“In the year ’98 there were the Yeomanry that were the worst of all.  The time Father Murphy was killed there was one of them greased his boots in his heart.  There was one of them was called Micky the Devil in Irish; he never went out without the pitchcap and the triangle, and any rebel he would meet he would put gunpowder in his hair and set a light to it.  The North Cork Militia were the worst; there are places in Ireland where you would not get a drink of water if they knew you came from Cork.  And it was the very same, the North Cork, that went of their own free will to the Boer war, volunteered, asked to go that is.  They had the same sting in them always.  A great many of them were left dead in that war, and a great many better men than themselves.  There was one battle in that war there was no quarter given, the same as Aughrim; and the English would kill the wounded that would be left upon the field of battle.  There is no Christianity in war.”

DENIS BROWNE

“There is a tree near Denis Browne’s house that used to be used for hanging men in the time of ’98, he being a great man in that time, and High Sheriff of Mayo, and it is likely the gentlemen were afeared, and that there was bad work at nights.  But one night Denis Browne was lying in his bed, and the Lord put it in his mind that there might be false information given against some that were innocent.  So he went out and he brought out one of his horses into the lawn before the house, and he shot it dead and left it there.  In the morning one of the butlers came up to him and said, ’Did you see that one of your horses was shot in the night?’ ‘How would I see that?’ says he, ‘and I not rose up or dressed?’ So when he went out they showed him the horse, and he bade the men to bury it, and it wasn’t two hours after before two of them came to him.  ‘We can tell you who it was shot the horse,’ they said.  ’It was such a one and such a one in the village, that were often heard to speak bad of you.  And besides that,’ they said, ‘we saw them shooting it ourselves.’  So the two that gave that false witness were the last two Denis Browne ever hung.  He rose out of it after, and washed his hands of it all.  And his big house is turned into a convent, and the tree is growing there yet.  It is in the time of ’98 that happened, a hundred years ago.”

THE UNION

“As to the Union, it was bought with titles.  Look at the Binghams and the rest, they went to bed nothing, and rose up lords in the morning.  The day it was passed Lady Castlereagh was in the House of Parliament, and she turned three colours, and she said to her husband, ’You have passed your treaty, but you have sold your country.’  He went and cut his throat after that.  And it is what I heard from the old people, there was no priest in Ireland but voted for it, the way they would get better rights, for it was only among poor persons they were