MORE ATROCITIES AND LAND CRIMES
I brought my family back to Kerry in the following summer, and after I
had rebuilt Edenburn I lived there until I gave it to my elder son, who
has it to this day and resides there in peace.
Matters were very different to that state of idyllic simplicity in the
critical times on which I am still dwelling.
One night, while in London, I was at the House of Commons, and the
London correspondent of the _Freeman_, being presumably extremely short
of what he would term 'copy,' he proceeded to make observations about me
after this fashion:--
'Over here Mr. Hussey is something of a fish out of water. It would be
hazardous to say that if he was to begin his career as an agent again he
would eschew the system that has made him famous, but his present frame
of mind is unquestionably one of doubt as to whether, after all, the
game was worth the candle.'
That young man will go far as a writer of fiction.
I received, among more pleasant welcomes on my return to my native land,
the following delightful blast of vituperation from the _Irish Citizen_,
and beg to tender the unknown author my profound thanks for the
diversion his ink-slinging afforded me:--
'Here is something about a man who ought to have been murdered any day
since 1879--indeed we don't know that he should have been let live even
up to that date, and as for his family, their translation to the upper
regions by means of a simple charge of dynamite, which nobody of any
sense or importance would even think of condemning, has been most
unaccountably deferred to the present year. This man is Mr. S.M. Hussey,
the miasma of whose breath, according to a well-informed murder organ in
Dublin, poisons one-half of the kingdom of Kerry. Let any man read the
speeches delivered in Upper Sackville Street, and the articles in
_United Ireland_ against Mr. Hussey, and he must ask why the fiend
incarnate has not been murdered long since. The infamy of persistently
turning hatred on a man like Mr. Hussey, and then escaping the
consequences of having thereby murdered him, has no parallel in any
country in the world. Inciting to murder is practically reduced to a
science in Ireland. That Mr. Hussey has not been murdered years ago is
not the fault of the scientist, but the watchfulness of the police.'
My experience while in England had been that few people I met really
appreciated what boycotting was like, so how are my readers of twenty
years afterwards to do so? Yet when I went back to Ireland, it seemed to
me even more cruel than when I had grown comparatively accustomed by
sheer proximity to it.
Mr. Parnell had himself given the order in a public speech:--
'Shun the man who bids for a farm from which a tenant has been evicted,
shun him in the street, in the shop, in the marketplace, even in the
place of worship, as if he were a leper of old.'
This was done with the thoroughness which characterises Irishmen when
back-sliding into unimaginable cruelties. Should a boycotted man enter
chapel, the whole congregation rose as with one accord and left him
alone in the building. Considering the sensitive and pious disposition
of the average Irishman, such ostracism was even more poignant than it
would be to an Englishman.
Only two families in Kerry, possibly in Munster, at Christmas 1885, had
the courage to resist the National League police, commonly called
moonlighters. These two were the Curtins and the Doyles. The Curtins had
to be under constant police protection, were insulted wherever they
went, and their murdered father was openly called 'the murderer.' As for
the Doyles, the Board of Guardians was urged to harass his unfortunate
children, who were both deaf and dumb.
The same Board of Guardians was most lavish in its relief to any man
evicted for declining to pay his rent. In one case they gave a man
fifteen shillings a week--or treble the ordinary out-of-door relief--for
over six years.
Sir James Stephen, a man of acute discriminations, who has done more
justice to the Irish problem than any one else, wrote:--
'The great difficulty the Land League and the National League have had
to contend with is that of hindering the neighbouring farmers, peasants,
and labourers from frustrating the strike against rent by taking up
vacant farms, however they came to be vacant. Boycotting never succeeded
unless crime was at its back. The Crimes Act cut the ground from under
the feet of the boycotters, not so much by its direct prohibitions of
the practice as by making it unsafe to commit outrages in enforcing the
law of the League. The Land League and the National League were nothing
else but screens for secret societies whose work was to enforce the
League decrees by outrage and murder.'
Whenever the 'History of Modern Ireland' comes to be written, that
glowing outburst of truth ought to be quoted.
