MYLES USSHER.
Every one knows that Ireland, for her sins, maintains two distinct,
regularly organised bodies of police; the duties of the one being to
prevent the distillation of potheen or illicit whiskey, those of the
other to check the riots created by its consumption. These forces,
for they are in fact military forces, have each their officers,
sub-officers, and privates, as the army has; their dress, full
dress, and half dress; their arms, field arms, and house arms;
their barracks, stations, and military regulations; their captains,
colonels, and commander-in-chief, but called by other names; and, in
fact, each body is a regularly disciplined force, only differing from
the standing army by being carried on in a more expensive manner.
The first of these--that for preventing the distillation of potheen,
commonly called the revenue police--was, at the time of our story,
honoured by the services of Myles Ussher. He held the office of one
of the sub-inspectors in the county of Leitrim, and he resided in the
town of Mohill; he had a body of about five-and-twenty men under him,
with a sergeant; and his duty was, as I have before said, to prevent
the distillation of potheen. This was only to be done by seizing
it when made, or in the process of making; and, as a considerable
portion of the fine levied in all cases possible from the dealers
in the trade, became the perquisite of the sub-inspector or officer
effecting the seizure, the situation in a wild lawless district was
one of considerable emolument; consequently gentlemen of repute and
good family were glad to get their sons into the service, and at the
present time, a commission in the revenue police is considered, if
not a more fashionable, at any rate a more lucrative appointment than
a commission in the army. Among these officers some of course would
be more active than others, and would consequently make more money;
but it will be easily imagined, that however much the activity of
a sub-inspector of revenue police might add to his character and
standing at headquarters, it would not be likely to make him popular
in the neighbourhood in which he resided.
Myles Ussher was most active in the situation which he filled;
whether an impartial judge would have said that he was too much so,
would be a question difficult to settle, as I have no impartial judge
on the subject to whom I can refer; but the persons among whom he
lived thought that he was. At the time I allude to, about ten years
ago, a great deal of whiskey was distilled in the mountains running
between the counties of Leitrim and Cavan, and in different parts
of the County Leitrim. Father Mathew's pledge was then unknown;
the district is a wild country, not much favoured by gentlemen's
residences, and very poor; and, though it may seem to be an anomaly,
it will always be found to be the case that the poorer the people are
the more they drink; and, consequently, Captain Ussher, as he was
usually called in the neighbourhood, found sufficient occupation for
himself and his men.
Now the case is different; the revenue police remain, but their
duties have, in most districts, gone; and they may be seen patrolling
the roads with their officers accompanying them, being bound to walk
so many miles a day. It is very seldom one hears of their effecting a
seizure, and their inactivity is no doubt owing to the prevalence of
Father Mathew's pledge of total abstinence.
Myles Ussher was a Protestant, from the County Antrim in the north of
Ireland, the illegitimate son of a gentleman of large property, who
had procured him the situation which he held; he had been tolerably
well educated; that is, he could read and write sufficiently,
understood somewhat of the nature of figures, and had learnt, and
since utterly forgotten, the Latin grammar. He had natural abilities
somewhat above par; was good-looking, strongly made, and possessed
that kind of courage, which arises more from animal spirits, and from
not having yet experienced the evil effects of danger, than from real
capabilities of enduring its consequences. Myles Ussher had never
yet been hit in a duel, and would therefore have no hesitation in
fighting one; he had never yet been seriously injured in riding, and
would therefore ride any horse boldly; he had never had his head
broken in a row, and therefore would readily go into one; he cared
little for bodily pain if it did not incapacitate him,--little at
least for any pain he had as yet endured, and his imagination was not
strong enough to suggest any worse evil. And this kind of courage,
which is the species by far most generally met with, was sufficient
for the life he had to lead.
But the quality in which Ussher chiefly excelled, and which was most
conducive to give him the character which he certainly held in the
country for courage, talent, and gallantry, was his self-confidence
and assurance. He believed himself inferior to none in powers of body
and mind, and that he could accomplish whatever he perseveringly
attempted. He had, moreover, an overwhelming contempt for the poor,
amongst whom his duties so constantly brought him, and it is not
therefore wonderful that he was equally feared and execrated by them.
I should also state that Myles Ussher had had sagacity enough to keep
some of the money which he had received, and this added not a little
both to his reputation and standing in the country, and also to
the real power which he possessed; for in Connaught ready money is
scarce, and its scarcity creates its importance.
This, then, was Feemy's lover, and she certainly did love him dearly;
he had all the chief ornaments of her novel heroes--he was handsome,
he carried arms, was a man of danger, and talked of deeds of courage;
he wore a uniform; he rode more gracefully, talked more fluently, and
seemed a more mighty personage, than any other one whom Feemy usually
met. Besides, he gloried in the title of Captain, and would not that
be sufficient to engage the heart of any girl in Feemy's position?
let alone any Irish girl, to whom the ornaments of arms are always
dear. But whether he loved her as truly, might, I fear, be considered
doubtful; if so, why were they not married?
