At the fair at Newmill there used to be faction fights, and there used to be companies of policemen under the command of Gore Jones. The policemen would be encamped in a field near by--in the field next to the fair. Their arms would be stacked there. In the evening a fight would commence among the factions. The police would not stir. Gore Jones would not give them any orders to rush in and make peace while the fight was going on. But when the fight was over, he’d rush into the fair field with his men and arrest all who had any signs of blood on them. They were handcuffed and taken to the jail of Ross, and then their families and their friends were kept for days and weeks after, going around to the different landlord magistrates making interest and influence to get them out of jail. That was all a trick of the English government in Ireland, a trick to bring the people whom England had robbed and plundered, more and more under compliment and obligation to those landlord magistrates who were living in possession of the robbery and plunder. They gain their point when they can keep the people always begging and praying to them for some little favor. You now understand why it is that when I am speaking to the Irish people at home and abroad about my recollections, I consider it an interesting thing to them to speak of the fair of Newmill. What else is that I brought in? Yes, my Blackbird road was the road we traveled the day I went to Lord Carbery’s funeral. I have a purpose, too, in speaking of that. It must be some time about the year 1844. With four or five other boys, I mootched from school that day and went to Rath-a-Bharrig, or Castlefreke, as it is christened in the language of the plundering Frekes. Before the Cromwellian time, it, and the land around it belonged to the Barrys, of the Norman time. When we got to the wake-house we did not get in; in fact we kept away from it, because as we ran away from school we did not want to let our fathers see us, so I went over to the lake to look at the swans. I found a swan’s nest with three eggs in it--the largest eggs that ever I saw. I had to put my two hands around one of them, taking it up, showing it to my companions. When the bells rang for the funeral service to move, I took my position behind a big tree in view of the avenue the people would pass through. I watched for my father, and when I saw him, with a piece of white calico around his hat, I got mad, for I knew my father was mad at being subjected to such humiliation, and at being obliged to wear such a menial garb of mourning at such a funeral. The word had been sent around by the gentry that all the tenants on the Carbery estate were to attend the lord’s funeral, and though my father was not paying rent directly to the Carbery lord, still, as his holding was looked upon as the Carbery property, he attended. I will give explanation on this subject by and by.