About a hundred years ago a most notorious robber, called Captain Webb,
used to make the County Mayo his headquarters; and dreadful tales are
still current amongst the people of his deeds of violence and cruelty.
Many beautiful young girls he carried off by force or fraud; and when
he grew tired of them it was his practice to strip the unhappy victims
naked, and plunge them down a deep hole near Lough Corrib, which is
still known throughout the county as “Captain Webb’s Hole.”
One day, however, fate worked out a revenge on the audacious highwayman
by the hands of a woman.
He had committed a daring robbery on the highroad—plundered a carriage,
shot the horses, and carried off a noble and lovely girl, who was
returning home with her mother from an entertainment, which had been
given by a great lord in the vicinity. Consequently, as the robber
knew, the ladies were dressed magnificently, and wore the most costly
jewels. After stripping the mother of all her ornaments, he left her
half dead upon the highway; but wrapping a cloak round the young lady,
Captain Webb flung her on the horse before him and galloped off to one
of the many hiding-places he had through the country.
For some time he gave up all his other favourites for the sake of
the beautiful girl, and carried her about with him on all his wild
expeditions, so great was the madness of his love for her.
But at length he grew tired even of her beauty, and resolved to get
rid of her, in the same way as he had got rid of the others, by a cruel
and sudden death.
So one day, when she was out riding beside him, as he always forced her
to do, he brought her to the fatal hole where so many of his victims
had perished, intending to cast her down headlong as he had done to so
many others; but first he told her to dismount and to take off all her
rich garments of silk and gold and her jewels, for she would need them
no longer.
“For pity, then,” she said, “do not look on me while I undress, for it
is not seemly or right to look on a woman undressing; but turn your
back and I shall unclasp my robe and fling it off.”
So the captain turned his back as she desired him, for he could not
refuse her last request; but still he kept close to the edge of the
hole ready to throw her in; when suddenly she sprang upon him, and
placing both hands on his shoulders, pushed him over the edge down into
the fathomless gulf, from which no mortal ever rose alive, and in this
manner the country was freed for evermore from the terrible robber
fiend, by the courage of a brave and beautiful girl.