There were some evictions carried out at Farranfore on the estate of
Lord Kenmare, by the sub-sheriff, Mr. Harnett, and a force of military
and police numbering about one hundred and thirty.
During the eviction of one Daly, horns were blown and the chapel bell
set ringing. These appeals drew about three thousand people to the
place, who groaned and threw some stones, besides growing so menacing
that the Riot Act had to be read, upon which the whole crowd moved off.
This brought a characteristic effusion from _United Ireland_:--
'We remember the time when Kerry was a county as quiet as the grave,
when its member, Henry A. Herbert, in the debate on the Westminster Act
of 1871, was able to rise in his place and boast that in purely Celtic
counties like his there was no crime, and that agrarian outrages was
confined to districts infused with English blood, like Meath and
Tipperary. What has changed it? Principally the malpractices of a couple
of agents ruling over half its area, whose bloated rentals grow swollen
under their hands with the sweat of dumb and hopeless possessors.'
Whatever else he possessed, that writer had not one vestige of truth
with which to cover the indecency of his misrepresentations.
He did not mention that Mr. Matthew Harris, a Member for Galway, had
publicly observed that if the tenant farmers of Ireland shot down
landlords as partridges are shot in the month of September, he would
never say a word against them.
It is a fact that the convulsion of horror at the murder of Lord
Frederick Cavendish alone prevented an organised campaign for the
'removal' of Irish landlords on a systematic and wholesale scale.
By the way, according to his son, it was quite by chance that Professor
Mahaffy--that illustrious ornament of Trinity College--was not also
murdered. He had intended to walk over with poor Mr. Burke after the
entry of the Viceroy and Chief Secretary, but he was detained by an
undergraduate and so found it too late to catch the doomed victim before
he started. Had he walked with them, it is questionable if the murderers
would have attacked three men: on the other hand, he might, of course,
have been added to the slain.
There was a meeting of Lord Kenmare's and Mr. Herbert of Muckross's
tenants at Killarney addressed by Mr. Sheehan, M.P., who advised them,
as the landlords refused 70 per cent, only to offer 50 per cent., and
nothing at all in March (1887), as by that time the new Irish Parliament
would have allotted the land free to the present holders, without any
compensation to the landlords.
Despite the efforts of traitors on both sides of the Channel, that Irish
Parliament has not yet been summoned.
The parish priest, Mr. Sheehy, stopped the Limerick hunting, and so took
£24,000 a year out of the pockets of the very poor. That man did more
harm than the landlords, who alone gave the poor work, and there is no
doubt that many of the worst crimes were instigated and indirectly
suggested from the altar.
At this point I want to interpose with one word to the reader to beg him
not to regard this as either a connected narrative of crime, much less a
regular essay with proper deductions--the trimmings to the joint--but
only a series of observations as I recall events which impressed me, and
which I think may come home with some force to a happier generation that
knew neither Parnellism nor crime. To write a consecutive and connected
history of these atrocities would be to compile a volume of horrors. I
prefer to give a few recollections of outrages, and to let the direct
simplicity of these terrible reminiscences impress those who have bowels
of compassion.
A gentleman named Nield was killed in Mayo, simply because he was
mistaken for my son Maurice. This was in broad daylight, in the town of
Charlestown. It was raining hard at the time--a thing so common in
Ireland that no one mentions it any more than they do the fact of the
daily paper appearing each morning--and the unfortunate victim had an
umbrella up, so the mob could not see his face. They shouted, 'Here's
Hussey,' and tried to pull him off the car, but the parish priest
stopped this. However, before he could reduce the villains to the fear
of the Church, which does affect them more than the fear of the Law,
they gave poor Nield a blow on the head, and, though he lived for six
months, he never recovered.
Another time, when returning to his house in Mayo from Ballyhaunis, on a
dark night, my son Maurice found a wall built, about eighteen inches
high, across the road, for the express purpose of upsetting him. It was
only by the grace of God--as they say in Kerry--and his own careful
driving, that he was preserved.
In those same Land League times, my son was a prominent gentleman rider.
