Anti-Treaty Soldier Ian Graeme Baun (‘Scottie’) MacKenzie Kennedy

Anti-Treaty Soldier Ian Graeme Baun (‘Scottie’) MacKenzie Kennedy (22 or 23) from Scotland (Belmont Cross near Rochestown)

Date of incident: 9 Aug. 1922

Sources: Death Certificate, dated 9 Aug. 1922; List of IRA Interments (Boole Library, UCC); Roll of Honour, Cork No. 1 Brigade (Cork Public Museum, Fitzgerald Park, Cork); CE, 15 Aug. 1922, 9 Aug. 1923; Poblacht Na h-Eireann (Scottish edition), 21 Oct. 1922; Irish Democrat, 8 Sept. 2006; O’Farrell, Who’s Who, 217; Cork One Brigade (1963), Roll of Honour; Last Post (1976 ed.), 95; O’Mahony (1986), 106; Borgonovo (2011), 147, fn. 30; Boyne (2015), 137; Keane (2017), 292-94, 416; https://archive.irishdemocrat.co.uk/features/mackenzie-kennedy-remembered/ (accessed 30 June 2017); Republican Monument, The Square, Macroom. 

Note: A member of the Cork Volunteers Pipers’ Band, Ian (‘Scottie’) MacKenzie Kennedy was killed on 9 August 1922 in action with anti-Treaty IRA forces at Belmont Cross near Rochestown as National Army troops routed their opponents and moved towards the capture of Cork city from the anti-Treaty republicans. MacKenzie Kennedy’s dead body was carried to Cork city on 11 August in a Corporation ambulance. See CE, 15 Aug. 1922. He was buried the next day in the Republican Plot in St Finbarr’s Cemetery in Cork, where his gravestone records the date of his death as 9 August 1922. See Last Post (1976 ed.), 95. His death certificate recorded that he had died of gunshot wounds and from shock and haemorrhage at Ballincurrig near Douglas at the age of 22. See Death Certificate, 9 Aug. 1922.

Writing in the Irish Democrat of 8 September 2006, Stephen Coyle surveyed MacKenzie Kennedy’s life and death. Born in 1899, reportedly in the Inverness area in the Scottish Highlands, MacKenzie Kennedy came to Ireland with his mother about the time of the 1916 Rising. He was known for wearing a kilt and a Glengarry cap and for sporting the Kennedy clan badge. He soon manifested strong Irish republican sympathies. Already proficient in Scots Gaelic, he settled for three years at Toureen Dubh in Ballingeary in north-west Cork (with the Twomey family) in order to learn Irish and to advance his general interest in Celtic studies. At the start of the War of Independence he joined D Company of the Eighth Battalion of the Cork No. 1 Brigade. Among his activities were a visit to England early in 1921 to purchase arms (he returned with eleven new Webley .45 revolvers) and the making of bombs and hand grenades in an underground foundry at Carrigbawn in Ballingeary. See https://archive.irishdemocrat.co.uk/features/mackenzie-kennedy-remembered/ (accessed 30 June 2017).

In the Civil War MacKenzie Kennedy took the anti-Treaty side and went with other republican comrades to oppose the landing of Free State troops at Passage West. ‘During the fighting in the Passage[-]Rochestown front, as the covering party of the IRA was evacuating to their second position near Douglas village, their lorry broke down at Belmont Cross. Three Volunteers jumped from the lorry and took up position in Belmont Cottage nearby to enable the rest of the party to get away under the protection of an armoured car. These were Scottie [MacKenzie Kennedy], Frank O’Donoghue, and [James] Moloney. One party of National Army Soldiers who charged the cottage was forced to retire, leaving one of their number by the name of Flood, a Dublin man, dying on the road. . . . The cottage was later surrounded, and the three brave republican soldiers kept up an unequal fight against 64 Free State troops, killing 12 and wounding 15, according to the report. . . . When further resistance was impossible . . . , the little party decided to surrender. MacKenzie Kennedy opened the door and put up his hands in token surrender but was shot dead, as was Moloney. O’Donoghue was captured and taken prisoner.’ See https://archive.irishdemocrat.co.uk/features/mackenzie-kennedy-remembered/ (accessed 30 June 2017). See also Poblacht Na h-Eireann (Scottish edition), 21 Oct. 1922.