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Short Sketches of the Life of Michael
Hogan, the Bard of Thomond.
By Himself.

Michael Hogan, commonly called the Bard of Thomond, I was born on the 1st of November 1832 at a place called the New Road, in the parish of Thomondgate or St. Munchin’s, near the banks of the Shannon. My father’s name was Arthur Hogan, he was a master of many trades, viz. Cabinet maker, wheelwright, millwright, cart and car maker and house carpenter. He was also a skilled master of Irish music and made several of his own instruments on which he performed the beautiful melodies of Erin, with sweetest effect. His society was courted by lovers of music in and outside the City of Limerick. His manners were simple but his language was witty and refined. He was generally liked by all who knew him, except by his wife, the Bard’s mother who was descended from the Cromwellian settlers of Co. Clare

and she was, like them, ill-tempered, tyrannical, hard-hearted, spiteful, covetous, and treacherous, and fond of backbiting her husband and his relatives, and all who sought his acquaintance or admired him for his talent.

I remember with grief the perpetual quarrels with which this cross woman, my mother, embroiled the house, contending against my father for complete mastery of everything, even to the estimates and proceeds of his business. She fought furiously for the “wearing of the breeches” and her motto was “I’d see any man to the devil before I’d allow him to have one inch of his own way!!”. She won the victory in the end, after years on years of hot conflict. His musical attainments were odious to her for she frequently complained that much of his time was spent at his musical trash instead of being at his trade earning hard cash for her.
I may justly think that I was born and reared in a war camp on account of those incessant hostilities between my Dalcassian father and my Puritan mother; but my mother was always the

aggressor in everything, for peace seemed an unwelcome stranger to her, and she loved to keep the house on fire, and everyone in it in the smoke of trouble; and this she did with so much tact and craft of incendiary wit that no one could directly blame her, or see that she was any way in fault.

Although she did not know the Common English alphabet, she would puzzle a philosopher with perverse theories of her own construction, proving lies to be truth and truth to be a lie. No woman of her class could paint a falsehood in such honest colors of truth, and no one could give truth a more revolting feature than she could. If she only conceived a spite to any person – and a mere trifle would provoke it – she would whisper a wicked, damning calumny against that person, and get it circulated through the neighbourhood in so adroit a way that no one could directly trace it to the fountain head.*
When I was a boy about eight years old I began to compose rude rugged rhymes. The first of those was a satire levelled at one of my uncles who amused himself by boring me with ridiculous wit, but


*She was a woman of most implacable disposition and unforgiving nature. She gloried in doing mischief even to those who served and obliged her. Her favorite weapons were private slander and detraction. She had no faith but love of greed and revenge. If she got an apartment in a palace she would not rest content without injuring the giver. She lived to see her neighbours in constant affliction and disunion.

the satire ended this annoyance towards me, and turned it on himself, because I succeeded in making the neighbours laugh at him.

Now I began to create a sea of trouble for myself, for I commenced lampooning every droll character and unpopular person in the parish for which I was rewarded with peals of laughter from some parties and fierce threats of vengeance from others. I soon became a dread rhymer, and if I had twenty friends I had an army of enemies. I often wonder at the narrow escapes I had of getting a fractured skull or broken limbs at the hands of people whom my satirical arrows made desperate. But I soon grew tired of this, and began to haunt the pleasant banks of the Shannon where I fell in love with Nature while in her beauty I found a higher and sweeter inspiration of song.
The enchanting remembrance of the glorious summer mornings and fairy evenings I spent alone by the bright, blue, beautiful Shannon still linger round me, like weird music, for it was there I conceived and embodied the “Lays and Legends of Thomond”.

