The Year of the French (19 page)

Into the earth which was shovelled upon the coffin was added a quantity of O’Carroll’s blood, which his nephew poured out from a small flask, for there is a saying among the people that “there must be blood spilled at a funeral.” If the purpose was ritualistic, then it was a wasted symbol, for the blood shed by Pryor and O’Carroll was in coming months to shower down upon us manifoldly.

On the following evening, as Mr. Gibson was returning home from an errand which had taken him into Ballina, shots were fired at him from behind a hedge which faces his entryway. Gibson is a bold man and rides armed at all times. He drew his pistol, wheeled his horse towards the hedge, and surprised into flight four men whom he was unable either to capture or to identify, although he later declared that one of them much resembled Malachi Duggan, one of his tenants. Gibson was unpopular, both as landlord and as magistrate, and it was known that he had, like Cooper, been arguing for forceful action against the Whiteboys. And yet Duggan, being questioned by the magistrates, strenuously protested his innocence, and offered to bring forward twenty who would swear to it.

We had now a small war in Killala, with wounds suffered upon the one side, and death upon the other. Of rumours, born of fear and a natural suspicion, there was an abundance. Among Papists it was said that they would fare as had the peasants of Wexford under martial law in the months before the insurrection. Militia and regulars were to be brought in to lash at the triangle and to burn crops and cabins, with the Tyrawley Yeomanry to serve as their belling hounds. And many Protestants, especially among those of the lower orders, believed that a general massacre was to take place, so soon as news arrived that the French had landed. The fear and the hostility were almost palpable in the shabby streets of Killala. A peasant, bulking large and ominous in a small Protestant shop, would gesture towards the length of rope or the tin pot which he required, and the shopkeeper would hand it over in silence, tight-lipped and distant.

Men’s fears having opened the gateways of their imaginations, fantasies more curious even than these gained entrance. The Irish are a most imaginative people, and have peopled the very earth and air with invisible presences, affixing to every hill and cairn some lovely or grotesque image. Yet this is but another way of saying that they are credulous and sunk in superstition, guiding their conduct by the dark utterances of old women and wandering prophecy men. This is at the best of times an impediment to their progress into civilisation, and I cannot but believe, illiberal though this may seem, that the Romish faith offers shelter to the incredible. In times when great events are astir, this propensity to dream can assume dangerous forms.

So it was now. The tumults which had ravaged Ulster and Wexford had thus far left Mayo alone, but they had not passed unnoticed. Here, as everywhere in Ireland, the prophecy men, strolling entertainers and storytellers, had carried magnified and richly coloured accounts of those wretched conflicts. Prophecies were carried from tavern to tavern, village to village, foretelling a great day of deliverance which would free from bondage the people of the Gael. So long as Mayo remained tranquil, scant attention was paid to such nonsense. But now, an apprehensive peasantry listened to and then repeated at the turf fire the apocalyptic poetry of ignorant men. A son with four thumbs had been born to a miller’s wife in Athlone, and this miller would lead the army of the Gael. The final battle was to be fought somewhere beyond the Shannon, in the Valley of the Black Pig. Black, tall-masted ships were hurrying from France and from Spain, carrying the champions of Erin. These glorious predictions, it will be observed, did not involve Mayo: the battles were to take place at a safe, indeed a legendary distance from the Moy. And in their cloudy grandeur (should four thumbs be accounted grand) they bore little relation to our own shabby sorrows—a man killed and tossed into a bog, a man maimed and tortured.

