The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim: Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of; William Carleton, Volume ThreeCarleton, William
General
The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim: Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of; William Carleton, Volume Three
Carleton, William
Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
“'Fly, boys!' says Grogan as soon as they fired out of the house--'we've
been sould,' says he, 'but I'll die game, any how,'--and so he did, poor
fellow; for although he and the other four war transported, one of them
never sould the pass or stagged. Not but that they might have done it,
for all that, only that there was a whisper sent to them, that if they
did, a single soul belonging to one of them wouldn't be left living. The
Grogans were cousins of Denis Kelly's, that's now laid out there above.
“From the time this tuck place till after the 'sizes, there wasn't a
stir among them on any side; but when that war over, the boys began to
prepare. Denis, heavens be his bed, was there in his glory. This was
in the spring 'sizes, and the May fair soon followed. Ah! that was the
bloody sight, I'm tould--for I wasn't at it--atween the Orangemen and
them. The Ribbonmen war bate though, but not till after there was a
desperate fight on both sides. I was tould that Denis Kelly that day
knocked down five-and-twenty men in about three-quarters of an hour; and
only that long John Grimes hot him a _polthoge_ on the sconce with the
butt-end of the gun, it was thought the Orangemen would be beat. That
blow broke his skull, and was the manes of his death. He was carried
home senseless.”
“Well, Lachlin,” said my brother, “if you didn't see it, I did. I
happened to be looking out of John Carson's upper window--for it wasn't
altogether safe to contemplate it within reach of the missiles. It was
certainly a dreadful and barbarous sight. You have often observed the
calm, gloomy silence that precedes a thunder-storm; and had you been
there that day, you might have witnessed its illustration in a scene
much more awful. The thick living mass of people extended from the
corner-house, nearly a quarter of a mile, at this end of the town, up to
the parsonage on the other side. During the early part of the day, every
kind of business was carried on in a hurry and an impatience, which
denoted the little chance they knew there would be for transacting it in
the evening.
“Up to the hour of four o'clock the fair was unusually quiet, and, on
the whole, presented nothing in any way remarkable; but after that hour
you might observe the busy stir and hum of the mass settling down into
a deep, brooding, portentous silence, that was absolutely fearful. The
females, with dismay and terror pictured in their faces, hurried home;
and in various instances you might see mothers, and wives, and sisters,
clinging about the sons, husbands, and brothers, attempting to drag them
by main force from the danger which they knew impended over them.
In this they seldom succeeded: for the person so urged was usually
compelled to tear himself from them by superior strength.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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