Larry Macdermot was too broken-hearted a man, and too low-spirited,
to have objected to Myles on the ground of his being a Protestant: it
was not that he was indifferent about his religion, but he had not
heart enough left to be energetic on any subject. In other respects,
Myles was more than a match for his daughter, in the present fallen
condition of the family. But the matter had not even been mentioned
to him by his daughter or her lover. Ussher was constantly at
Ballycloran,--was in the habit of riding over from Mohill, only three
miles, almost daily, when disengaged, giving his horse to Patsy, the
only male attendant at Ballycloran, and staying the whole morning, or
the evening, there, without invitation; and Larry, if he never seemed
particularly glad, at any rate never evinced any dislike to his
visits.
Whatever war the sub-inspector might wage against run spirits in
the mountains and bogs, he always appeared on good terms with it at
Ballycloran, and as the Macdermots had but little else to give in the
way of hospitality, this was well.
Young Thady could not but see that his sister was attached to Ussher;
but he knew that she could not do better than marry him, and if he
considered much about it, he thought that she was only taking her
fun out of it, as other girls did, and that it would all come right.
Thady was warmly attached to his sister; he had had no one else
really to love; he was too sullen at his prospects, too gloomy from
his situation, to have chosen for himself any loved one on whom to
expend his heart; he was of a disposition too saturnine, though an
Irishman, to go and look for love when it did not fall in his way,
and all that he had to give he gave to his sister. But it must be
remembered that poor Thady had no refinement; how should he? And
though he would let no one injure Feemy if he could help it, he
hardly knew how effectually to protect her. His suspicions were now
aroused by his counsellor Pat Brady; but the effect was rather to
create increased dislike in him against Ussher, than to give rise to
any properly concerted scheme for his sister's welfare.
On the evening previous to the fair at Mohill mentioned in the last
chapter, Captain Ussher with a party of his men had succeeded in
making a seizure of some half-malted barley in a cabin on the margin
of a little lake on the low mountains, which lay between Mohill and
Cashcarrigan. He had, as in these cases was always his practice,
received information from a spy in his pay, who accompanied him,
dressed as one of his own men, to prevent any chance of his being
recognised; this man's name was Cogan, and he had been in the habit
of buying illicit whiskey from the makers at a very cheap rate, and
carrying it round to the farmers' houses and towns for sale, whereby
he obtained considerable profit,--but at considerable risk. With this
employment Captain Ussher had made himself acquainted, and instead of
seizing the man whilst in possession of the whiskey, he had sounded
him, and finding him sufficiently a villain, had taken him into his
pay as a spy; this trade Cogan found more lucrative even than the
former, but also more dangerous; as if detected he might reckon on
his death as certain. He still continued to buy the spirits from
the people, but in smaller quantities; he offered lower prices; and
though he nominally kept up the trade, it was more for the purpose of
knowing where the potheen was, than of buying and selling it.
It was not wonderful therefore that more seizures than ever had been
lately made, and that the men were getting more cautious, and at the
same time more irate and violent in their language. In the present
instance the party had come on the cabin in question unawares; not
that they might not have been noticed, but that the people were
confident of not being suspected. No whiskey had been run there; and
the barley had only lately been brought in turf kishes from another
cabin where it was not thought to be safe.
Three men and an old woman were found in the cabin when Captain
Ussher entered with three of his own men. On being questioned they
denied the existence of either whiskey, malt, or barley; but on
searching, the illicit article was found in the very kishes in which
it had been brought; they were easily discovered shoved into the dark
chimney corner farthest from the door.
"Dat I may never see the light," began the old woman, "if I thought
it wor anything but the turf, and jist the kishes that Barney Smith
left there, the morn; and he to say nothing of the barley, and bring
all these throubles on me and yer honer,--the like of him, the
spalpeen!"
"Never mind my trouble, my dear," said Ussher; "it is little we think
of the trouble of easing you; and who's Barney Smith, ma'am?"
"Oh, then, Barney's jist my daughter's own son; and he coming down
from the mountains with turf, and said he must lave the kishes here,
till he just went back round Loch Sheen with the ass, he'd borrowed
from Paddy Byrne, and he'd be--"
"And very good natured it was of him to leave you the malt instead of
the turf; and who are you, my good men?"
The men had continued smoking their pipes quietly at the fire without
stirring.
"We be sthrangers here, yer honer," said one; "that is, not
sthrangers jist, but we don't live here, yer honer."
"Where do you live, and what's your names?"
