At the insistence of Mr. Falkiner, I took a seat at the magistrates’ bench, although of course I took no part in the questioning. It was Mr. Falkiner’s belief, good and innocent man that he is, that the presence of a clergyman would place his colleagues upon their best behaviour. It was a wearisome and melancholy affair. I have just now reread the minutes which were kept by Mr. Josiah Greene, the Ballina solicitor who acted as secretary, but his compounding of questions and answers into little mounds of dried oatmeal serves most imperfectly to recall for me those interminable evenings. The great number of those examined spoke no English. Cooper would put the questions in Irish to the witness and would then translate the answers for us. There is no question in my mind but that he exercised great and improper editorial discretion. A witness would respond volubly, hurling into the candlelit room a torrent of barbaric words, gesticulating wildly, and doubtless protesting his innocence with reference to the entire calendar of saints. This would be reduced by Captain Cooper to a laconic, “He still claims he knows nothing.”
I will incorporate at this point the evidence of an English-speaking witness, that the reader may sample it to the best of Mr. Greene’s skill:
STATEMENT OF OWEN MACCARTHY, KILLALA, SCHOOLMASTER
I keep a classical academy in Killala where boys of all ages receive instruction. I am thirty-seven years of age. I came to this barony three years ago. I am a native of Tralee in County Kerry, and have taught school in that county, and also in Cork and in Limerick. In Kerry and in Cork I applied for and received a licence to keep a school, and each time I took my allegiance to King George, whom I recognise as my lawful sovereign. I did not apply for a licence in Killala because that is no longer required by law. I believe oaths are binding, and this is also the teaching of my Church. I have never heard a Papist priest say otherwise.
I have elsewhere than in this barony been arrested upon various charges, but most often for brawling or for disturbing the peace. I am not a Whiteboy or a United Irishman, and I have no knowledge of anyone who is. If I had such knowledge, I would report it to the magistrates. The United Irishmen are madmen and incendiaries. A republic is a country without a king. I have twice taken an oath of allegiance to King George. Of the plans of the Whiteboys, I know only what is common knowledge. I have been shown their so-called proclamation. They are madmen and rapparees, and the man who wrote their proclamation has need of a classical education. On the night that Sam Pryor was mistreated I was drinking in a tavern as many can attest.
The place in County Cork where I kept school was Macroom. There was much Whiteboy activity at Macroom but I had no hand in it. This would have been about twelve years ago. I never met Patrick Lynch, who was called “the Whiteboy Captain of Macroom.” I saw him hanged in Macroom, as did many others.
I have never encouraged disaffection in my pupils. I am a writer of verses in Irish, and these are widely known among those who understand that language. They are all on harmless subjects such as love and the natural world. I have never broken the law when sober.
The questions which were put to MacCarthy may be inferred from his responses, as may the assumptions of his questioners. His evidence, as I recall it, has been much abridged by Mr. Greene, perhaps in the interest of common sense. Thus, both Captain Cooper and Mr. Gibson were made suspicious by the fact that MacCarthy was able to read French, and they pressed him as to whether or not he possessed revolutionary pamphlets from Paris. MacCarthy responded with patience to such imbecilities. He had been routed from his bed at the point of a bayonet, but the circumstances had quickened his wits, and he answered all the questions readily and deferentially, though with, as I thought, a faint sardonic smile. The magistrates were left unsatisfied, however, and several times called him “a plausible rogue.” But for the present they took no action against him.
Seven other men, however, were bound over for trial and were taken to the gaol in Ballina. Most of the “evidence” against them was provided by a man named Paudge Nally, a small, ill-favored fellow with a humpback, who possessed a smattering of English. It was clear even to Captain Cooper that Nally was not a Whiteboy, but he professed a wide knowledge of men in the barony who had demonstrated disaffection in one way or another. Thus, one of the men bound over was a young fellow named Gerald O’Donnell who helped his brother Ferdy work a hillside farm rented from Cooper. It was proved that in the preceding year, when Sam Pryor came there to collect the tithes, Gerald O’Donnell drove him off with curses and oaths. Nally gave evidence that since then young O’Donnell had been making threats against Pryor in the taverns, vowing once that in other counties the men knew how to deal with the ears of tithe proctors.
The testimony of Nally, who thereafter lived for safety’s sake in a room in Cooper’s house, I set at naught. He was the very stuff of which informers are made, retailing stale tavern gossip amidst the snuffles of a perpetually dripping nose. Mr. Falkiner suspected that his “evidence” had been forthcoming in consequence of an accommodation having been made with respect to his rent, which was badly in arrears. This assumption, however repellent, is a logical one, for surely some motive other than an abstract love of public order must have prompted him to so dangerous a course of conduct. Informers are common in Irish courts, but they seldom live into old age.
