"Now, boys," said the Captain, "all is safe--we may go. Remember,
every man of you, what you've sworn this night, on the book an' altar of
God--not on a heretic Bible. If you perjure yourselves, you may hang
us; but let me tell you, for your comfort, that if you do, there is
them livin' that will take care the lease of your own lives will be but
short."
After this we dispersed every man to his own home.
Reader,--not many months elapsed ere I saw the bodies of this Captain,
whose name was Patrick Devann, and all those who were actively concerned
in the perpetration of this deed of horror, withering in the wind, where
they hung gibbeted, near the scene of their nefarious villany; and
while I inwardly thanked Heaven for my own narrow and almost undeserved
escape, I thought in my heart how seldom, even in this world, justice
fails to overtake the murder, and to enforce the righteous judgment of
God--that "whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."
*****
This tale of terror is, unfortunately, too true. The scene of hellish
murder detailed in it lies at Wildgoose Lodge, in the county of Louth,
within about four miles of Carrickmacross, and nine of Dundalk. No such
multitudinous murder has occurred, under similar circumstances, except
the burning of the Sheas, in the county of Tipperary. The name of the
family burned in Wildgoose Lodge was Lynch.
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