Tenant League.—This league was organized in 1850. On the 4th of July, 1851, a great meeting was held on the site of the Battle of the Boyne. In 1852 a general election took place and about fifty-eight leaguers were elected. However, their leaders broke their pledges, betrayed the Irish people, destroyed the party and within a few years after killed themselves. A branch of this league was established in Dingle. (See the [Pope's Brass Band], also Supplementary History of the County Kerry, for more particulars.)
Thierna-Dubh's Raid, or the Black Earl's Raid.—This was applied to the Earl of Ormond, who was Lord Governor of Munster. During the Great Desmond Wars, in 1580, he converted the whole barony of Corkaguiny into one great slaughter-house. He went to oppose the Spaniards, then with a Pope's banner, at Fort-del-Ore, in Smerwick Harbor, and also to capture the 15th Earl of Desmond, a Catholic, because the latter was suspected of favoring his cousins in a rebellion against the British crown, and Ormond was anxious to possess Desmond's confiscated estates. At Tralee, Ormond, the Black Earl, divided his forces into three divisions, and from thence marched westward towards Dingle, through Slieve-Mish. In this journey the English soldiers slaughtered every man, woman and child they met. At Standbally, they tossed the children for pastime from pike to pike and next stabbed to death the feeble mothers. Father Dominick O'Daly calls it "Cooling their impious thirst with the blood of Catholics." Classing Father O'Daly as a supporter of the Desmonds and rejecting his evidence and taking their own evidence, the author finds that in the commander's letters to Queen Elizabeth they promised "If God will give us bread, we doubt not but to make as bare a country as ever a Spaniard put a foot on," meaning the Dingle peninsula. (Pelham's Letters to Queen Elizabeth.) "non was spared the toddling child, the feeble old man, the blind, the lame, the idiot, the strong man and the weak shepherd." As the soldiers of Queen Elizabeth entered a village they had the laggards set on fire. Mothers clasping their babies together with the dwellers were surrounded and driven into the flames or cut off with the sword. The English soldiers were hunting defenseless poor people for pleasure. The only way to receive pardon was to bring the bleeding head of one of their countrymen and throw it at the head of an English commander in order to sow hatred for one another amongst the Irish. This wicked journey of the Earl of Ormond, such was the blight that it brought on the homes of everybody that it left a memory everywhere through which he passed, which can never fade while a Father can speak to a son. The soldiers under Ormond, like ravenous beasts, having once tasted human blood, could not quench their craving for slaughter. Young women, who refused to be outraged were hanged from trees by the hair of their heads. When they could not subdue men they turned their weapons against women and children.
"His hosts are all gather'd, his cordon is set,
Strong and close wove the meshes—wide stretches the net,
As it sweeps the doom'd district, its progress thus trace'd,
All before as a garden—behind as a waste.
Their course is unsparing and searching as fire,
Leaves not sheaf in the barn, nor hoof in the byre,
While hymning their triumph, in concert combined,