"I and Joe Smith live down away jist on the road to Cash, about half
a mile out of this; and Tim Reynolds, he lives away at Drumleesh, on
Mr. Macdermot's land; and my name's Paddy Byrne."
"Oh, oh; so one of you is father of the lad who brought the donkey,
and the other the owner of it; and you neither of you knew what was
in the kishes."
"Sorrow a know, yer honer; ye see Barney brought them down here from
the mountains when we warn't in it; and it war some of the boys up
there was getting him to get away the malt unknownst, hearing of yer
honer, maybe."
"Ah, yes I see--whose land is this on?"
"Counseller Webb's, yer honer."
"Who holds the cabin and potato garden?"
"I do, your honer, jist for my wife's mother, ye see; but I live down
towards Cash."
"Ah, very good-natured of you to your wife's mother. I hope the three
of you have no objection to take a walk to Mohill this evening."
"Ochone, ochone, and it's ruined we'll be, yer honer; and that I may
never see the light if the boys knew it; and yer honer wouldn't have
the death of an ould woman on ye!" the old woman was exclaiming,
while the police began seizing the malt and making prisoners of the
men.
"Carol, see and get an ass to put these kishes on," said Ussher.
"Killeen, pass a rope across these fellows' arms; I suppose they'll
go quiet."
It was now full time for the men to arise when they found that
the rope was to be fastened across their arms; which meant that a
rope was to be fastened on the right arm of one, passed behind his
back, fastened to the arm of the second, and so behind his back
to the third. Smith and Byrne, the former of whom in spite of his
protestations to the contrary was the inhabitant of the cabin, had
given the matter up as lost; but as the other, Tim Reynolds, did in
fact reside at Drumleesh, he thought he might still show some cause
why he should not be arrested for visiting his friend Joe Smith.
"Yer honer won't be afther taking an innocent boy like me," began
Tim, "that knows nothing at all at all about it. Shure yer honer
knows the masther, Mr. Thady down at Ballycloran; he will tell yer
honer I'd nothing in life to do in it. Then don't you know yourself
I live with Joe Reynolds down at Drumleesh, and war only up here
jist gagging with the ould woman and the boys, and knew nothing in
life--how could I?--about the malt, Captain Ussher."
"Oh no, Mr. Reynolds, of course you could not; how could you, as you
justly observe,--particularly being the brother of that inoffensive
character Mr. Joe Reynolds, and you living too on Mr. Macdermot's
property. You and your brother never ran whiskey at Drumleesh, I
suppose. Why should a tenant of the Macdermots escape any more than
one of Counsellor Webb's?"
"No, yer honer, in course not; only you being so thick with the
masther, and that like; and av he'd spake a good word for me--as why
shouldn't he?--and I knowing nothing at all at all about it, perhaps
yer honer--"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Reynolds, I cannot oblige you in this little matter,
but that's not the way I do business. Come along, Killeen; hurry,
it's getting d----d cold here by the water."
With this Captain Ussher walked out of the cabin, and the two men
followed, each having an end of the rope. Smith and Byrne followed
doggedly, but silently; but poor Reynolds, though no lawyer, could
not but feel that he was unjustly treated.
"And will I go to gaol then, jist for coming up to see ould widow
Byrne, Captain?"
"Yes, Mr. Reynolds, as far as I can foresee, you will."
"Then, Captain Ussher, it's you'll be sorry for the day you were
trating that way an innocent boy that knows nothing at all at all
about it."
"Do you mean to be threatening me, you ruffian?"
"No, Captain Ussher, I doesn't threaten you, but there is them as
does; and it's this day's work, or this night's that's all the same,
will be the black night work to you. It's the like of you that makes
ruffians of the boys about; they isn't left the manes of living, not
even of getting the dhry pratees; and when they tries to make out the
rint with the whiskey, which is not for themselves but for them as
is your own friends, you hunts them through the mountains and bogs
like worried foxes; and not that only; but for them as does it, and
them as does not be doing it, is all the same; and it's little the
masther, or, for the like of that, the masther's daughter either,
will be getting from being so thick with sich as you,--harrowing and
sazing his tenants jist for your own fun and divarsion. Mind I am not
threatening you, Captain Ussher, but it's little good you or them as
is in Ballycloran will be getting for the work you're now doing--What
are you pulling at, misther'? D'ye think I can't walk av myself,
without your hauling and pulling like a gossoon at a pig's hind leg."
The last part of Tim's eloquence was addressed to the man who held
the foremost end of the rope, and who was following his officer at a
rapid pace.
Captain Ussher made no further answer to his remonstrating prisoner,
but marched on rapidly towards Carrick after the advanced party,
with whom was Cogan the informer. He, after having pointed out the
cabin, of course did not wait to be recognised by its occupiers.
