To a lone piper's strains of The Croppy Boy, the coffin of the last veteran of Ireland's War of Independence, 105-year-old Dan "Ballygamboon" Keating, was yesterday lowered into the grave alongside the church in which he had been baptised in 1902 near Castlemaine, Co Kerry.
He was "an inspiration to republicans", Republican Sinn Féin party president Ruairí Ó Brádaigh said in a lengthy graveside oration before about 600 mourners at Kiltallagh Cemetery.
In an oration often interrupted by applause, and to a congregation that included many wearing Easter lilies, Mr Ó Brádaigh said Dan Keating had never wavered from his belief that "1916 was right, 1916 was justified".
He said Mr Keating had stood by a united Ireland and an end to the British presence in Ireland.
"Dan Keating, as we know, gave it always straight from the shoulder - he regarded the so-called peace process as a surrender process," Mr Ó Brádaigh said to prolonged applause during an oration watched over by plain-clothes Garda detectives.
Mr Ó Brádaigh said Mr Keating would not accept any British government presence in Ireland, regardless of how it was presented.
The parish priest of Kiltallagh, Fr Luke Roche, concelebrated the funeral Mass with Msgr Dan Riordan of St John's Church in Tralee, where Dan Keating had travelled by bus to attend daily Mass.
Fr Roche told the large congregation that Dan Keating lived through extraordinary change. But there were "certain constant factors" in his life, and Fr Roche thanked God for Dan's strong faith, loyalty to his country and a long life which had seen him remaining alert to the end.
He extended his sincere sympathy to Jack and Eileen Keating, the nephew and niece-in-law who had taken such "loving care" of Mr Keating for 27 years.
A six-man colour party made up of Republican Sinn Féin members received the coffin at the door of the church after the Mass and draped it in the Tricolour. They then shouldered the coffin to the graveside.
Wreaths were laid on behalf of his family, branches of Republican Sinn Féin, republican prisoners and the National Graves Association.