Thrice forty summer suns have bathed shoulder of the hill
Yet round the hearth-fire’s blaze the outlaw’s name is sounded still
And the hunter marking out the chase will stiffen in his chair
To tell of speeding Black and Tan behind Sean Bearna’s lair.
But saddest tale of all, the death that claimed the border king
’Twas Saxon gold that loosed the shaft and stilled the wild hawk’s wing
And lonely shepherds on the round still meet in moor and glen
When hangs the moon a ghastly troop Sean Bearna and his men.
Sean Bearna rode within the light, his steed a dappled grey,
His tail and mane were streaming like the first pale shades of day
Nor cleaner limb nor fleeter, ever fought the surging flood
Or left the foeman far behind, in deep Drumfurrer wood.
On one such night, Sean Bearna went on a predatory excursion to the Gola estate. Attended by his hard-riding mountainy men, he circled the lawn and the estate, herding the sheep, the cattle, the horses and swollen droves and heading for the mountain. Before leaving, the fire brand was laid to the straw pile, the blazing pine showing the wooden structure. Flames soared into the teeth of the wind. As burning timbers crashed to the ground around the robber band, a company of redcoats came from a column. Dismay reigned and there was a confusion of stampeding and fighting in the ranks of the rapparees. The dappled grey was wounded, his stride was shortened. Through the black water stream and into the breast of the dear dark mountain trailed the outlaws, with the grey taking up the rear.
On Strawmacelroy, Sean Bearna was drowned. He shot his dappled charger and turned to face his foes. On Strawmacelroy was taken Sean Bearna and when morning paled in the east his body lay mutilated on the hill. His head was raised high on a spear in the resting camp of the enemy. To the town rode his majesty’s militia, with the head of the rapparee tied up in a bag.
But saddest tale of all, in death
Was claimed the border king
‘Twas Saxon gold that loosed the shaft
And stilled the wild hawk’s wing.
Behind Meenamar Hill are the stables of Sean Bearna and the little lake nearby. Once, on a day when the redcoats were closing on him, Sean Bearna swam that little lake and when he dived into the dark waters, he found an entrance, one of many, to his retreat. Tradition has it that his great wealth is on the muddied floor of the lake. One day, a mountainy man with greed in his heart went forth to seek the treasure trove, but he was never seen again. Fairy music emanates from the sturdy rock pile of the long-dead rapparee and the fairy lights twinkle about the stables. On bright nights when the moon is up, the figure of the Slieve Beagh King appears erect and defiant, his feet in the blossomed tendrils of the heather.
6
GILDER – A TRUE
CHARACTER
This is the story of Gilder, a wise man of Monaghan who had a cure for many ailments.
We speak a lot about old characters when we talk about the past. These are people who stand out and have certain quirks that set them apart from others. On this journey, I have come across my fair share of characters, but when I get my ‘story shovel’ out and dig up the past, those days when television and radio weren’t even an option, never mind a luxury, it’s there that I find the real authentic characters – the ones who were not being ‘quirky’ for any reason other than that was just how they were made. They were cut that way.
‘Gilder’ was the definition of a character. He was called James Agnew, but people in the locality called him various names, including ‘Gildernew’ and ‘Gilder Agnew’, but most of the time he just got plain old ‘Gilder’.
Gilder was known to have special powers. I suppose he would’ve been a wise man or witch doctor of the time. He was believed to have cures for certain ailments, including ringworm and skin conditions. Some say he was able to cure both man and beast and he was known for working well with horses, in particular.
He lived in a little cabin with his sister Ketty, in a place called Toneystaken in Co. Monaghan. This may seem idyllic and some of us might visualise a wooden house with a front porch and a bright red door and flowers on the windowsills. But sadly that wasn’t the reality for Gilder and Ketty. For they couldn’t have lived any further away from comfort. One person described the house in this way: ‘A hole in the roof served as a chimney, doors nor windows they had none, just a bag nailed over an opening in the wall for a door.’ So when someone travelled to see Gilder, they may well have been dubious of his skills.