This capture was the subject of the discussion held on the fair-day
at Mulready's whiskey-shop in Mohill, at which Joe Reynolds
the prisoner's brother had presided, as Brady informed Thady
Macdermot,--or at any rate had taken the most noisy part. To tell the
truth, our friend Pat himself had been present all the evening at
Mulready's, and if he did not talk so loud, he had said full as much
as Joe. The latter was naturally indignant at the capture of his
brother, who, in fact, at the time was living in his cabin, though he
did hold an acre or two of ground in the same town-land as Joe Smith
and the widow Byrne. He was not, however, engaged in the potheen
making there; and though at the moment of the entrance of the police,
the party were all talking of the malt, which had, in fact, been
brought from Byrne's cabin to that of his mother and brother-in-law,
Reynolds had really nothing to do with the concern.
His known innocence made the party more indignant, and they
consequently swore that among them they'd put an end to our poor
friend Ussher, or as Joe Reynolds expressed it, "we'll hole him till
there ar'nt a bit left in him to hole." Now, for the benefit of the
ignorant, I may say that, "holing a man," means putting a bullet
through him.
The injuries done by the police were not, however, the only subject
discussed at Mulready's that night.
Ribbonism, about 183--, was again becoming very prevalent in parts
of Ireland, at any rate so said the stipendiary magistrates and the
inspectors of police; and if they said true, County Leitrim was full
of ribbonmen, and no town so full as Mohill. Consequently the police
sub-inspector at Ballinamore, Captain Greenough, had his spies as
well as Captain Ussher, and Joe Reynolds was a man against whom
secret information had been given. Joe was aware that he was a marked
man, and consequently, if not actually a ribbonman, was very well
inclined to that or anything else, which might be inimical to gaols,
policemen, inspectors, gaugers, or any other recognised authority;
in fact, he was a reckless man, originally rendered so by inability
to pay high rent for miserably bad land, and afterwards becoming
doubly so from having recourse to illegal means to ease him of his
difficulties.
He, and many others in the neighbourhood of Mohill somewhat similarly
situated, had joined together, bound themselves by oaths, and had
determined to become ribbonmen; their chief objects, however, at
present, were to free themselves from the terrors of Captains Ussher
and Greenough, and to prevent their landlords ejecting them for
non-payment of rent. It would be supposed a man of Pat Brady's
discernment, station, and character, would not have wished to
belong to, or have been admitted by, so desperate a society; but he,
nevertheless, was not only of them, but one of their leaders, and it
can only be supposed that "he had his rasons."
All these things were fully talked over at Mulready's that night.
The indignities offered to humanity by police of every kind, the
iniquities of all Protestants, the benefits likely to accrue to
mankind from an unlimited manufacture of potheen, and the injustice
of rents, were fully discussed; on the latter head certainly Brady
fought the battle of his master, and not unsuccessfully; but not on
the head that he had a right to his own rents, but what he was to do
about Flannelly, if he did not get them.
"And shure, boys, what would the ould masther do, and what would Mr.
Thady do without the rint among ye,--an' ould Flannelly dunning about
him with his bonds, and his bills and morgidges? How'd ye like to
see the good ould blood that's in it now, driven out by the likes of
Flannelly and Keegan, and them to be masthers in Ballycloran?"
"That's all very well, Pat, and we'd be sorry to see harum come to
Mr. Larry and the young masther along of such born robbers as them;
but is them dearer to us than our own flesh and blood? As long as
they and the like of them'd stand between us and want, the divil a
Keegan of them all'd dare put a foot in Ballycloran. But who is it
now rules all at Ballycloran? Who, but that bloody robber, Ussher?
They'd go through the country for him, the born ruffian,--may food
choke him!--and he making little of them all the time. Bad manners to
the like of him! they say he never called an honest woman his mother.
Will I, Mr. Brady, be giving my blood for them, and he putting my
brother in gaol, and all for sitting up warming his shins at Loch
Sheen? No; may this be my curse if I do!" and Joe Reynolds swallowed
a glass of whiskey; "and you may tell Mr. Thady, Pat, if he wants
the boys to stick to him, let him stick to them, and not be helping
a d----d ruffian to be dhriving the lives out of them he should
befriend. And maybe he will want us, and that soon; and if he'll
stick to us now, as his fathers always did, sure it's little he need
be fearing Flannelly and Keegan. By G----, the first foot they set in
Ballycloran they shall leave there forever, if Thady Macdermot will
help rid his father's land of that bloody ruffian."
"It's little Mr. Thady loves the Captain, Joe, and it's little he
ever will, I think; however, you can come up, you know, on Friday,
and say your own say about your brother, and the rint and all."
"And so I will come, Pat; but there's all the rint I have, and Mrs.
Mulready, I think, 'll have the best part of that," and he jingled
a few halfpence in his pocket. So ended the meeting previous to the
conversation in Macdermot's rent-office.