At Abbeyfeale races he rode in a green jacket and won the race, which
produced a lot of enthusiasm, the crowd not knowing who it was sporting
the popular colour. They only heard it was my son after he had left the
course, whereupon a mob rushed to the station, and the police had to
stand four deep outside the carriage window to protect him, to say
nothing of an extra guard at the station gates.
The cordiality of my fellow-countrymen also provided me with another
disturbed night at Aghadoe, which I had leased from Lord Headley.
To quiet the apprehensions of my family, and also to relieve the mind of
the D.I. from anxiety about my tough old self, there were always five
police in the house, and two on sentry duty all night.
On this particular date, about two o'clock in the morning, we were
aroused by hearing shots fired in the wood below the house, the plan of
the miscreants being to draw the police away from the house. As this did
not succeed, a second party began a counter demonstration in another
quarter. The theory is that a third party wanted to approach the house
from the back in the temporary absence of the constabulary, and
disseminate the house, its contents, and the inhabitants into the air
and the immediate vicinity by the gentle and persuasive influence of
dynamite.
However, the police were not to be tricked, and soon the fellows, having
grown apprehensive, or having exhausted all their ammunition, were heard
driving _off_. Signs of blood were found on the road towards Beaufort
next morning, so the attacking force suffered some inconvenience in
return for giving us a bad night.
Lord Morris, among a group of acquaintances in Dublin, pointing to me,
said:--
'That's the Jack Snipe who provided winter shooting for the whole of
Kerry, and not one of them could wing him.'
'Mighty poor sport they got out of it,' I answered, 'and I have an even
worse opinion of their capacity for accurate aiming than I have of their
benevolent intentions.'
Other people know more of oneself than one does, and I was much
interested to hear that, in this year of grace, the editor of the _Daily
Telegraph_ said of me:--
'Sam Hussey, yes, that's the famous Irishman they used to call
"Woodcock" Hussey, because he was never hit, though often shot at.'
I always thought 'Woodcock' Carden had the monopoly of the epithet, but
am proud to find I infringed his patent.
I was benevolently commended by a vituperative ink-slinger, Daniel
O'Shea, in his letter to the _Sunday Democrat_ in 1886, but none of
those he blackguarded were in the least inconvenienced by 'the roll of
his tongue,' as the saying is:--
'A vast number of the Irish have been heartlessly persecuted by the most
despotic landlords of Ireland, such as Lord Kenmare, Herbert, Headley,
Hussey, Winn, and the Marquis of Lansdowne, all of whom are Englishmen
by birth, and consequently aliens in heart, despots by instinct,
absentees by inclination, and always in direct opposition to the cause
of Ireland. Poor-rate, town-rate, income-tax, are nothing less than
wholesale robbery, and is it any wonder that some of the people who are
thus oppressed should be driven to desperation? It is deplorable to
learn that they should have had any cause to commit what are called
"agrarian" crimes. Why not turn their attention to these landlords, the
police, the travelling coercion magistrates, not forgetting the
emergency men? These are the people to whom I would direct the attention
of the men of Kerry.'
I have given a number of examples of how I have been genially
appreciated in the hostile Press, but my family are of opinion that it
would not be fair, considering how many kind things were published in
loyal journals, not to render some tribute to them too. I was sincerely
obliged when I received a good word, but, frankly, the bad ones amused
me much more. However, I am not ungrateful, and I have specially prized
one able description of my attitude which appeared in the _Globe_, the
manly strain of the writing of which is in healthy contrast to the
hysterical effusions tainted with adjectival mania of those who wanted
me shot, but were too cowardly to fire at me themselves:--
'Mr. Hussey is admittedly fair and just in his dealings with his own
tenants. But he is only just and fair, which, in the ethics of Irish
agrarianism, is equivalent to being a rack-renter and a tyrant. He
refuses to let his own land at whatever the tenants think well to pay
for it. He persists, with exasperating obstinacy, in refusing to
sacrifice the interests of the landlords for whom he acts. In short, Mr.
Hussey is one of the most determined and formidable obstacles to the
success of the Land League. While such men have the courage to face the
agrarian conspiracy, that grand consummation of patriotic effort--the
rooting out of landlordism--must be a somewhat tough and tedious
business. He has lived in the midst of enemies, who would have murdered
him if only they had the opportunity. His life, it may be safely said,
has had no stronger security than his own ability to protect it.'
