Looking down from Paddy’s cottage door upon the richly wooded glens of Banagher, the traveller is struck by the extent and beauty of the view. Below lies a ruined church, a little to its right the glens—four dark lines of wood branching off from a common meetingpoint, and running up the mountain in different directions, and to the left the quaint country town of Dungiven. Above the town rises the majestic mountain range of Benbraddagh; while yet farther to the left, and like pale, smoke-tinted phantoms, are the hills of Magilligan, and the shadowy coast-line. This was the view we saw from Paddy’s low doorway, and with a little reluctance we turned away from contemplating it, to enter the smoky cabin.
Paddy was a fine old man with thick, grizzled hair, a better-formed profile than many of his class, and a hale, hearty voice. He was totally blind, but his keen face was so full of intelligence that it was easy to forget that he could not see. His daughter, herself a very old woman, moved his arm-chair near the door, and we sat beside him facing the scene above described. The turf smoke, of which the kitchen was full, blew past us to find its outlet at the door. A turf stack was built against the end of the dresser just behind Paddy’s chair. A calf was walled off by a little rampart of boards from the rest of the room, and the cock and hens had already flown to their roost directly above our heads. The atmosphere and neighborhood might have been objected to by squeamish people, but in the pursuit of knowledge what will not one dare?
The old woman stood behind her fathers chair ready to jog his memory if necessary. A present of tobacco, tea, and sugar touched the patriarch’s heart; he was quite willing to take the desired journey into the regions of the past.
“Do I mind the time o’ the Uniting? Is that what the lady wants to know? Ay, bravely I mind it. I mind it far better nor things that happened yesterday. I was ane o’ the United Men mysel’, an’ I was sent wi’ a big wheen o’ the boys to keep the pass on the White Mountain when the army was expected from Derry to destroy us. I had my pike, an’ the maist part o’ the boys had guns.”
“Were you not afraid to meet the soldiers?”
“Feared? Was I feared? Troth an’ faix I was, sorely feared; but it wad ha’ been as much as your life was worth to let on that you were feared. I mind us leaning against the heather, an’ the big rocks an’ mountains rising up all roun’ us, an’ the cold night an’ the darkness comin’ on, an’ feen a word was spoke amang us, for we be to keep the pass.”
“Well?”
“Weel, at long an’ at last, Jack McSparron came running back (he was put to watch); ‘an’,’ says he, ‘the army’s comin’ now; there’s the tramp o’ the horses,’ says he. Wi’ that we to the listening, an’ we all heered the tramp o’ the cavalry; an’ the company o’ the United Men just melted away like snow off a ditch. Jack an’ one or two others tried to keep us thegether, but it couldna be done; the boys was too feared. I ran wi’ the rest, an’ I never stopped till I was in my father’s house sittin’ into the chimney-corner aback o’ my mother. After that there was soldiers passing we’er door nearly every day, an’ they said they were marching to burn Maghera to the ground.”
“Why was Maghera to be burned to the ground?”
“I dinna rightly know, but I think the United Men was strong in it. But counter-orders came that it was na to be destroyed, an’ then the army came back to Dungiven.”