That night his wife, who had felt all day the most harrowing presentiment of impending woe, had a dream of her husband lying weltering in his blood. Her wild cries roused the household, and her father, finding his efforts at comfort unavailing, finally determined to go out and seek for news. At the end of the lane leading from his house to the highway he met his son-in-law’s riderless horse, saddled and bridled and covered with foam—and the early June dawn discovered groups of country people passing along the highway with faces and gestures and voices, all eloquent of some dreadful tragedy. “What news from the Curragh?” he asked a group which passed. “Bad news, bad news,” came the answer like some tragic chorus, “our friends were all slaughtered on the Curragh, to-day.”
When her father came home with his tidings, Mrs. Downey insisted on getting out one of the carts, and proceeding to the place of the slaughter to search for her husband’s body—for she was quite convinced that her dream was true, and she would find him among the slain. She came at last to the bloody plain, and found it littered with corpses. She turned over two hundred dead bodies before she discovered her husband’s. She laid him in the cart, covered him with straw and a quilt, and proceeded to the house of a relative to wake him. But the word had gone round that wherever a rebel corpse should be found the house sheltering it would be burned by the “yeos.” Without waiting even for a coffin, the broken-hearted young widow had to wrap her man in a sheet, and so see him laid in the hastily made grave. When quieter days came and she was able to return to the home he had made for her, she found it a wreck. She sold her farm and went to live in Monasterevan.
Her story presents to our imagination the tragedy of the “Widows of the Massacres” in concrete form. But it is the story of only one woman. Think of it as multiplied by the number of all the women who were left desolate on that day—and estimate the sum of woman’s misery caused by that one day alone—if our hearts dare!
Think of the women left desolate by the wholesale massacre of Carnew, of Gorey, of New Ross, of Enniscorthy, of Carrigrew, of Killoughrim Woods—and estimate these contributions to the sum of woman’s misery—if our hearts dare!
To renew our courage, it is time to tell a tale with a happier ending, though it, too, has to do with one of the most horrible massacres which disgraced the period—the Massacre of Dunlavin.
One day, Captain Saunders of Saunders’ Grove, reviewing his yeomanry, suddenly announced that he knew those who were United Irishmen among them, and ordered them to fall out. About thirty-six of them did; but the others, imitating the example of one Pat Doyle (who had had word of what was forward from the Captain’s brother) stayed in their places. The thirty-six who had “given themselves away,” were locked up in the market-house of Dunlavin, and on the Fair Day of Dunlavin, they were marched out to a hollow near the Catholic Church, while a number of Ancient Britons were posted on a height at some little distance. The word was given; the Ancient Britons fired—and the men fell in their blood, amid the shrieks and groans of the bystanders, among whom were their widows and relatives.
Among the victims was a man named Prendergast. In his case the ball made two orifices, but he had sufficient presence of mind before he lost consciousness, to detach his cravat and stop the blood of one orifice with it, while his clenched hand acted as a styptic for the other. A brave girl happened to see the motion, and she found an opportunity to staunch the wounds with her shawl, while she went off to Prendergast’s house, whence she presently returned with his brother, leading a horse and cart. They put the wounded man into the cart, covered him with bloody straw and carried him back to his widowed mother’s home. News reached Saunders that “some of the croppies were getting alive again,” so he sent back the Ancient Britons to finish their work, and hack and gash any of the bodies which might possibly harbour a spark of life. He then proceeded to Prendergast’s house, and genially addressed the widow. “Well, widow, I hear that that croppy scoundrel of a son of yours is living still.” “Yes, your honour,” said the poor woman, “the Lord has been pleased to grant the poor boy a longer day.” “Come on now,” said his Honour, forcing his way into the house, “I will put him out of pain; he can’t possibly recover, and your time can’t be taken up by attending on him.” The poor mother found strength to hold the great brute back, while the wounded man was conveyed out of the house by some of the neighbours. An angry crowd gathered round the Captain, and he thought it better to get away. At nightfall Michael Dwyer came down from the hills and carried off young Prendergast to his eyrie. And here during many months the wounded boy was nursed by Michael Dwyer and his “Mountain Mary”—and he lived to marry the brave girl who had saved his life.
And this, did space permit, would be the appropriate place to tell the story of one of the bravest women of ’Ninety-Eight—Mrs. Michael Dwyer (we have already met her name in connection with Anne Devlin, her husband’s niece). She was a beautiful Wicklow girl, the daughter of a “strong” farmer named Doyle; but she left all the comforts of her father’s well-stocked farm to share the outlaw’s “wild and uncertain life in hill and vale, in mountain cave and fastness.” The story of her romantic marriage is the subject of a well-known and very stirring ballad which tells how:—
As the torrent bounds down from the mountain