And yet some one ventured to call Irish land agents 'popularity-hunting
scoundrels.'
'Popularity and getting in money were never on the same bush,' as I told
Lord Kenmare, and if I had stopped to think how I should make myself
popular, I should have bothered my head about what I did not care
twopence for, and provided an even more easy target for firing at at
short range.
Drifting from a man who paid no heed to scoundrels, I am led to allude
to the attitude of a profession, the members of which profited by their
amenities--I, of course, mean solicitors--because some one put a
question to me on the subject only the other day.
My answer is, that none of the solicitors were in the Land League, and
they did not instigate outrages; but they drew comfortable fees for
defending the perpetrators.
Swindlers and murderers never agree, for they practise distinct
professions.
We were fighting a Land War, and though I have kept back land questions
as much as I can, in order not to weary the reader with what never
wearies me, I have one or two examples to give which cannot be omitted
if I am to portray the true facts.
My firm was agent for an estate in Castleisland, the rent of which, in
1841, was £2300. I exhibited the rental, showing only three quarters in
arrear. By 1886 it was cut down by the Commissioners to £ 1800, and the
landlord sold it for £30,000, for which the tenants used to pay four per
cent, for forty-nine years, to cover principal and interest.
There was a tenant on that estate named Dennis Coffey. He took a farm at
£105 a year; the Commissioners reduced that rent to £80. He purchased it
for £1440--eighteen years' purchase, for which his son has £42 a year
for forty-nine years. The father had purchased a farm for fee-simple of
equal value for £3000, which he left to two others of his sons. So that
one son, by paying half what he had covenanted to pay, and which he
could pay, gets a farm equal in value to what his father paid £3000 in
hard cash for. The man who is paying rent has his farm well stocked; the
others are paupers, and one died in the poorhouse.
That may belong to to-day, and not to the period of outrage with which I
have been dealing; but it duly points the moral, and is the outcome of
those times.
At the Boyle Board of Guardians in 1887, upon a discussion over the
Kilronan threatened evictions, Mr. Stuart said:--
'There was one of these men arrested by the police. His rent was £4,
12s. 6d., and, when arrested, a deposit-receipt for £220 was found in
his pocket.'
This case had been freely cited at home and in America as a typical
instance of the ruthless tyranny of Irish landlords.
My friend and neighbour, Mr. Arthur Blennerhassett, addressed the
following letter to Mr. W.E. Gladstone, then Prime Minister:--
'Sir--I beg respectfully to call your attention to the following
statement. In 1866, Judge Longfield conveyed to my uncle, under what was
called an indefeasible title, the lands of Inch East, Ardroe and Inch
Island, and previous to the sale, Judge Longfield caused them to be
valued by Messrs. Gadstone and Ellis, and in the face of the rental, he
certified that the fair letting value of Inch East and Ardroe was £230,
and that the fair letting value of Inch Island was £75, now in hand. On
the strength of will, my uncle purchased the lands valued at £305 for
£6200, and your sub-Commissioners have just reduced the rental of Inch
East and Ardroe at the rate of from £230 to £170 a year.
I therefore request you will be pleased to take some steps to recoup me
for the £60 a year I have lost by the action of the Government, and I
may say this can be partially done by abandoning the quit rent and tithe
rent charge, amounting to £34, 5s. 4d., which I am now forced by the
Government to pay without any reduction.
A. BLENNERHASSETT.'
The Right Honourable W.E. Gladstone.
The oracle of Hawarden was as dumb to this as to my effusion to a
similar purport already mentioned. Not even the proverbial postcard was
sent to Tralee, so the verbosity of Mr. Gladstone was strangely checked
when he found himself pinned down to facts by Irish landlords.
Whilst landlords and their families were literally starving, and agents
were collecting what they could at the peril of their lives, the real
land-grabbers, the no-renters, were accumulating money, and investing it
in land.