From talking to people, it seems that Gilder had no fear and had little or no respect for the clergy or authority figures of any kind. He relied on his funny wee ways and his sense of humour to get by and, in many cases, to get him out of tricky situations.
The land that Gilder and Ketty’s home was on was owned by a land agent and the man in charge was James Rodgers. There was a set day for paying the rent and so the people would queue up and wait their turn to pay. One day, when Gilder’s turn came, he approached Mr Rodgers with a smile and said, ‘Hello Jimmy.’
Mr Rodgers said, ‘Have you got my rent?’
‘No, I haven’t,’ Gilder replied.
‘Well, why not?’
So Gilder said back to him, ‘Ah, you’re in bad form today, Mr Rogers. I’ll come back some other day when you’re in better form.’ And off he went.
This kind of interaction reminds me of Francie Brady from The Butcher Boy. Like Francie’s character, Gilder seems to have been untouchable. Although we don’t know the full story and we have no idea of the aftermath and the consequences he faced. From the recollections and the stories that have been passed down, he seems to have been a law unto himself. He feared nobody.
Gilder was a rough sort of a man – a raw man, as they would say in the country. He said what was on his mind. Maybe he was brought up that way and knew no better. In 1832, his father was sentenced to death for forging a £1 note, but later the charge was dropped.
What really upset Gilder the most was the death of his mother. When she died, the parish priest tried to console him by telling him that his mother was happy now in heaven. So when it came to the month’s mind, the priest returned to Gilder’s house to make arrangements for the Mass but Gilder said to him, ‘You told me she was already in heaven, so if she is then why would I want her to be any higher!’ He then walked away, leaving the priest to make of that what he wanted.
Was he trying to save a few pound by not having a Mass? Was he being funny? Or did he actually believe what the priest had told him?
Another story involving a priest was the story of the priest who brought a pony to Gilder for a cure (I’m not sure if it was the same priest). The pony had a bad skin condition and he thought Gilder would be the right man for the job. Gilder took a good look at the pony, sighed a few times, threw his eyes up towards heaven a few times and maybe even down towards hell. Every so often, he would take a look at the priest and then focus on the horse again. He just keep circling the horse in silence until he eventually stopped and stood in front of the animal and he asked the priest, ‘Where did you get him?’
The priest said, ‘I bought him at the fair.’
And Gilder replied (as serious and deadpan as can be), ‘Well, you must have been blind or drunk that day.’
So he walked into his house and came back out with a bag of oats and who knows what else and fed it to the pony, and the condition was cleared up within a few days.
Another man travelled miles to see Gilder, all the way from Fivemiletown in Armagh, which is almost twenty miles away. Apparently the man was well-to-do and was dressed in his finest pinstriped suit. So Gilder decided he would give him the cure, but first he got him to clean out his byre (‘byre’ is a fancy word for a cow barn). The man had no choice because only Gilder had what he wanted. Gilder had him right where he wanted him – knee deep in cow dung.
Gilder was no stranger to the law. At one point he
had to make a visit to a solicitor. After the consultation, the solicitor asked him for a payment for his services and Gilder turned to him and said, ‘For what?’
He said, ‘For my advice.’
Gilder stood up and said, ‘Ah, but I am not going to take your advice!’ And off he went about his business.
Was Gilder as witty as Oscar Wilde or was he just a wild countryman?
It’s hard to tell whether Gilder was just a simple man or whether he was taking everyone for a ride. It seems he took advantage of situations and had a laugh to himself when people’s backs were turned. Gilder was meant to have looked much older than he was and the only photograph I could find suggests he was an old, old man and could pass for 90 or more … but in actual fact he died young, at only 64 … and I have no idea when the picture was taken. But one thing is for sure: Gilder was a true character who is still being talked about almost 100 years later.