The seven prisoners were removed from Killala in two farm carts, under a guard of yeomen. The wives and mothers set up a great tumult with their wailing. They clung to the sides of the carts and sought to grasp the bound hands of the prisoners. A large number of people stood watching in the street, and, from most of these, the cries of the women drew forth a sympathetic low muttering. As the carts moved past the chapel, Murphy, the curate, rushed out and held a cross to the lips of the men, who kissed it fervently. But Ferdy O’Donnell stood leaning against the gable end of the chapel, his hands jammed into the waistband of his trousers, and his lips pressed closely together. His friend MacCarthy stood with him, and talked to him.
For a few minutes after the carts had begun to move down the Ballina road, we continued to hear the rumble of their wheels and the hoofbeats of the escort. But the town did not fall back into silence, for the women continued to wail, and the other peasants to talk among themselves. I went back into my house much troubled in spirit, and turned for guidance to our Creator, whom I addressed in language as zealous as that of any canting Methodist.
On the very next night, Paudge Nally’s cabin was attacked by a large body of men. His wife and his poor innocent children were driven out onto the road. Then his cabin was destroyed and his crops burned and his few cattle slaughtered. Such an event would a scant month before have drawn upon itself the horror of the countryside, but now it had been half expected, and men spoke casually of it, as of some minor inevitability.
It is the event witnessed which has the most powerful hold upon the imagination, and I believe that the sight of the prisoners being carried off, the crying women, the creaking carts, lips pressed to crucifix, told more heavily than word of a burned thatch. I then believed, as reason prompted me to believe, that of the seven men seized up, some most likely were in fact Whiteboys and others quite possibly were not. And for the peasants of the barony the spectacle of innocent men being carted off must have been especially pitiable and enraging, a witness to them of their utter dependence upon the will and whims of their masters. In future days, when I had come to know well certain of the peasants, I was told over and over again of this incident, as though with it our troubles had begun.
This is a most sentimental and volatile society, as nearly all travellers here have reported. The bonds of friendship and of family affection are strong. Sensibilities are easily outraged. A man may be ill regarded in his community, but hang him, or even imprison him, and he becomes a popular hero, the subject of tearful or indignant tavern ballads. And should he be a man held in honour and esteem, as was young Gerald O’Donnell, this indignation waxes fierce. Perhaps our troubles did indeed begin when the carts rumbled off towards the Balli
na gaol. But there is no way of knowing. The first link in the chain of human passions is often undiscoverable, lost in swirling mists of emotion.
5
The Acres, Killala, August 5
“You have made me a disgrace in my own parish,” Judy Conlon said.
“Well, Judy,” MacCarthy said, “I think we have worked together at that.”
He was leaning against the doorpost, looking outwards towards the bay.
“There was never a one to speak a word against me while my husband was alive to defend and to praise me.”
“No man could go to your bed without rising up to praise your beauty and your accomplishments. I have praised you often in my heart, and in lines of verse.”
“I was a married woman then, and could be married now.”
“Ach, Judy, it is a chancy life a schoolmaster has, and the more so if he is a poet.”
She was standing behind him in her shift, her dark hair falling about her shoulders.
“ ’Tis said that you are a good poet, Owen—”
“It is the truth. By God it is.”
“But you are as good a master, and there will always be need of a school in Killala.”
“Not for me, Judy. I am going away onto the road. I have no stomach for what is happening here and for what will happen.”
“And all because Sam Pryor got his ears clipped? Sure he looks far handsomer now, the mean old leech.”
MacCarthy laughed. “You will take after me with the shears one day, you fierce woman. And pray God you will settle for my ears. No, there will be more mischief in Killala, and poets have a way of getting hurt at such times. I declare to God, I would be in Ballina gaol tonight if it had not been for Mr. Falkiner and the little Protestant minister. Cooper did his best.”
“Cooper had best watch out,” she said, “from all the talk that I have heard. Cooper and that Paudge Nally, swearing men’s liberty away from them.”
“My God, Judy, what help is that to poor Gerry O’Donnell, who has never lifted his hand against any man save for the time that Pryor came with the bailiff to take two of Ferdy’s cows? By now I don’t know who is a Whiteboy and who is not, but I know that Ferdy is not and I will take my oath on that.”
“There are those who say that a schoolmaster should stand with the people, as masters in other places have done.”
“That is wonderful talk you hear.”
“It is little enough that a woman knows, but only what she hears them all saying.”
“Then it is little call she has to be talking about such matters. I declare to God that I did not rise up this morning to be preached at and worried by a slip of a girl.”
“But you will not be leaving, will you, Owen? You said that because you were cross with me.”
“No, Judy,” he said, turning away from the bay to face her. “I meant that. It would be plain folly to stay here, a man like me. I would be less fortunate the next time. Do you want to see me in a cart, trussed up like a turkey? And no comfort but mad Murphy shoving a cross at me.”
“O God, Owen. What would I do without you?”