I sent the following series of sales to the _Times_ to show the real
value of land:--
(1) The interest on Lord Granard's estate, the valuation of which was
five guineas, was sold for £280, and the fee-simple subsequently
bought for £80.
(2) On one of his own farms for which the tenant paid £65 annual rent,
the tenant's interest fetched £750 and auction fees.
(3) A farm at Curraghila, near Tralee, annual rent £70, Poor Law
valuation, £51, 10s., area stat. 73 acres. The tenant's interest was
sold for £700.
(4) Tenant's interest on a farm in County Tipperary, on Lord
Normanton's estate, at yearly rent of £30, was sold for £600, and the
fee-simple purchased for £450.
(5) Tenant's interest at Breaing, near Castleisland, held at the
annual rent of £51, 10s., was sold for £550.
(6) At Abbeyfeale, County Kerry, tenant of a small farm, at annual
rent of twenty-four shillings, sold his interest for £55.
All the sales, save the Tipperary one, were in a district in which,
prior to the Land Act of 1881, tenant-right was unknown.
Poetry is always congenial to an Irishman, probably because it has
licences almost as great as he likes to take, and has a vague,
irresponsible way of putting things, much akin to his own methods.
Here are some lines from the 'Irish Tenant's Song' which express a good
deal of the popular emotion:--
Oh, Parnell, dear, and did you hear the news that's going round?
The landlords are forbid by law to live on Irish ground.
No more their rent-days they may keep, nor agents harsh distrain,
The widow need no longer weep, for over is their reign.
I met with mighty Gladstone, and he took me by the hand,
And he said, 'Hurrah for Ireland! 'tis now the happy land.
'Tis a most delightful country that I for you have made--You
may shoot the landlord through the head who asks that rent be paid.'
We care not for the agent, nor do we care for those
Who come upon us to distrain--we pay them back in blows.
And when hopeless, helpless, ruined, these landlords vile shall roam,
We'll hunt and hound them from the roofs they've held so long as home.
I don't say that was sung in Castleisland, but it might have been the
local hymn and verbal companion to the brutal misdeeds of the benighted
inhabitants.
As if matters were not bad enough, that Apostle of outrage Mr. Michael
Davitt came to Castleisland on February 21, 1886, and in a pestilential
speech, inciting to crime, he showed that, at all events, he appreciated
that for sheer blackness and turpitude Kerry was bad to beat. He said:--
'For some time past Kerry has attracted more attention for the
occurrences which have been taking place here, than the whole remainder
of Ireland put together. I am not without hope that henceforth, until
the battle with landlordism and Dublin Castle is triumphantly over, the
people of Kerry will be towers of strength to the national cause. The
hope of Irish landlordism is now centred in Kerry. Elsewhere it has
none, it is a social rinderpest, since the National League was started
1600 families have been turned out in this one county.'
Captain M'Calmont in the House of Commons, three weeks afterwards,
called attention to Mr. Baron Dowse's address to the Grand Jury of the
County of Kerry in which he stated:--
'That this county is in a very much worse state than it has been for
years: that there are no less than three hundred offences specially
reported to the constabulary since the Assizes of 1885, consisting of
two cases of murder, eighteen cases of letters threatening to murder,
thirty-nine cases of cattle, horse, and sheep stealing, eleven cases of
arson, eighteen cases of maiming cattle, fifty-two cases of seizing
arms, seventy-four cases of sending threatening letters, and twenty-four
cases of intimidation.'
You will observe that this is the same picture from two different points
of view.
Almost the worst case in which I was personally interested, was that of
the Cruickshank family.
The father, an industrious, respectable, elderly Scotsman, supported his
family at Inch by the proceeds of a rabbit-warren which he rented. He
had no farm, and therefore might expect to live in peace, even in Kerry,
in those times; but, as he was a Scotch Protestant, and had arms, he was
a marked man.
Having been threatened, he was partially guarded by the police who
patrolled the district. However, in April 1885, when the Prince of Wales
visited Ireland, and the constabulary from country districts were
drafted into the towns through which he had to pass, a number of
disguised Nationalists entered Cruickshank's house at night. They gave
him a frightful beating, even breaking a gun on his head, which was
seriously injured. This was done in the presence of his wife and
daughters, and of a young son who, with one of his sisters, went off in
the night to a police station four miles distant, to obtain assistance
for his father.
