‘He then sent me to Kilkenny jail; and at the summer assizes following, James Bulger, Patrick Hacket, otherwise Bristeen, Martin Millea, John Stack, Felix Donnelly, Edmund Kenny, and James Larrassy were tried, convicted, and executed; and at spring assizes following, George Roberts was tried for receiving Colonel Palliser’s gold watch, knowing it to be stolen, but was acquitted on account of exceptions taken to my pardon, which prevented my giving evidence. At the following assizes, when I had got a new pardon, Roberts was again tried for receiving the tankard, ladle, and silver spoons from me, knowing them to be stolen, and was convicted and executed. At the same assizes, John Reddy, my instructor, and Martin Millea were also tried, convicted, and executed.’
And so they were all hanged: James Bulger, Patrick Hacket or Bristeen, Martin Millea, John Stack and Felix Donnelly, and Edmund Kenny and James Larrassy, with Roberts, who received the Colonel’s watch, the tankard, ladle, and the silver spoons, were all convicted and all executed. Their names drop naturally into blank verse. It is hard upon poor George Roberts too: for the watch he received was no doubt in the very inexpressibles which the Captain himself took from the Colonel’s head.
As for the Captain himself, he says that, on going out of jail, Counsellor Robbins and Lord Carrick proposed a subscription for him—in which, strangely, the gentlemen of the county would not join, and so that scheme came to nothing; and so he published his memoirs in order to get himself a little money. Many a man has taken up the pen under similar circumstances of necessity.
But what became of Captain Freeny afterwards does not appear. Was he an honest man ever after? Was he hanged for subsequent misdemeanours? It matters little to him now; though, perhaps, one cannot help feeling a little wish that the latter fate may have befallen him.
Whatever his death was, however, the history of his life has been one of the most popular books ever known in this country. It formed the class-book in those rustic universities which are now rapidly disappearing from among the hedges of Ireland. And lest any English reader should, on account of its lowness, quarrel with the introduction here of this strange picture of wild courage and daring, let him be reconciled by the moral at the end, which, in the persons of Bulger and the rest, hangs at the beam before Kilkenny jail.
CHAPTER XVI
MORE RAIN IN GALWAY—A WALK THERE—AND THE SECOND GALWAY NIGHT’S ENTERTAINMENT
‘Seven hills has Rome, seven mouths has Nilus’ stream,
Around the Pole seven burning planets gleam.
Twice equal these is Galway, Connaught’s Rome:
Twice seven illustrious tribes here find their home.[24]
Twice seven fair towers the city’s ramparts guard,
Each house within is built of marble hard.
With lofty turret flanked, twice seven the gates,
Through twice seven bridges water permeates.
In the High Church are twice seven altars raised,
At each a holy saint and patron’s praised.
Twice seven the convents, dedicate to Heaven,—
Seven for the female sex—for godly fathers seven.’[25]
HAVING read in Hardiman’s History the quaint inscription in Irish Latin, of which the above lines are a version, and looked admiringly at the old plans of Galway which are to be found in the same work, I was in hopes to have seen in the town some considerable remains of its former splendour, in spite of a warning to the contrary which the learned historiographer gives.
The old city certainly has some relics of its former stateliness; and, indeed, is the only town in Ireland I have seen, where an antiquary can find much subject for study, or a lover of the picturesque an occasion for using his pencil. It is a wild, fierce, and most original old town. Joyce’s Castle in one of the principal streets, a huge square grey tower, with many carvings and ornaments, is a gallant relic of its old days of prosperity, and gives one an awful idea of the tenements which the other families inhabited, and which are designed in the interesting plate which Mr. Hardiman gives in his work. The Collegiate Church, too, is still extant, without its fourteen altars, and looks to be something between a church and a castle, and as if it should be served by Templars with sword and helmet, in place of mitre and crosier. The old houses in the Main Street are like fortresses; the windows look into a court within; there is but a small low door, and a few grim windows peering suspiciously into the street.
Then there is Lombard Street, otherwise called Deadman’s Lane, with a raw-head and cross-bones and a ‘memento mori’ over the door where the dreadful tragedy of the Lynches was acted in 1493. If Galway is the Rome of Connaught, James Lynch Fitzstephen, the Mayor, may be considered as the Lucius Junius Brutus thereof. Lynch had a son who went to Spain as master of one of his father’s ships, and being of an extravagant wild turn, there contracted debts, and drew bills, and alarmed his father’s correspondent, who sent a clerk and nephew of his own back in young Lynch’s ship to Galway, to settle accounts. On the fifteenth day, young Lynch threw the Spaniard overboard. Coming back to his own country, he reformed his life a little, and was on the point of marrying one of the Blakes, Burkes, Bodkins, or others: when a seaman who had sailed with him, being on the point of death, confessed the murder in which he had been a participator.