Tales of the R.I.C.

by Unknown

After the coursing they took O’Dowd into their confidence, showed him the distillery and arranged that he should act as their agent. This part was simple, but the difficulty was how, when, and where to deliver the goods to O’Dowd. If the “tay carts” came to Ardcumber, or the distillery Ford went to O’Dowd’s continually, suspicion would be aroused. After a long discussion they decided on a plan of action.

Once a week, when Evans drove into Ballybor for provisions, he was to fill up the Ford with poteen and leave the car in a shed in O’Dowd’s yard, where the poteen could be transferred to O’Dowd’s cellars and the car loaded up with empties. O’Dowd wanted to use earthenware jars, but Evans decided on two-gallon petrol tins as being less likely to excite suspicion.

For a considerable time the plan worked well. Evans took a full load weekly to O’Dowd’s, whose tea carts distributed the poteen far and wide throughout the district.

One morning Blake, who had spent a busy night raiding in the district for arms and poteen stills, called in at Ardcumber on his way home and had breakfast with the Evans. During the conversation he mentioned casually that the country was flooded with poteen, and that they had failed to find out where it was being made, but that they suspected it was being delivered in tea carts from Ballybor.

As soon as Blake had gone David drove off into Ballybor, settled up his accounts with O’Dowd, who was only too thankful to be rid of the job in time, and before he left for home had arranged with an egg merchant called Michael Flanagan, who sent lorries out to all the villages for miles around collecting eggs, to take over the agency, the petrol tins to be hidden in the straw of the empty egg-crates.

The police appear to have had no suspicion of Evans, and the probabilities are that the Ardcumber distillery would have worked on indefinitely but for interference from a quite unsuspected quarter. The Sinn Fein leaders of the district began to grow uneasy at the effects of the apparently unlimited supply of poteen on the discipline of the Volunteers, and determined to put down the industry.

Any men who were now found with stills in their possession by the Sinn Fein police were paraded before the congregation outside the chapels after Mass on Sunday morning, the stills broken up with hammers, the owners heavily fined, and then let go with a warning of much severer penalties if they were found guilty of the same offence again.

Afterwards Evans and Flanagan received summonses to appear on a named date before a Sinn Fein Court. Flanagan went and was heavily fined, but Evans took no notice of the summons.

Flanagan was now, of course, afraid to act as agent, and the question again arose of how they were to get the poteen to the different buyers. While matters were in this state Flanagan sent a warning to Evans that the Volunteers would raid Ardcumber on a certain night, and that the results would be very unpleasant for them.

The situation was now serious. It was impossible for two men to defend such a large house, and once inside, the Volunteers, apart from the fact that they would probably shoot them, would certainly break up the distillery, and the rapid increase of their bank balances would cease.