Between the fight and the chill received that night, the boy fell into a
decline of which he died in May 1886. One daughter, not strong at the
time of the outrage, became a chronic invalid. The father, as soon as he
was able to move after the perpetration, applied for compensation under
the Crimes Act, but as it was then to expire in about a fortnight, the
Lord-Lieutenant refused to consider the case. The poor fellow continued
to suffer from the wounds on his head, and so affected was he by the
shock of his son's death, that he became insensible and only survived
him a few weeks, leaving his widow and three daughters without any means
of support.
My wife and the former Archdeacon of Ardfert appealed for subscriptions
and obtained £120, which enabled the unfortunate survivors to return to
Scotland.
That was the settlement of the land question that suited the
Nationalists, namely, to cause the death of the head of the family, and
to get the rest out of the country. It did not say much for the
civilisation of the nineteenth century, but after the brutalities of the
spring of 1871 in Paris, there can be no doubt how thin is the veneer
over the barbarity of even the most civilised; those deeds were
perpetrated in the heart of the European capital specially devoted to
amusement: what I describe took place in the most distant portion of
Europe, where Nature is lovely and man, alas, the creature of impulse,
the prey of those who lead him into the worst temptations.
Another settlement was suggested by an anonymous writer who concealed
his identity under the pseudonym of Saxon. He observed:--
'Two hundred millions of English money are now (1886) to be spent buying
out Irish landlords, but would it not be surely better and more in
accordance with reason and justice to buy out the tenants? At a very low
calculation, two hundred millions would put a couple of hundred pounds
in every Irishman's pocket, and there is not one of them that would
refuse to leave his beloved country, and bless America or Australia on
these terms. The island could be populated with Scotch and English
settlers, and our difficulties be at an end. The Irish must not have
their own loaf and ours too. I commend this scheme to Messrs. Gladstone
and Morley. It is quite as just, quite as reasonable, and more forcible
than their own.'
Hear, hear! say I, but our grandchildren's grandchildren when grey old
men will still be trying to settle the Irish question, which can never
be settled until there arises a big man strong enough to force his will
on the Empire and fortunate enough to be able to hand over the reins of
political dictatorship to an equally enlightened and powerful successor.
It is hopeless to expect Irish matters to go well, when the balance of
parties in the House of Commons is held by hirelings and traitors, men
who debase patriotism and would to-day encourage outrage as much as they
did in 1884, if it was worth their mercenary while.
I had a word to write myself a year later to Mr. T. Harrington, who
thought he could tell as many lies about me as suited his own purpose,
and I addressed my reply, published on August 29, 1887, to the Editor of
the _Times_. It ran as follows:--
'Sir--I have just read the speech of Mr. T. Harrington in the debate on
Mr. Gladstone's motive relating to the proclamation of the National
League, in which he states that I invented and gave to Mr. Balfour the
particulars of the boycotting of Justin M'Carthy. I beg you will allow
me to state that I never wrote to Mr. Balfour, or to any member of the
Government, on that or any subject. Had I supplied the information, I
would have mentioned some facts which Mr. Balfour omitted, for instance,
that a man named Andrew Griffin was nearly murdered because he brought
provisions to Justin M'Carthy, that four men were put on their trial for
the outrage, but notwithstanding a plain charge from the judge, the
jury, fearing the vengeance of the League, acquitted the prisoners. I
would also mention a fact that would seem almost incredible to your
English Catholic readers, that the old man cannot attend his place of
worship without being hissed at in the church, and that his aged wife,
while partaking of the sacrament of the Holy Communion, was hissed at
and jeered. These things can be proved on oath, and are not to be set
aside by frothy declamation. Neither can the fact be disproved that one
of the offences for which Justin M'Carthy has suffered was that he
purchased his farm from me under Lord Ashbourne's Act, a proceeding
which (as it is likely to settle down the country) is considered a
deadly crime; and for committing the same offence another man in the
same barony had his cows stabbed.
Your obedient servant, S.M. HUSSEY.'
