Many a sweetheart an’ many a bride
Wud liefer ha’ gone till where he died,
An’ murned her lone by her man.”—Florence Wilson.
AFTER the defeat of the insurgent army at Antrim, the yeomen were let loose in the country, and the most terrible outrages committed. Cannon were trained on the houses situated in what is known as “the Scotch quarter,” in Antrim town, and a shot having struck one of them, the inmates of the neighbouring house, a man called Quin, and his lovely sixteen-year-old daughter, made their escape from their home, and crossing the garden, made towards Belmount. They were pursued by the yeomen, shot dead, and buried where they fell. So shallow was the grave made for them that for several days after, the long beautiful hair of the girl, which was only partially covered, was seen waving in the wind.
The gentleman who related this incident to Dr. Madden noted that it excited more sympathy among the poor people than many horrid barbarities of the time. I think we can understand why it should be so. Even, at this distance of time, one cannot think of the long golden hair of the murdered girl, tossing in the wind above her shallow grave, without being gripped by the sense of pity and tragedy in a most poignant way—and feeling that here we have found the very heart of the sorrow of ’Ninety-Eight.
In the same way, it seems to me, that it is in the story of the more obscure heroines that sentiment is most inherent. The stories of the other women with which we have dealt have left us, after all, with an overwhelming feeling of “the glorious pride” of ’Ninety-Eight. But for the “sorrow” which also fills its name, we must go to the “short and simple annals of the poor.”
Very pitiful is the story, told by Cloney, of the fate of a woman called Fitzpatrick and her husband in Kilcomney. Like the other defenceless inhabitants of Kilcomney, a hundred and forty of whom were murdered that day by the yeomanry under Sir Charles Asgill, their sole “offence” was that the insurgent army had passed through their district on its retreat from Scollagh Gap. When the butchering “yeos” entered the cabin of Patrick Fitzpatrick, the poor wife, with her baby in her arms, ran to her husband’s side, and while she was endeavouring to protect him, a volley was poured into them, and they fell dead at the same moment. “The cabin was then set fire to as a matter of course over the heads of the children of this unfortunate couple—six in number; and five of them, ‘poor innocent creatures,’ ran into the house of a neighbour, who had escaped the massacre, one of them crying out, ‘My daddy is killed—my mammy is killed—and the pigs are drinking their blood.’ A poor woman of the name of Kealy, an aunt of theirs, took the children home, and when her scanty means were exhausted for their support, she became a beggar to get them bread; the neighbours helped her, they gave her assistance, and God, in His mercy to her, enabled her to bring them up.” “There may be no space,” writes Madden with that quick sentiment of his for heroic deeds which gives to his work an atmosphere so inspiring, “in the records of the noble deeds of women for the goodness of this poor creature; but her conduct will not be forgotten, at all events, on that day when virtue is destined to receive its own exceeding great reward—the awful recompense of all its sufferings and sacrifices here below, and when the man of blood will find no act of indemnity available for his sanguinary and inhuman deeds.”
On June the 3rd, 1798, occurred the massacre of Gibbet Rath—“the place of slaughter”—on the Curragh of Kildare. There the insurgents, who had entered into terms with General Dundas, assembled, according to stipulation, to lay down their arms and receive the “protections” which were to enable them to return to their homes without further molestation. Suddenly on their unarmed ranks fell Sir James Duff with his cavalry, and Lord Roden’s “Fox-Hunters,” and the slaughter began. “Three hundred and fifty men, admitted into the king’s peace, and promised his protection, were mowed down in cold blood.”
Let us turn our eyes for a moment from that bloody “Place of Slaughter,” where the gory corpses of their men lay all through that bright June day, to the cabins where the women vainly awaited them through its slowly passing hours. To help us to realise the scenes that must have taken place in many of them, we have the story, related by Fitzpatrick, of Mrs. Denis Downey, the grandmother of Canon O’Hanlon, the distinguished hagiologist.
She was a young wife, with two little children, when the “word” came which called her husband to the fight. As their home in Grey Abbey near Kildare was attacked by the soldiers, she and her babies took refuge at her parents’ house near the River Barrow. The day before that fixed for the surrender of the insurgents, it was said that Lord Roden’s “Fencibles” (or “Fox-Hunters”) paraded the streets of Kildare, mad with drink, and carrying articles of apparel on the end of their bayonets, shouted “we are the boys who will slaughter the croppies to-morrow at the Curragh.” On this account a great many of the insurgents wisely stayed away. Unfortunately Denis Downey was not one of them. Mounted on a fine horse he presented himself with his comrades. When the massacre began he leaped on his horse, and in all probability would have made good his escape, had he not stopped to take up a relative. A bullet found him, and he fell dead from the saddle. His riderless horse, which had been stabled at his father-in-law’s place, galloped thither, mad with terror.