Miss Byrne
Miles Byrne in his Memoirs makes frequent mention of a brave sister of his, and incidentally throws much light on the way the women of Wexford helped their men during these soul-testing times. When the atrocities of the Orange magistrates and the Ancient Britons had forced the men to the hills, the women undertook to act as intelligence officers and keep them informed of the progress of the preparations for the Rising. Miss Byrne was one of the most active of these fearless girls. On one occasion Miles returned to his mother’s house and found his sister alone in it, for their mother had gone to Gorey to try and get their step-brother Hugh, out of prison. “We arrived a little before daybreak. I approached the house with great precaution (lest there should be soldiers placed there), and I must add overwhelmed with anxiety, fearing to learn everything for the worst. However, finding all silent, I went at once and knocked. My poor sister came to the window, trembling and alarmed, until she saw it was I.... Before I had time to answer any questions my sister told me she hoped to have good news to tell me in the morning; that it was certain the people were rising in every direction, and had already defeated the troops. She could not then give me the details, but in an hour or two she was sure to be able to satisfy me in every particular.”
Miles and his companions concealed themselves in the fields until his sister could procure the tidings she expected. “When it was broad daylight we saw my sister running to look for us to give us the cheerful tidings with all the joyful enthusiasm so characteristic of a young Irish girl of eighteen. She told us that the troops had run away from Gorey, and that all the prisoners were at liberty to go where they pleased; but still the people, or the Insurgent army, as we must now call them, did not march that way, but were in great force in the neighbourhood of Camolin and Ferns. We instantly prepared to go and join them....
“It was only now I heard for the first time of all the barbarous murders that had been committed whilst I was away; the massacre of Carnew, the murder of poor Garrett Fennell, Darcy, and a list of others who had shared the same fate. My dear sister thought she could never tell me enough about all that had happened during my absence; how our horses were taken, and that three men mounted my mare and sprained her back, etc. But if I had not remarked a long scar on her neck she would not have mentioned anything about herself. A yeoman of the name of Wheatley, on the day that poor Hugh was arrested, threatened to cut her throat with his sabre if she did not instantly tell the place where I was hiding; the cowardly villain no doubt would have put his threat into execution had not some of his comrades interfered to prevent him.
“Being joined by a few of our former workmen and tenants’ sons, who heard I had returned, I prepared again to take leave of my sister, knowing that my dear mother would soon be home to keep her company. This time she saw me depart with joy and delight, for she had set her heart and soul on the success of our undertaking; her courage and spirit was surprising under such circumstances for a girl of her age, and she never despaired. I bid her farewell, and marched off with my faithful friends on the road to Camolin.”
Miss Teeling
Charles Teeling in his “Personal Narrative” pays tribute to “the heroic courage” of one of his own sisters. “She was my junior”—he was only in his eighteenth year himself—“and with the gentlest possessed the noblest soul; she has been the solace of her family in all subsequent afflictions, and seemed to have been given as a blessing by Heaven, to counterpoise the ills we were doomed to suffer.” When the first letters “from home” were delivered to the poor prisoners in Kilmainham he records the sensation he experienced on getting one from his father “which also bore the signature of the sister whom I loved.”
Miss Hazlett
Another sister commemorated by Teeling is Miss Hazlett, the sister of Henry Hazlett, of Belfast. She had come to Dublin, with Henry’s little son, to comfort their brother by their visits to his prison. “It was impossible to exclude her visits from the prison, for, from the surly turnkey to the cold and impenetrable man of office, her voice acted as a talisman on the most obdurate heart. Her presence dispelled every gloom, as the cheering messenger of Heaven.” The little boy caught a contagious disease, and his beautiful young aunt, nursing him, contracted it also, and one day to the sorrowing prisoners in Kilmainham, who had all learned to love her, there came the news of her death. Her funeral from Dublin to the North was made a national demonstration. “The daughters of Erin strewed garlands in the way—thousands of youthful patriots surrounded the bier—and in the mournful procession of an hundred miles, every town and hamlet paid homage to the virtues of the dead.”