“I would never leave you with an empty purse. Mr. Treacy is paying me to write out my poems for him on fine parchment, to go beside the poems of O’Rahilly and O’Sullivan. As is only proper.” Not true: he had never written a poem could rival O’Rahilly.
“What good will your poetry be when you are an old man with no one to stand by you?”
“If I stay in this barony I may not live to be an old man. God, when I think of the way I have been made to drift across this island, a harmless inoffensive creature. There are vagabonds and sturdy beggars who have a more settled life.”
She put her hand on his shoulder, standing on tiptoe. “You will do what you think is best.”
“ ’Tis little enough I know about what is best for me, or for anyone else. I sometimes look at the poor children whose parents pay me for their instruction, and I wonder what am I about, flogging knowledge into their heads.”
“Sure the lads have need of knowledge. You do work as honest as that of any tailor.”
“Small knowledge they require to harm cattle or to ride off to Ballina in a cart.”
“That is the way of it,” she said.
“The army of the Gael rose up in Wexford, and there are tall-masted ships sailing from France to my own Munster. And in Mayo men fight over cows and half-acres of scrubby land that would not give grass to a goat. A sorry, mean place this is.”
“I have never seen those other places where you have been. Would you not give thought to taking me with you?”
He shook his head. “Five guineas I will have from Mr. Treacy for the poems, and I will leave three with you. The two is more than I will need.”
“Is it because I would not be a proper wife for a schoolmaster?”
He drew his fingers along the side of her head, touching the thick, coarse hair, the cheek.
“It is not,” he said. “ ’Tis that I am not a marrying sort of fellow, love. And well you know it.”
“I know that,” she said, and stepped backward, away from him.
He looked again towards the dull, distant bay. She was as good-hearted as any girl he had known, a fine, generous girl. But there was little else to keep him in Mayo. He had made few close friends here, for women were never friends. There was a mystery in the centre of their being, a distance that was never closed, not even in the blackness of night. For friends he had only Ferdy O’Donnell up the mountain, and Sean MacKenna, the schoolmaster below in Castlebar. There was little to keep him here. The children’s classes were over, and in two weeks’ time he would have earned Treacy’s five guineas.
Let them find a new master, some young foolish lad up from Kerry who knew no better.
Ballina, August 7
Malcolm Elliott and Randall MacDonnell met with Malachi Duggan in Ryan’s alehouse, a mile outside Ballina. MacDonnell ordered a bowl of punch, but he and Elliott had it to themselves, for Duggan drank nothing. He sat facing them, stolid but alert, his large, mild eyes looking at neither of them, but straight ahead, or, head bent, at a crack in the rough table. A gentleman, a squireen, and a peasant, they were an ill-assorted group, and, of the three, only Duggan felt no embarrassment.
“Before God, sir,” he said to Elliott, “I know nothing whatever of what wild and furious rapparees do in the darkness of the night. Why, they have fired shots at Mr. Gibson, who is my own landlord and has never given me a cross word.”
“Of course not,” Elliott said. “But you are a man to whom the people look up, whether they are Whiteboys or not.”
“Ach, sir. ’Tis only because I had a way of being first and foremost in the faction fights. But I am growing old for that now.” He slapped his heavy belly. “Faction fights are frolics for young lads. There is no harm to them at all, and they bring honour to the barony.” His English, although the pronunciation was thick and unpredictable, was more than serviceable.
“Jesus but you are the great one for the factions,” MacDonnell said. “Three years ago I saw you swing your holly against the men of Ballycastle. Thick-headed bastards they are.”
“These are bad days for the barony,” Elliott said, “with the gaol in this town filling up with Killala men and Kilcummin men.”
“Bad days for the entire country, sir. Every Sunday Mr. Hussey tells us of our dangers. Frenchmen on the sea who go neither to church nor to chapel. Men below in Wexford rising up against the King. And men right here about us doing evil things.”
“You are a most law-abiding sort of fellow,” MacDonnell said drily.
“That is the way of it,” Duggan said.
“Seven men of the barony in Ballina gaol,” Elliott said. “And there will be more than seven before Cooper and the other magistrates have finished.”
The massive head nodded. “That was a dreadful thing to have done. Those young lads are no more Whiteboys than I am.”
“I know one at least who is not,” MacDonnell sa
id, “and that is Gerry O’Donnell. When I heard that he had been seized up I could not believe it. A decent, quiet lad. By God, when I heard that, I rode over to Sam Cooper and pledged my word for Gerry. I should have saved my breath to cool my porridge. He had given me a glass of whiskey, and I was that angry, I smashed the glass in the fireplace and turned my back on him and left.”
“That is no fellow I would want to turn my back on,” Duggan said. “Meaning no disrespect to the gentry.”
“Gentry!” MacDonnell said. “Gentry, is it? That fellow is no more gentry than a tinker is. Cromwellian plunderers, the Coopers were.”
“So were the Elliotts,” Malcolm Elliott said.
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