7
THE WILDE SISTERS
This is a well-known story from Co. Monaghan about the tragic lives of Oscar Wilde’s two half-sisters.
This is the heartfelt inscription on the gravestone that was erected for the half-sisters of Oscar Wilde, who lost their young lives tragically in a fire in Co. Monaghan in 1871.
You can visit this grave, if you wish. Just a short distance south-west of Monaghan town, on the road to Clones, there is a signpost which reads ‘Drumsnatt Church of Ireland’. To the rear of this small country church is the grave where the two sisters were laid to rest a long, long time ago.
The sisters in question, who lost their lives in a fire in a nearby manor house, were the half-sisters of the Irish poet, novelist and dramatist, Oscar Wilde, who was born in Dublin in 1854. Oscar was only 18 when his half-sisters died, but loss and heartache were already known to him. Five years before the tragic event, when Oscar was just 12, he had lost his younger sister Isola, who died at only 10 years of age, after a bout of fever, at the home of her aunt, Margaret Nobel, in Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford.
Isola’s death had a traumatic effect on Oscar Wilde and he was said to have been inconsolable for months afterwards. When he died in 1900, his possessions included an envelope containing some strands of his beloved sister Isola’s hair, with the inscription ‘My Isola’s Hair’ penned on the envelope.
Oscar had just gone to Trinity when his two half-sisters died and it is said that his grief was not at all on the same scale as when his younger sister passed away. This is most likely because he knew them less since the girls were only his half-sisters. Some sources argue that Oscar may not have known them at all, because Emily and Mary may have been kept secret.
They shared the same father – Sir William Wilde of Dublin. Despite the fact, however, that their father attended their funeral, it is believed that he was terribly grief-stricken and heartsick, having to bury two more of his children.
The Northern Standard was the only paper in the area to report the tragedy, in a brief obituary in its 25 November 1871 issue. Their deaths had been discreetly kept from the Dublin press. The Northern Standard reported that Mary died on 8 November and that ‘Emma’, by which name Emily was better known, died on the 21 November. Normally something so tragic would have been more widely publicised, but it was obviously kept under wraps to preserve Sir William’s reputation.
According to Julian Hanna (2015), in his essay ‘Death by Fire: The Secret of the Wilde Sisters’ in the online magazine Numéro Cinq, the first published account of the story appeared in a biography of William Wilde by T.G. Wilson in 1942.
Emily and Mary Wilde were living in Co. Monaghan and were being looked after by a relative, a Rev. Ralph Wilde, rector of St Molua’s, Drumsnat, who was the brother of their father.
The night of the fire was Halloween night. A party had been arranged to celebrate All Hallow’s Eve, or Samhain in Ireland, and because the girls were popular with the local people, they were invited to a ball in a manor house called Drumaconnor House. The man who owned the house was Mr Andrew Reed, a local bank manager. This house still exists and is still known by the same name. Currently it serves as a B&B, just off the Monaghan–Clones road.
After the other guests had gone home, the two girls remained for a while longer and a gentleman took one of them for a final dance around the floor (it is said that the gentleman was Mr Andrew Reid, the host of the party), but as they glided past the open fireplace, her crinoline caught fire. Her sister ran to her rescue and in the hysteria her sister’s dress also caught fire. Those in attendance tried to smother the flames by wrapping garments around both girls and some stories say that those who remained at the ball carried the girls out and rolled them in the snow.
