this weekend night for the re-enactment were grandchildren and great grandchildren of the original participants.
“It was about retracing the footsteps of our grandfathers,” said Seán Máirtín Báicéar, whose grandfather John Baker from Baile na nGall was one of those who had joined the Volunteers in Ballyferriter in 1914.
“People were thinking about what they could do for the 100th anniversary of the Rising. It dawned on me what my grandfather and the rest of the lads had done,” Mr Báicéar said.
He got immediate support for what was probably the most difficult of all the 100th commemorations - almost 40 miles of a trek, and over the 456m pass - even if many like himself were keen hillwalkers.
The west Kerry men who had joined the Irish Volunteers, a force formed in 1913 as an answer to the Ulster Volunteer Force, had trained in the sands in Ballyferriter.
Roger Casement
They were asked to assemble in Tralee on Good Friday to go to Fenit to take arms off The Aud – the German arms ship Roger Casement had organised.
Forty walked from Ballyferriter on the morning of Good Friday, setting out in dribs and drabs to avoid attention, waiting in Dingle, joined by dozens of others to wait for the cover of night before leaving along the old Dingle road and over the Conor Pass to avoid detection.
But on arriving in Tralee they found the Aud had been arrested and the plans were off.
For the re-enactment of the trek, the volunteers enjoyed “a beautiful moonlit night”. The wren boys of Dingle formed a band to lead them out the road.
They were met with tea and sandwiches by a group of people who came up from Brandon, and at 1.15am Tomaisíns in Stradbally and at 4.30am O’Neill’s in Camp opened to offer rest and hot food.
Songs of the Rising shortened the road and a lone piper led them from Blennerville Bridge into Tralee at about 8am on Saturday – the same time as the original walkers.
Eileen Moriarty from Gallarus, whose father Johnny was 2nd Lieutenant of the Ballyferriter Volunteers, laid a a wreath at the assembly area in Tralee, and relatives of Cumann na mBan who had helped the original group were also present.
In 1916 some 350 volunteers from throughout Kerry had arrived in Tralee on Easter Saturday morning to help distribute the arms from the Aud. Twelve men had cycled up from Cahersiveen.
Other commemorative events this weekend included the launch of a book, Kerry 1916: Histories and Legacies of the Easter Rising – A Centenary Record, by Bridget McAuliffe, Dr Mary McAuliffe, and Owen O’Shea.
A plaque was unveiled in Castleisland and there was a performance by the Kerry Choral Union.