According to Seamus this story took place around 1860, during which time farm produce was brought to Dublin by horse and cart. This included food and bedding for Dublin’s many dairy cows, which was delivered from places like Rathcoffey and Clane.
Pat Gill lived about two miles north of Rathcoffey and was one of the major transporters of hay and straw to Dublin. The route he took was a road taken by many from the Donadea–Rathcoffey area by way of the Baltracey crossroads to Lady Chapel and on to Celbridge. This road has not changed so much until you come to the outskirts of Maynooth and then it’s motorway all the way. Anyway, one evening the bold Pat was on his way to Dublin city with his cart piled high with hay and straw for the dairy and he headed for the Lady Chapel crossroads. The junction is still there today but a whole lot busier. Pat decided to do something that would be highly illegal and dangerous now, but back then it was fine. He decided to have a little sleep while he was driving. The auld horse was well used to taking this journey on a regular basis and it knew the way. I suppose it was like an early form of auto-pilot.
As Pat was passing Baltracey Mill, which is situated half a mile from the crossroads, he was having a grand wee snooze and popping an eye open every once in a while to check his horse. Then, all of a sudden, poor auld Pat got the fright of his life when saw a woman dressed in long white clothes appear out of nowhere and start crossing the road. She came up to the horse and walked on with him, close by his neck. Pat pulled the reins on the horse’s head to the opposite side of the figure, for fear the animal should tread on her feet or long robes, but she did not move away and calmly walked on alongside the horse. Pat was sure that at one point he could see right through her robes and there was nobody to be seen, only the other side of the road.
Poor Pat was scared now but he could not keep his eyes off this strange silent creature that had appeared out of nowhere and insisted on walking alongside his horse. He was wondering what he should do. Should he stop or keep going? What if this creature was a malevolent spirit and became angry with him if he stopped? He was perplexed by the situation and terrified at the same time. The horse seemed happy enough and was not bothered by his new companion and just trotted along happily.
The centre of the crossroads at Barreen had a patch of green in the middle and traffic would pass on either side. When Pat came to its edge, the white figure stood still, while the cart turned and it seemed as though a part of the shaft of the cart on one side passed straight through her, like she had been impaled.
When Pat saw this he got an awful fight and he cried out, ‘By your leave ma’am!’ but the white figure said nothing at all.
On shot the horse and cart and it flew on down the road. Pat was afraid to look back, for he was sure he had killed the woman. But his conscience had got the better of him and he stopped and looked back. And there he saw the white apparition standing in the centre of the plot of grass, her hand placed over her forehead to shade her eyes from the sun, as she looked solemnly after him. Pat never took his stare off the woman until he turned around the bend. Then he heard the sound of a low mournful cry fly above his head and a terrible chill passed through his body and there was a dreadful sadness in the air. Poor Pat carried on to Dublin, but he did not sleep for the rest of the journey, and he made sure to stay the night at an inn in the city, for he would not dare return home at night along the stretch of road where he had seen the white lady.
Who was this strange, shrouded figure and where did she come from? The spectre appeared close to a spot where some sixty years earlier a woman was executed for the monstrous crime of cannibalism. Some people say the figure is that of the mother of one of the poor boys, looking in vain for her lost son. But most believe that the spectre is that of the cannibal woman herself, maybe hunting for new victims to feed her diabolical appetite. The crossroads is only 150 metres from the site of the cannibalism transgression, known as the Hungry Hall.
Local people who live in and around the area where the story took place still say that they have seen strange sightings of a white figure haunting the roads at night. Indeed, many say that Kildare is the most haunted county in Ireland.
14
NELLIE CLIFDEN AND THE CURRAGH WRENS
I wish to thank Dr Mary Ellen Leighton for her help in putting together this powerful and moving story.
‘THE CURRAGH OF KILDARE’, ALSO KNOWN AS ‘THE WINTER IT IS PAST’
The winter it is past and the summer’s come at last.
The birds they are singing in the trees.
Their little hearts are glad, but mine is very sad
For my true love is far away from me
And straight I will repair to the Curragh of Kildare
For it’s there I’ll find tidings of my dear.
The rose upon the briar by the water running clear
Brings joy to the linnet and the deer.
Their little hearts are blessed, but mine knows no rest
For my true love is far away from me
And straight I will repair to the Curragh of Kildare
For it’s there I’ll find tidings of my dear.
A livery I will wear and I’ll comb back my hair
And in velvet so green I will appear
And straight I will repair to the Curragh of Kildare
For it’s there I’ll find tidings of my dear
And straight I will repair to the Curragh of Kildare
For it’s there I’ll find tidings of my dear.
I’ll wear a cap of black with some frills around my neck.
Golden rings on my fingers I will wear.
Oh yes, this I’ll undertake for my own true lover’s sake
For he lives in the Curragh of Kildare
And straight I will repair to the Curragh of Kildare
For it’s there I’ll find tidings of my dear.
Oh, you who are in love and cannot it remove
I pity the pain you do endure
For experience lets me know that your hearts are full of woe
’Tis a woe that no mortal can endure
And straight I will repair to the Curragh of Kildare
For it’s there I’ll find tidings of my dear.
