Sind—J. Rock. R.T.L.
given at our counsil this
10th day of April 1823.
‘Sure, and that’s a real letter, and no mistake,’ said Barry, handing it back to me after perusal. ‘I remember when I was a gorsoon [boy], my father writing letters just like it, when he and the Boys would meet of nights at our house. Many is the queer thing I heard them plan, when they thought I was asleep in bed; and though I forgets most of their doings now, I remembers a few; and I’ll tell them same to you and welcome, if you likes to hear them. The Whiteboys, and the Bloodsuckers, and the Molly M‘Guires resembles the Moonlighters of the present day; though they were not, so to say, as bad entirely, still they were fidgety creatures enough. ’Tis nigh on sixty years since my father died, and I was a tidy bit of a lad then. He was a follower of Captin Rock, the leader of what we called one kind of Whiteboys, in those days. Captin Rock was, you know, only an imaginary name, just as Captin Moonlight is in these times. I would not say as the Whiteboys in my father’s time was as bad as those as followed them. They said nothing against paying the rent; and a good drop of the crater would do wonders with Captin Rock and his followers. Sure, ’twas hard in name he was, as my father used to say, and not in nature.
‘The Bloodsuckers, who came next, were frightful creatures. They were so called because they took money to inform. ’Twas the price of blood, you see.
‘The famine of 1845 had a demoralising effect on the people, and many and many the poor creature breaking stones on the roadside had a pistol or some weapon of defence hid in the heap beside them. There was one gentleman you would like to hear about, maybe, who met with great troubles at the hands of the Boys. I knew him well, for many a pocketful of apples he gave me; and he was as hard-working and honest a creature as you’d meet with in a day’s walk. The Boys had no ill-will against himself personally; but they thought to frighten him from taking a farm as was “useful to them,”’ said Barry, with a knowing wink. ‘The first thing they did was to send him a threatening letter. Then a man as I knew full well—for many’s the time he and my poor father laid their plans together—he was turned off to shoot him. He stood inside the road-wall where there was an old archway half built up—a mighty convenient place, as he afterwards said, to rest a gun on. But for all that, he didn’t fire the shot that night, for reasons which you’ll hear presently. The Boys were so disappointed, that two of them went at dusk one evening to the gentleman’s own hall door and knocked. Sure enough, just as they thought, he opened it himself for them. On doing so, he saw the two Boys, one with a pistol, the other with a blunderbuss.
“Come out; you are wanted,” says they to him.
“Yes,” replied he; “but wait till I get my hat.”
“Don’t mind your hat,” was the answer; “you’ll do for us without it.”
‘Just then the Missis came into the hall, and hearing the noise, off they went.
‘Weeks afterwards, these men told the Master (as I shall call him, seeing I never likes to mention names) that had he gone in for his hat as he wanted to, they’d have shot him dead just where he stood, for they would have been afraid he was going for help.