Liam Mac an Ultaigh

Liam Mac an Ultaigh of Dublin (fl. c. 1965) is an Irish Nationalist and was Chief Scout of the Fianna Éireann from 1965. In such tenure, Mac an Ultaigh is most recognized for his work on the Committee that under his administration drafted the Fianna Handbook’s 3rd or 1965 (1st 1913, 2nd 1924) edition, which uniquely of the editions attempts to chronicle the organization’s history. Notably, this thorough and well documented Handbook history conclusively disputes traditional histories, which credit the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s Bulmer Hobson with founding the “Scouts” and exposes a, possible, anti-feminist bias in the traditional histories. The 3rd Handbook in its section “The History and Tradition of the Fianna Éireann” at its pages 24–26 credits instead the Sinn Féin’s Constance Markievicz or “the Countess Markievicz” with founding “Na Fianna Éireann”. As already noted in the Wikipedia article Fianna Éireann, Patrick Pearse has stated that the creation of Fianna Éireann was historically as important to the liberation of Southern and Western Ireland from British rule and the founding of the Irish Free State and, later, the Republic of Ireland as was the creation of the Irish Volunteers in 1913. The paramilitary Fianna Éireann youth scouts were involved particularly with gun running commencing with the 1916 Easter Rising and later in combat, particularly in Dublin, during the Civil War period of 1922-1924.

The Handbook used historical periodical articles, particularly, Bean na hEireann, Vol. 9, July 1909, page 8, and Nodlaig Na Fian (1914 reprinted 1935), other written recollections of Markievicz and Helena Molony, which along with the preceding materials had been reviewed but ignored by traditional researchers, where those writings differed from Hobson’s and other male accounts, and other regional sources to compile its history. In tracing the Fianna Éireann’s founding, the Committee did not find that the 1909 Dublin founded Fianna Éireann organization was either continuous or, even, conceived from an earlier and then already defunct boy’s and girl’s hurling league that Hobson had organized in Belfast, (now) Northern Ireland in 1903. The committee found rather that a national boy scouting organization formed by Markievicz a few weeks earlier and, then, still, continuously operating and named the “Red Branch Knights” had simply been renamed the Fianna Éireann at Hobson’s request when he was later invited to assist with its further development by Markievicz. One of the Committee researchers had even remarked derisively that “to say Bulmer Hobson founded Fianna was like claiming that a priest who christens a child is its biological father.” Chief Scout Liam Mac an Ultaigh in describing the Committee’s historical research methods stated “when we went about compiling the book we worked from old Fianna literature and we were helped by Cumann na Sean -Fhianna in Cork and other people in different areas each of whom wrote about his own area”.