My favorite books of study were Pope’s Homer, Goldsmith’s Works, Carleton’s and Gerald Griffin’s works,

Dryden’s Virgil, Tasso’s Jerusalem, Ovid and other classic authors. MacPherson’s Ossian* set me in raptures with the images of Nature and the sublimity of romance. I was likewise enamoured with Byron, Moore, Burns and Scott. Yet the literature of Ireland, viz the Annals of the Four Masters, Keating, O’Halloran, John Mitchel etc were most endearing studies of mine. Thomas Davis “the Minstrel of Mallow”, Francis Davis “the Belfast Man”, Edward Walsh “the Bard of Legendary Lore”, D.F. MacCarthy, Lady Wilde, and others, were my favorite Irish Poets. But I was never tired of hunting up traditions. They possessed an overwhelming chasm for me. I felt an especial fondness in visiting fairy forts, old ruined castles and abbeys; often sitting for hours among their weird shadows, bathing my imagination in the wildest poetic dreams; but I never for a moment dreamed of how I was to go through life or encounter the world for a living. In the earlier part of my life I was sent to a monk’s school in my native parish; but at this place, instead of learning something, I only wasted my time in lampooning the scholars and scribbling rhymes. No effort or persuasion of the master could induce me to study any particular branch.

Grammar was detestable


*I consider Ossian to be the most enchanting author I ever read.

and mathematics were profane to my taste. So after a year I left this seminary just as wise as when I first entered it. I remember an epigram I made on this affair.

I was the funniest idle fool
That ever graced a Christian school;
I never learn’d a common rule
In any book;
For I, like every headstrong mule,
My own way took.

After leaving school I turned to assist my father at his trade of wheelmaking. He was then growing feeble in years, and wanted help to get through his business, for his eldest son had enlisted in the army and went away soldiering. But I felt no taste for this trade, for it required sharp sight to master it – and my sight was naturally too weak to do that. However, I gave all the help in my power, and succeeded, although in an imperfect manner, to learn the business: but consequently it was of no benefit, for spinning machinery soon usurped the employment of rural spinning wheels, and I was obliged to seek work in some other direction. At the time – and even before it – my mother’s tyranny was levelled at me because I was unable to make good earnings for her. She systematically curtailed my

meals and abused me. She often left me whole days without a morsel. She did the same to my poor father when he became too enfeebled to make earnings to satisfy her greed. She used frequently account of the weakness of his limbs through age. I have known this inhuman woman – this unwomanly wife – to leave her venerable husband fasting for thirty hours together, while she amused herself with the pangs of his hunger; meantime she had money in her purse and bread locked up in her box but still she let him suffer, and all because he was unable to earn money for her.
Along with other modes of persecution she corrupted his children against him, teaching them to disobey and insult him. She would not allow any of those who were younger than myself to attend school, on the plea that ignorant people get along in the world much better than scholars or learned men – and so the children were reared according to her own dark way of thinking. On myself she always forced constant battle, and to avoid those unholy wranglings I frequently quitted the house and remained for weeks and months wandering about among the neighbours. It was on one of these homeless excursions I found employment at Newtown Pery Mills, a concern

belonging to the Messrs Russell.

The managing clerk of this place was a young man named William Doyle. He had a high taste for literature, and having read and admired some of my juvenile verses, he took me to work on my first application. My wages, indeed were small, being only a boy’s wages, for I was not old enough or strong enough to do the work of a man. I felt delighted with my new sphere in this flour mill. The rush and roar of machinery and the whirling crash of the great millstones gave me infinite pleasure. I soon became a general favorite with the workmen, and if positions could be weighed, I was far happier in my own way than the rich owners of the establishment were in theirs. In this mill I composed some of my funniest poems, such as “Drunken Thady”, “The Askeaton Goat”, “The Rolling Buggaboo”, “The Miller’s Song”, “A Parody on the Humours of Glin” etc none of which appeared in print but “Drunken Thady”. Now when my selfish Cromwellian mother learned that I was employed at Russell’s, all her cunning tact was set in operation to coax me home, and she succeeded. As long as I continued to hand her my wages I got

peace in return, but no other attention was given to my meals which were of the cheapest material.