An Irish folk song, mid-1700s
The song ‘The Curragh of Kildare’ is a beautiful and melancholic portrayal of a young woman who disguises herself to go and find her lover who has gone to the army camp at the Curragh in County Kildare. This woman would have been referred to at the time as a ‘camp follower’. These were the wives, lovers and partners of the soldiers who followed their men as they travelled.
The best-known version of the text, usually referred to by the title The Winter it is Past, is attributed to the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Burns appears to have developed it from an existing ballad, entitled The Lovesick Maid, which referred to a highwayman called Johnson, who was hanged in 1750 for robbery in the Curragh of Kildare. Burns changed the original text considerably and removed two stanzas referring directly to Johnson. The resulting ballad was published in the collection The Scots Musical Museum, published between 1787 and 1803.
There have been different versions of the song recorded over the years and it has been popularised by several well-known artists. But the version above is the one that I grew up listening to. I often wondered how such a sad and haunting song came to pass and what happened to these women who went to the Curragh of Kildare.
Well, I was to find out and it was no wonder that this is a song that talks of love as an emotion that no mortal can endure. For the camp followers that were rejected by their men, left behind to fend for themselves when their men were posted overseas, or who fell pregnant out of wedlock were to face a fate worse than death and indeed a woe that no mortal can endure. They were to become ‘wrens’ because they lived in holes in the banks and covered themselves with furze bushes to protect themselves from the bitter and brutal weather conditions. They were given this name from an old song that was and still is sung traditionally by ‘wren boys�
� on ‘Wren Day’ (Saint Stephen’s Day or Boxing Day on 26 December).
The wren, wren, the king of all birds
On St Stephen’s Day was caught in the Furze.
There have been songs, stories and plays written about the Curragh Wrens. Even Charles Dickens wrote of their terrible plight. Today they have their own dark folklore in and around Kildare. And this is their story.
The story of the Curragh Wrens first came to light when a journalist called James Greenwood from the London newspaper the Pall Mall Gazette (edited by Charles Dickens) heard mysterious little stories wafting over from the Curragh in Kildare to London. They were stories about a certain colony of poor wretches who lived in conditions that were subhuman and died like stray dogs in the London streets. In these stories there was always something so shocking that comfortable people were glad to disbelieve them and something so strange that it was easy to disregard them as fireside tales of terror. No one could believe that in a Christian, police-regulated society like their own that people could be expected to live in such conditions.
This seemed all the more unlikely because the Curragh was not an unfrequented nook in some distant corner of the land, but a plain near the capital city of Dublin. The Curragh Camp was an encampment wherein thousands of Englishmen as well as thousands of Irishmen constantly lived (both a gentle and simple life), and where scores of strangers, visitors, would go there for no other purpose but to see what was to be seen, peer about every week of every summer season. It did not seem at all natural that things so very unlike what ought to happen in the respectable and quaint Victorian nineteenth century could go on from year to year without investigation, arrest and scandal. So Charles Dickens thought it worth while to ask James Greenwood, ‘a hardy man of brains’ to go and look into the matter.
Dickens requested that Greenwood go to the camp, and find the wrens (if any), and visit their nests (if any), and spend time enough by day and night amongst them to let him know the nature of these peculiar people, about whom so many incredible hints had been given and forgotten. And this is what Greenwood reported back:
… it was on an evening before September had cooled – three weeks ago and more – that I set out to investigate the manners and customs, the habits and habitat, of a bird not unknown indeed in England, nor even in London, but reported to be on the Curragh of a seriously peculiar kind.
From London to Holyhead, from Holyhead to Kingstown [now known as Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin], from Kingstown to Dublin – all this was within the limits of civilization. Dublin – yes, Dublin is a civilized city: there is not courage enough in the world to deny it. To Kildare my steps were directed, for that town is nearer than any other to the Curragh camp: – thence could I most easily go a-nesting.
From Dublin to Kildare, passed much squalor and degradation, Greenwood described seeing wretched huts and hovels that seem to grow out of the earth like grotesque toadstools. And around them was a plethora of poverty and idleness, the likes of which he had never seen before.
In Kildare Greenwood found a man called Jimmy Lynch who agreed to drive him over to the camp. During the journey Jimmy regaled Greenword with stories about his mare, ‘Scottish Queen’, and the mighty boxer Dan Donnelly, whom he believed was the greatest fighter of all time.
Greenwood was only half-listening and looked away to the vast plains where an army lived all the year round. Breaking into Jimmy’s raptures about the Scottish Queen, he asked him how many soldiers were on the camp. ‘Well, thin, tin or twelve thousand, maybe and a mighty fine time they have of it,’ replied Jimmy with a glint in his eye. Greenwood asked him if their wives or sweethearts were with them. Jimmy replied: ‘Widout their wives, shure, and what of that, yer hanner? But some of their wives is with them, I believe, good luck to them! Though there’s no sweethearts in the camp at all, divil a one!’
‘But over there!’ Pointing vaguely with his whip across the plains, Jimmy’s jovial mood changed and a iciness came about the affair as he directed Greenwood’s eye towards the outskirts of the camp. ‘There’s many of them poor devils living in places made of furze inthirely. Winther and summer, in a bit of a bush.’
