A TRAGIC LOVE STORY on Valentines day 100 years ago.

The young Irish Republican Army leader died on April 10, 1923, leaving behind a local girl he’d promised to marry after hostilities had ceased.

Liam met Bridie Keyes during Gaelic League Irish language classes, in Fermoy, in 1917. Due to his revolutionary lifestyle, their courting was sporadic. By 1919, as the war was intensifying, Liam and Bridie agreed a marriage could only happen once hostilities ceased and so the couple decided to postpone marriage.

When the truce arrived in the summer of 1921, friends and family expected Liam and Bridie to wed but the rebel chief again asked his fiancée to hold out as he feared a resumption of hostilities.

Liam last met Bridie during Easter weekend in 1923. They met at a safe house in Graigavalla before he went off to meet his destiny on the Knockmealdown mountains weeks later.

The next time Bridie would see her fiancée he was lying cold in a coffin. Bridie moved away from Fermoy after Liam Lynch’s death and found work with the Irish hospital sweepstakes. Bridie never married, she remained true to the chief of the Irish Republic.