There is yet another case I cannot forbear from handing on to a
generation that knows no outrages nearer home than Macedonia. Six
ruffians, having their faces covered with handkerchiefs, and armed with
heavy cudgels, entered the house of a farmer named Lambe and began to
beat him. To save his head from the blows, he ran the upper part of his
body up the chimney and held on by the cross-bar. His wife, on coming to
his assistance, was beaten so severely that her skull was fractured,
while an aged female--stated to be in her ninety-seventh year--was not
only roughly handled, but also beaten. A most discreditable episode
indeed, in a land formerly renowned for respect for womanhood, and for
the warm-hearted generosity of her sons.
In only one instance in Kerry was police protection being regarded as
necessary up to the present summer, and all who know the contemporary
condition of affairs will at once recollect that Mrs. Morrogh Bernard is
the lady in question.
The late Mr. Edward Morrogh Bernard of Fahagh Court, Bullybrack, was a
Roman Catholic, who had resided in Kerry all his life, and some
five-and-twenty years ago he built on his property the residence in
which he died in the spring of 1904. He and his wife, an English lady,
who was justly beloved for her wide charity, were one night, after
dinner, sitting in their drawing-room, when a party of masked
moonlighters walked in. One of them held a pistol to her head, and told
her not to scream or move, else he would shoot her. Another performed
the same kindly office for Mr. Bernard, whilst the rest ransacked the
house for arms and money.
Mrs. Bernard noticed that the hands of the man who was threatening her
with violence were not those of an agricultural labourer, because they
were small and white. On the strength of this clue, the police arrested
a little tailor in the village, and she courageously identified him in
court, though every possible pressure was brought on her not to do so.
He was sentenced to several years' imprisonment, and his friends vowed
they would make it hot for Mrs. Bernard, and ever after she has been
protected by two or three constables. The police did not live in Fahagh
Court, but in a hut specially built for them a few yards off, and at
night they always came into the house. To the very last days of Mr.
Bernard's life whenever he and she went to pay a call on a neighbour,
two policemen followed them either on a car or on bicycles, and I have
never heard any reasons advanced to show that these precautions were
superfluous.
Meeting this little party on the highway was the only thing in the
twentieth century which brought home to the British tourist the terrible
deeds which blackened Kerry in the eighties.
I have always looked on the light side of life, even when it has seemed
blackest, and so I will not close this chapter without a more cheery
anecdote.
There was a good deal of friction among Land Leaguers over the amount of
relief money and other remuneration doled out by the rebel authorities.
This seldom reached a more droll pitch than in the complaint of a girl
at Rossbeigh, who wrote to a prominent member of Parliament--since
deceased--that another girl had been awarded a pound for booing at a
sergeant, 'while I, who broke a policeman's head, never got so much as
would pay for a candle to the Blessed Virgin.'
Sometimes the crafty Paddy utilised the agitation for his own purposes,
as the following example will prove.
A farmer's house was fired into, but no one could tell the reason why,
for he had not paid any rent and was a good Land Leaguer. He was asked
if he could account for it himself, and after some shuffling under
promise of strict secrecy, made the following revelation.
'Well, it was this way, I married a dacent girl from the North, and all
went well with us until her mother came along, and she had the divil's
own tongue, and nothing could get her out of the house. I would say "the
North has fine air, would not a change back there get you your health?"
'To which the old Biddy would reply:--
'"Where would I live except with my only daughter and her husband?"
'And this sort of thing made me desperate, and I promised the "bhoys"
five shillings if they would fire round the house on a certain night. On
the evening that had been agreed upon, I began reading on the paper how
farms in Castleisland were being fired into, and the old woman said that
if these things were so, County Kerry was worse than County Cork, and I
thought to myself "maybe you'll find it so, you ould divil."
'Well, they came and did their work in grand style after we had gone to
bed, and there was the mother-in-law screeching and bawling, and every
hour too long for her until daylight, when I put her in the cart and
drove her to the station.'
The sequel is that the couple left to themselves lived happily ever
after, a thing more likely to happen to people in England and Ireland,
if it was no one's business to make bad blood between them.