‘Wrens don’t you call them?’ said Greenwood, trying to catch a glimpse of his reporter’s quarry.
‘Wrins! That’s the name ov ’em, Wrins! That’s what they do call ’em, and a dridful life they lade. Most distrissing, believe me!’ Jimmy’s final remark was obviously something he had heard from others he had taken to the camp, describing what they saw.
There was a moment of silence and Jimmy sought relief again in the virtues of his mare, while Greenwood’s eyes wandered over the plains where many a furze bush was visible, but none which looked as if it could be inhabited by any creatures but birds of the air and beasts of the field.
On the Curragh the air was strong; an easterly wind was blowing over its miles of wasteland – dead level for the most part, but with undulations here and there, and broken by mounds and raths, stretching along for a considerable distance and at a height at least distinguishable.
The turf was soft and elastic everywhere. Sheep browsed upon it and there you could see the Irish shepherd. Greenwood saw a beautiful shepherdess flustering her rags out of their natural repose in an attempt to separate the sheep marked this way from the sheep marked that. She wore no bonnet on her head, revealing abundant locks, and below her ragged skirts a pair of shapely legs.
The Scottish Queen ambled along. There were good roads from Kildare to the camp, and from time to time they met cars containing well-buttoned military men. Other military men were seen, in ones and twos and threes, lounging: moving patches of red amongst the dark-green masses of furze.
Jimmy had no precise instructions; he was to drive upon the Curragh, and that’s all; but he had a notion that Greenwood wanted to go to the camp, and particularly to the Hollow, the actual spot where the boxer Cooper was beaten by the immortal Dan Donnelly. He had no idea that his passenger wanted to see something that no regular tourist would wish or need to see.
In this somewhat aimless way they came to a series of block huts, extending for approximately two miles, on either side of the road. Here and there a few groups of soldiers were seen lounging listlessly, or engaged in some athletic sport. Jimmy pointed out each object of interest as they drove along. ‘And that’s the Catholic chapel, your hanner. And that’s the Prodestan’ church. And this is Donnelly’s Hollow’ (strewn with many canvas tents) ‘where the fight was! Hould the mare, sir! hould Scottish Queen, and, bedad! I’ll show ye where Cooper stood, and where Donnelly stood – well I know the futmarks ov ’em!’ Jimmy would not be denied this opportunity to show where his hero had once stood. And those footprints are still there to this day, but that’s another story.
Fortunately, the Scottish Queen restrained the fiery impulses of her blood, and stood still like any carthorse while Jimmy planted himself in Donnelly’s footmarks, and tried to satisfy the last object of Greenwood’s journey by putting himself in a fighting attitude on that heroic spot. With as little shock to his feelings Greenwood made him aware that he didn’t care too much about Cooper or Donnelly; that the afternoon was too far advanced for a regular visit to the camp itself, but that in driving back he should like to get a glimpse of the wrens’ nests.
Jimmy put his hands down slowly, and in silence remounted the car. The soldiers he could understand as the object of a tourist’s gaze, and Donnelly’s Hollow as the object of his excitement. But ‘Thim Wrins!’ sighed poor Jimmy, exasperated.
However, back they went through the line of huts; the road dwindled, and they were presently driving over the plains. By this time the air was fast growing colder and mistier. The block huts of the camp could only be seen as a dim outline, soon they were the only hints of human life in the dreary prospect.
As far as the eye could distinguish within the waning limits of the light, all was barren and cheerless. The sky above looked waste as the plain itself, and drearier, for there were still thos
e constantly recurring patches of furze to break the green monotony below, while there was nothing at all to break the grey monotony above.
How in such solitary places at such times the mind also seems to close in from above and on all sides in a twilight sort of way, like one has found oneself in a strange haunting dream. Greenwood soon found his mind in this condition as they rolled over the noiseless turf; so that it was with a start a presently saw a bare-headed, bare-footed woman standing only a few feet away. Had the figure sprung out of the earth or dropped from the clouds? His surprise could not have been greater; true though it was that he had come to Ireland to see this very woman and her companions. ‘There’s a wrin, sir!’ Jimmy shouted at that moment, ‘and there’s a nest! And there’s another!’ But Greenwood saw no nest.
The clumps of furze looked a little thicker than usual in the direction indicated, but there was nothing more remarkable about them. But when, jumping from the car, Greenwood walked a few paces onward; he understood better now what nesting on the Curragh was. These heaps of furze were built and furnished for human occupation; and here and there outside them were squatted groups of those who dwelt therein. ‘Winther and summer in a bit of a bush.’ Not one or two, but several groups – half naked, destitute and wretched. There seemed to be a considerable colony.
Greenwood spent a long night amongst them afterwards. He found out all that was worth knowing of a tribe of outcasts as interesting, perhaps, as any which the scientific men of the Abyssinian expedition were likely to write books about.
Greenwood stated there were ten ‘nests’ in all, accommodating about sixty women aged between seventeen and twenty-five, some of whom had been there for up to nine years.
Kildare Folk Tales Page 9