On the first of August, the Tyrawley Yeomanry was ordered into uniform and placed on active service while the magistrates of the barony conducted an enquiry into seditious and criminal actions, with a view to the suppression of the organization styling itself the Whiteboys of Killala. The local magistrates were four in number, Captain Cooper, Mr. Gibson, Mr. Saunders, and my friend Mr. Falkiner. Of Captain Cooper I have already written, and shall have much more to say. Mr. Gibson and Mr. Saunders, although honest enough in a bluff and rough-and-ready fashion, were coarse and abrupt men. Only Mr. Falkiner at all approximated in temper what we in England understand by the word
magistrate
, which is to say an equable disposition and a respect for the rules of evidence and common sense. The magistrates proposed to examine anyone who might have knowledge of the crimes of the Whiteboys, and should answers prove unsatisfactory to bind such over for trial at the assizes. Thus far, they were of course but fulfilling their sworn responsibility. The proceedings were conducted with the most vivid display of force, those wanted for questioning being hauled out of their cabins in rough and peremptory fashion by squads of armed yeomen. There were more instances than one of extreme brutality, against which protests were unavailing. Far worse, it became clear to Mr. Falkiner that the intention of the others was that charges should be laid with or without the evidence to sustain them, on grounds of simple suspicion and to strike terror into the hearts of the peasantry. Throughout the hearings, he argued strenuously but without success against such shocking illegality, the consequences of which were, as we shall see, calamitous.

At the insistence of Mr. Falkiner, I took a seat at the magistrates’ bench, although of course I took no part in the questioning. It was Mr. Falkiner’s belief, good and innocent man that he is, that the presence of a clergyman would place his colleagues upon their best behaviour. It was a wearisome and melancholy affair. I have just now reread the minutes which were kept by Mr. Josiah Greene, the Ballina solicitor who acted as secretary, but his compounding of questions and answers into little mounds of dried oatmeal serves most imperfectly to recall for me those interminable evenings. The great number of those examined spoke no English. Cooper would put the questions in Irish to the witness and would then translate the answers for us. There is no question in my mind but that he exercised great and improper editorial discretion. A witness would respond volubly, hurling into the candlelit room a torrent of barbaric words, gesticulating wildly, and doubtless protesting his innocence with reference to the entire calendar of saints. This would be reduced by Captain Cooper to a laconic, “He still claims he knows nothing.”

I will incorporate at this point the evidence of an English-speaking witness, that the reader may sample it to the best of Mr. Greene’s skill:

S
TATEMENT OF
O
WEN
M
AC
C
ARTHY
, K
ILLALA
, S
CHOOLMASTER

I keep a classical academy in Killala where boys of all ages receive instruction. I am thirty-seven years of age. I came to this barony three years ago. I am a native of Tralee in County Kerry, and have taught school in that county, and also in Cork and in Limerick. In Kerry and in Cork I applied for and received a licence to keep a school, and each time I took my allegiance to King George, whom I recognise as my lawful sovereign. I did not apply for a licence in Killala because that is no longer required by law. I believe oaths are binding, and this is also the teaching of my Church. I have never heard a Papist priest say otherwise.

I have elsewhere than in this barony been arrested upon various charges, but most often for brawling or for disturbing the peace. I am not a Whiteboy or a United Irishman, and I have no knowledge of anyone who is. If I had such knowledge, I would report it to the magistrates. The United Irishmen are madmen and incendiaries. A republic is a country without a king. I have twice taken an oath of allegiance to King George. Of the plans of the Whiteboys, I know only what is common knowledge. I have been shown their so-called proclamation. They are madmen and rapparees, and the man who wrote their proclamation has need of a classical education. On the night that Sam Pryor was mistreated I was drinking in a tavern as many can attest.

The place in County Cork where I kept school was Macroom. There was much Whiteboy activity at Macroom but I had no hand in it. This would have been about twelve years ago. I never met Patrick Lynch, who was called “the Whiteboy Captain of Macroom.” I saw him hanged in Macroom, as did many others.

I have never encouraged disaffection in my pupils. I am a writer of verses in Irish, and these are widely known among those who understand that language. They are all on harmless subjects such as love and the natural world. I have never broken the law when sober.

The questions which were put to MacCarthy may be inferred from his responses, as may the assumptions of his questioners. His evidence, as I recall it, has been much abridged by Mr. Greene, perhaps in the interest of common sense. Thus, both Captain Cooper and Mr. Gibson were made suspicious by the fact that MacCarthy was able to read French, and they pressed him as to whether or not he possessed revolutionary pamphlets from Paris. MacCarthy responded with patience to such imbecilities. He had been routed from his bed at the point of a bayonet, but the circumstances had quickened his wits, and he answered all the questions readily and deferentially, though with, as I thought, a faint sardonic smile. The magistrates were left unsatisfied, however, and several times called him “a plausible rogue.” But for the present they took no action against him.