The fact was that the sordid rogue was privately hoarding up money for herself by curtailing her family of the wholesome necessaries of the table. But at that time we could not see through her miserable drift or design. On one occasion she played me a trick* which called forth the following epigram which grew very popular in Limerick.

I never was so disappointed –
I wish to God I were anointed;
I’d leave this world and try the other,
For here a man can’t trust his mother,
Ah Betty Cromwell, to my grief,
You are my mother – and a thief.

During the time of my employment at the mill, I spent every evening, after my day’s labour, at the composition of an Epic Poem, entitled “The Kinkora”. It was a picture of all the Chieftains and Princes of Munster who attend at the great palace of Brian in the days of Irish Chivalry; their festivities and war-councils, and the triumphant combats they fought against the Scandinavian Invaders of ancient Erin. I was three years engaged at the composition of this work. It comprised ten books, but after making many efforts to publish it I finally failed, and in a fit of irritation I dashed it into the fire.

*She induced me to secure her in some shop goods but she ran five times the amount, then quarrelled with me while I struggling to pay the debt by instalments. She wanted to have all.

Some years previous to the episode just related I became associated with a small host of literary young fellows in Limerick – all notaries of the Muse and rivals for her favor. The most distinguished of those was John O’Donnell who afterwards figured in London under the nom de plume of “Caviare”. I was often amused to hear some of those critical cockroaches biting at the loftiest literary planets of the age – I thought such pigmy presumption ought to be well chastised, but nothing can stop the venom of envious hearts.
Those paltry, important candidates for Parnassian distinctions were great by little degrees at scribbling, quoting, rhyming, reciting and criticising. One young man of this party was a favorite companion of mine. He was very religious, very selfish, thrifty and egotistical. With the silent patience of a snail he crawled to fortune and deserted me. He was always a worthless, sentimental, sanctimonious friend. He violated every friendly pledge he made me, but he died suddenly and his hard-gathered money fell into the hands of thankless people who gave it wings to fly. The first poem of mine that saw the light in type was a warlike effusion which I fancifully

named “The Light of Munster*”.

This little work was printed in pamphlet form by G. Goggin of Limerick. 600 copies were struck off. By unceasing exertion I sold 400 at one shilling each. This little enterprise brought war between me and my covetous mother. She insisted on getting all the proceeds which I stoutly refused to give. She expelled me from home. I packed the remainder of my poetic ware in a travelling bag, took one of the mail cars and left Limerick. 1853.
I arrived at night in Bruff, slept there, and next day proceeded to Kilmallock where I spent many hours of solemn pleasure in visiting the Geraldine ruins of this desolate Balbec of Erin. I then moved on to Charleville and lodged for a week there where I sold some of my little books. But now my travels on foot began with pleasant persistency. I visited Buttevant, Mallow, Cork, Queenstown, Midleton, Youghal, Tallow, Lismore, Fermoy, Mitchelstown, Clonmel, Cahir, Waterford, Ross, Thomastown, Kilkenny, Fethard, Cashel, Tipperary and back once more to the old storied ramparts of Garryowen. I met with many changes of good and ill on my travels through those various places.

Sometimes I was successful in getting acquainted with in-

*Alderman Thomas Gaffney paid the printing cost. He was, at that time, bookkeeper to the Messrs. Russell at Newtown Pery Mills’ Office. He gave many proofs of friendly feeling towards me while I was employed there.

telligent and generous people, although the country visibly bore on her features the sad masks of the awful Government-created famine of 47 and 8. I have a fearful recollection of those dreadful years of devastation. I remember seeing the famine-and-plague pits open in the fields of Killeely where thousands of coffinless corpses were flung in heaps over each other from the pestilential pens of the murderous Workhouse where they were poisoned with rotten Indian meal food and deadly medicine. I often wondered how God could patiently look on at his Irish people – the finest men and women in the world – slaughtered like rats by savage English statesmen and their brutal satellites for an accursed political purpose. It seemed to me as if Providence had a mighty interest in heretic England but none at all in Roman Catholic Ireland. The Irish people melted away with a vengeance in those terrible years of hunger and plague, and the land became a wilderness dotted with graves.

