For some time after the death of Anthony Mayne, the murdered R.M., Petty Sessions Courts ceased to be held in Ballybor, and the Sinn Fein Courts reigned supreme. At length Mayne’s successor arrived, and endeavoured to start the Courts in his district again, but found that not only were the country people too terrorised to bring any cases before a British Court, but that most of the magistrates had resigned, and none of the few remaining ones would face the bench.
However, Fitzmaurice, the new R.M., stuck to it, and in the end a retired officer, living just outside Ballybor, became a magistrate for the county; and suddenly, to the intense excitement of the whole town, it was given out that some countryman had had the audacity to defy the edict of Dail Eireann, and to summon a neighbour to appear before the British magistrates.
The court-house at Ballybor is a most curious-looking edifice of an unknown style of architecture, shabby and dismal outside and like a vault inside. On the day that the Court reopened the place was packed to the doors, and when the clerk stood up to announce the Court open, and ending with the words, “God save the King!” the silence could be felt.
It was what is known in the west of Ireland as a “saft day”—a day of heavy drizzling rain and a mild west wind off the Atlantic, and after a time the crowded court-house of countrymen in soaked home-spuns and women with reeking shawls over their heads literally began to steam, and the strong acrid smell of turf smoke from the drying clothes became overpowering. At first all eyes were fixed on the two magistrates sitting on the raised dais at one end of the court-house, and many, remembering poor Mayne’s end, wondered how long the two had to live. The R.M., they knew, was well paid by the British Government, but the second magistrate’s unpaid loyalty must surely be a form of madness, or most likely he received secret pay from the Government.
After the disposal of cases brought by the police for various offences, the only civil case on the list—in reality the beginning of a trial of strength between Sinn Fein and the British Government—came on for hearing, and in due course the magistrates gave a decision in favour of the complainant, a herd by name Mickey Coleman.
Taking advantage of the suspension of the law, a neighbour, Ned Foley, had thought to get free grazing, and day after day had deliberately driven his cattle on to Coleman’s land. Coleman, having remonstrated repeatedly with Foley in vain, consulted a Ballybor solicitor, who advised him to bring Foley into a Sinn Fein Court, where, he assured him, he would get full justice. This Coleman refused to do, and after consulting a second solicitor, brought the case before the Ballybor Petty Sessions Court.
Coleman appears to have been a man of great determination and courage, as he had been repeatedly warned by the Volunteers that if he persisted in taking Foley into a British Court they would make his life a hell on earth; and as he left the court after winning his case, a note was slipped into his hand to the effect that the I.R.A. neither forgets nor forgives.
Coleman had started life as a farm labourer, eventually becoming herd to a Loyalist called Vyvian Carew, whose ancestors came over to Ireland in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and who lived alone in a large house about eight miles from Ballybor, where he farmed his own demesne of four hundred Irish acres.
Carew belonged to a class of Irishman fast dying out in the west, and considering that it has always been the policy of every Liberal Government to throw them to the wolves, it is almost beyond belief that any are left in the country. A type of man any country can ill afford to lose, and all countries ought to be proud and glad to gain. After serving throughout the late war in the British Army, Carew had returned home, hoping to live in peace and quiet for the rest of his days, but had soon been undeceived. Though working himself as hard as any small farmer, and farming his land far better than any other man in the district, it was decided by men who coveted his acres that he possessed too many, and the usual steps in the west were taken to make him give up three of his four hundred acres, and if possible force him to sell out all.
Coleman started with a heavy heart for his cottage in Rossbane, Carew’s demesne, and from the moment he left the court-house until he lifted the latch of his door found himself treated as a leper by townsfolk and country people alike. Probably some of the people would have been willing to speak to him, and most likely many admired his pluck, but a man who comes under the curse of the I.R.A. is to be avoided at any costs. No man can tell when that sinister curse, which is often a matter of life and death to a peasant, may be extended to an unwary sympathiser.