[52]. When it was sought to make a child remember any thing long and circumstantially, it was the custom in Ireland either to whip him three or four times, duck him in cold water, or put him into a bag, with his face only out, and hang it up against a wall for a whole day. Such an extraordinary and undeserved punishment made an impression on the fresh tablet of the youngster’s mind never to be erased.
Young Fitzgerald roared lustily, but was nevertheless well soused, to make him remember his oath the better. This oath he repeated upon the same spot, while his mother lived, on every anniversary of his father’s murder; and it was said by the old tenants, that “young Stephen” (though flourishing in more civilised times) religiously kept the vow as far as he could; and that, so soon as he came into possession of Moret, four of the ablest of the Cahills (by way of a beginning) were missed from the neighbourhood of Timahoe in one night—nobody ever discovering what had become of them; indeed, the fewest words were considered far the safest.
The skeletons of four lusty fellows, however, were afterwards found in clearing out a pit in the Donane colliery, and many persons said they had belonged to the four Cahills from Timahoe; but, as the colliers very sapiently observed, there being no particular marks whereby to distinguish the bones of a Cahill from those of any other “boy,” no one could properly identify them.
A bystander, who had been inspecting the relics, protested, on hearing this remark made, that he could swear to one of the skulls at least (which appeared to have been fractured and trepanned); and he gave a very good reason for this assertion—namely, that it was himself who had “cracked the skull of Ned Cahill, at the fair of Dysart, with a walloper, and he knew the said skull ever after. It was between jest and earnest,” continued Jemmy Corcoran, “that I broke his head—all about a game-cock, and be d—d to it! and by the same token, I stood by in great grief at Maryborough, while Doctor Stapleton was twisting a round piece out of Ned Cahill’s skull, and laying a two-and-eight-penny-halfpenny[[53]] (beaten quite thin on the smith’s forge) over the hole, to cover his brains any way. The devil a brain in his sconce but I could see plainly; and the said two-and-eight-penny-halfpenny stayed fast under his wig for many a year, till Ned pulled it off (bad luck to it!) to pay for drink with myself at Timahoe! They said he was ever after a little cracked when in his liquor: and I’m right sorry for having act or part in that same fracture, for Ned was a good boy, so he was, and nobody would strike him a stroke on the head at any rate after the two-and-eight-penny-halfpenny was pledged off his skull.”
[53]. An Irish silver half-crown piece; the difference of English and Irish currency.
Though Mr. Jemmy Corcoran was so confident as to the skull he had fractured, his testimony was not sufficient legally to identify a Cahill, and the four sets of bones being quietly buried at Clapook, plenty of masses, &c. were said for an entire year by Father Cahill, of Stradbally, to get their souls clean out of purgatory; that is, if they were in it, which there was not a clergy in the place would take on to say he was “sartain sure of.”[[54]]