Seven other men, however, were bound over for trial and were taken to the gaol in Ballina. Most of the “evidence” against them was provided by a man named Paudge Nally, a small, ill-favored fellow with a humpback, who possessed a smattering of English. It was clear even to Captain Cooper that Nally was not a Whiteboy, but he professed a wide knowledge of men in the barony who had demonstrated disaffection in one way or another. Thus, one of the men bound over was a young fellow named Gerald O’Donnell who helped his brother Ferdy work a hillside farm rented from Cooper. It was proved that in the preceding year, when Sam Pryor came there to collect the tithes, Gerald O’Donnell drove him off with curses and oaths. Nally gave evidence that since then young O’Donnell had been making threats against Pryor in the taverns, vowing once that in other counties the men knew how to deal with the ears of tithe proctors.

The testimony of Nally, who thereafter lived for safety’s sake in a room in Cooper’s house, I set at naught. He was the very stuff of which informers are made, retailing stale tavern gossip amidst the snuffles of a perpetually dripping nose. Mr. Falkiner suspected that his “evidence” had been forthcoming in consequence of an accommodation having been made with respect to his rent, which was badly in arrears. This assumption, however repellent, is a logical one, for surely some motive other than an abstract love of public order must have prompted him to so dangerous a course of conduct. Informers are common in Irish courts, but they seldom live into old age.

The seven prisoners were removed from Killala in two farm carts, under a guard of yeomen. The wives and mothers set up a great tumult with their wailing. They clung to the sides of the carts and sought to grasp the bound hands of the prisoners. A large number of people stood watching in the street, and, from most of these, the cries of the women drew forth a sympathetic low muttering. As the carts moved past the chapel, Murphy, the curate, rushed out and held a cross to the lips of the men, who kissed it fervently. But Ferdy O’Donnell stood leaning against the gable end of the chapel, his hands jammed into the waistband of his trousers, and his lips pressed closely together. His friend MacCarthy stood with him, and talked to him.

For a few minutes after the carts had begun to move down the Ballina road, we continued to hear the rumble of their wheels and the hoofbeats of the escort. But the town did not fall back into silence, for the women continued to wail, and the other peasants to talk among themselves. I went back into my house much troubled in spirit, and turned for guidance to our Creator, whom I addressed in language as zealous as that of any canting Methodist.

On the very next night, Paudge Nally’s cabin was attacked by a large body of men. His wife and his poor innocent children were driven out onto the road. Then his cabin was destroyed and his crops burned and his few cattle slaughtered. Such an event would a scant month before have drawn upon itself the horror of the countryside, but now it had been half expected, and men spoke casually of it, as of some minor inevitability.

It is the event witnessed which has the most powerful hold upon the imagination, and I believe that the sight of the prisoners being carried off, the crying women, the creaking carts, lips pressed to crucifix, told more heavily than word of a burned thatch. I then believed, as reason prompted me to believe, that of the seven men seized up, some most likely were in fact Whiteboys and others quite possibly were not. And for the peasants of the barony the spectacle of innocent men being carted off must have been especially pitiable and enraging, a witness to them of their utter dependence upon the will and whims of their masters. In future days, when I had come to know well certain of the peasants, I was told over and over again of this incident, as though with it our troubles had begun.

This is a most sentimental and volatile society, as nearly all travellers here have reported. The bonds of friendship and of family affection are strong. Sensibilities are easily outraged. A man may be ill regarded in his community, but hang him, or even imprison him, and he becomes a popular hero, the subject of tearful or indignant tavern ballads. And should he be a man held in honour and esteem, as was young Gerald O’Donnell, this indignation waxes fierce. Perhaps our troubles did indeed begin when the carts rumbled off towards the Ballina gaol. But there is no way of knowing. The first link in the chain of human passions is often undiscoverable, lost in swirling mists of emotion.