One of them had, shortly
before this fatal night, prosecuted and convicted some of the
neighboring Ribbonmen, who visited him with severe marks of their
displeasure, in consequence of his having refused to enrol himself as
a member of their body. The language of the story is partly fictitious;
but the facts are pretty closely such as were developed during the
trial of the murderers. Both parties were Roman Catholics, and either
twenty-five or twenty-eight of those who took an active part in the
burning, were hanged and gibbeted in different parts of the county of
Louth. Devann, the ringleader, hung for some months in chains, within
about a hundred yards of his own house, and about half a mile from
Wildgoose Lodge. His mother could neither go into nor out of her cabin
without seeing his body swinging from the gibbet. Her usual exclamation
on looking at him was--"God be good to the sowl of my poor marthyr!"
The peasantry, too, frequently exclaimed, on seeing him, "Poor Paddy!" A
gloomy fact that speaks volumes!
TUBBER DERG; Or, THE RED WELL.
The following story owes nothing to any coloring or invention of
mine; it is unhappily a true one, and to me possesses a peculiar and
melancholy interest, arising from my intimate knowledge of the man whose
fate it holds up as a moral lesson to Irish landlords. I knew him well,
and many a day and hour have I played about his knee, and ran, in my
boyhood, round his path, when, as he said to himself, the world was no
trouble to him.
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