Local historian Eamonn Mulligan, co-author of ‘The Replay’: A Parish History (a history of the parish of Kilmore and Drumsnat, published in 1984), explained that in their efforts to conceal the whole tragic episode and to shield the person of Sir William from further adverse publicity, the family name of the Wilde sisters was actually altered to read ‘Wylie’ in several later reports, particularly in two reports written by the coroner for the county, Mr Alexander C. Waddell, who was clearly influenced by the stern request from Sir William Wilde that no inquest be held. Instead, an inquiry was held, to be followed by a second inquiry, but no inquest. Both of the coroner’s reports are quoted in full by one of Co. Monaghan’s leading historians, Mr Theo McMahon, in the 2003 edition of Clogher Record, of which Theo was editor of several years. The second of the two reports is somewhat similar in content to the first. It reads as follows:
On Wednesday 22nd November 1871 the death of Miss M Wylie, daughter of Sir William Wylie, was reported to me as resulting from very serious injuries caused by her clothes accidentally catching fire from those of her sister Miss L Wylie on the night of 31st October in the house of Mr Reed of Drumaconnor. In accordance with the report I attended the residence of Mr Reed where she had been an invalid since the painful occurrence. From all the circumstances of the case, same as those attendant on the death of her sister, I did not consider anything further necessary than a careful inquiry into the facts, which showed that everything possible was done to preserve the life of the deceased.
Crinoline dresses were fashionable during that period and they caused the deaths of many young women. It is easy to imagine how the tragedy occurred. So simple: in moments, the atmosphere would have changed and panic would have set in. It is also easy to understand why her sister ran to help. Her kindness and selflessness caused her to die also.
The crinoline is a woman’s large petticoat that has come in and out of fashion since the early nineteenth century. The original garment was made from very stiff horsehair fabric that kept the fashionable hoop skirts of the 1800s in their proper position.
In 1864, the New York Times reported that almost 40,000 women throughout the world had died because of crinoline fires. I read about how dangerous crinoline was in an article on the Vintage News website (2016):
As fashionable as the crinoline was, it became one of the most dangerous articles of clothing ever known. It was highly flammable, any women who witnessed the flames were unable to help for fear of their own skirts catching fire. It is reported that in Philadelphia, nine ballerinas were killed when one brushed by a candle at the Continental Theater.
The deaths of Emily and Mary are still very much spoken about among the people of Kilmore/Drumsnatt parish and the people are extremely grateful to Eamonn Mulligan and Father Brian McCluskey, co-authors of ‘The Replay’, and to leading historian Theo McMahon for researching the subject in such depth as their work will help keep the story alive for future generations of folklorists and historians in north Monaghan and beyond.
Julian Hanna states that the aftermath of the tragedy was, if possible, even more gruesome than the terrible accident itself. He is of the opinion that to die on Halloween night would have been merciful: instead, the young women lingered on for days and weeks at Drumaconnor. He goes on to say that the sisters remained in the house, as was t
he custom at the time, where they were treated for the severe burns they had both suffered. Mary, the younger sister who had tried to help, died first, on 9 November. Her death was kept a secret from Emily, who was also near death, to spare her the shock; nevertheless, three weeks after the accident, on 21 November, Emily also died.
Hanna writes about the local legend of the ‘woman in black’ – thought to be the girls’ mother – who visited the graves regularly for twenty years after the tragedy. I have heard this from several people in Monaghan. Oscar Wilde also used to tell the story of a woman in black. Wilde, who was still a teenager at the time, recalled an unknown woman’s visits to his house during his father’s last illness. The woman would come into the house and kneel by William’s sickbed, while Oscar’s mother stood by, watching without interfering, apparently aware that her husband and the woman, who shared a tragic bond, had loved each other deeply.
I heard from one source that the ‘woman in black’ would travel by train from Dublin to Monaghan and make her way to the girls’ grave, say a prayer and return to Dublin. It is said that she wore a black veil and would not speak if approached by someone.
8
SMUGGLING STORIES
When I was travelling around Co. Monaghan, talking to all the different characters that I met along the way, in between their wonderful stories about ghosts, fairies and wild folk, I would always hear wee tales about smuggling.
Customs controls were introduced between the borders of Northern Ireland and the Republic shortly after the establishment of the Irish Free State on 1 April 1923, ‘April Fool’s Day’. In fact, when the customs checkpoints and the men in their wee uniforms were introduced, the locals believed that it was all part of an elaborate joke.
Monaghan Folk Tales Page 5