In my sojourn at Lismore I was, one night, so pestered by fleas that I jumped out of bed and took my pencil to open a satirical fire on those tantalizing insects that kept me awake all night. I only remember the first stanza.

Ye black militia devils call’d fleas
That dance and jump a thousand ways;
Give audience while I chant your praise,
Your pranks and evils-
Ye are smart subjects for my lays,
Ye bouncing devils.
Just while I nap to doze off care,
Me – even me, ye will not spare;
Ye make me start, and tear, and swear,
And kick and curse,
But still ye devils play “Beat the Bear”
Around my a---.

In the morning I left my hotel of lively inmates, and before evening I got acquainted with the village teacher, a dominee with a more cheerful disposition than Goldsmith’s Schoolmaster. His name was Fitzsimon, a genial good fellow, a social comrade and a pleasant wit. He had a whole host of poetical authors by heart and could recite well. Now this was the right sort of a man I wanted. He lived on the borders of Lismore near the venerable Castle, and many a jolly evening did we spend in his little parlour enjoying a feast of reason and a flow of soul.

Nor were we alone at this delightful banquet -

neighbouring lovers of Lore and Song joined us, and hearty was the glee over a merry rhyme or flash of wit. One Sunday morning, while we were sitting by ourselves at the fire, Fitzsimon began to regret the barrenness of literary taste which marked the townspeople. He complained of the apathy of the young men to improve their minds by intellectual pursuits. He said the town was swamped in ignorance and sordidness, and the people would rather patronize a bull-beat or an ass-race than have a circulating literary establed in their midst. On hearing this I wrote the following satirical verses which caused an uproar of merriment during the day among the Fitzsimon family.

Ye sons of Science, Light and Lore,
For Heaven’s sake, stay from Lismore!
For Dullness there has made a store
Of muddy heads;
And Mammon too has sown it o’er
With sordid seeds.

If ye would shun Misfortune’s crooks
(I do not mean the noble Duke’s)

Throw by your literary books,
And turn a clown,
Then ye will please the untutor’d rooks,
And match the town.

And if ye love obscure retreats,
And wish to cool your genial heats;
Go there among the mud-brain’d pates,
And by this letter!
The devil a place in British States,
Will suit ye better.

I have travelled Munster’s various parts,
I’ve warr’d with Fortune’s keenest darts,
But such a town of dullard hearts
I’ve found no where;
The devils the only Master of Arts
That prospers there.

‘Twas once renown’d for famous schools,
But now ‘tis famed for vulgar fools;
Old kitchen-piggins, pots and stools
Would hold their Lore;

I’d swear ‘twas ignorance made rules
To sway Lismore.

For God’s sake, then ye Men of light,
Who clamber Science’ sacred height;
Whether at morning, noon or night
Ye love to soar,
Take warning by my luckless plight,
And shun Lismore.

I quitted Lismore where I sold only three copies of my little book, and I went to Fermoy along with a travelling cloth-merchant name Henry Traynor who was owner of a draper’s shop in that town. This good-natured man was actually possessed of a mania for comedy and comic song. He invited me to remain in his house as long as I cared to stay in Fermoy. His parlour represented an Opera stage every night, although there was no audience to enjoy the fun except the actors, namely Mr and Mrs Trainor and myself, and having no critics to listen, we pleased ourselves pretty well with sentimental and comic lyrics, and hearty bursts of laughter. If ever the god of genial good

humour and innocent merriment visited three happy mortals he was amongst us on those pleasant evenings. But I could make no sale of my poetical ware in Fermoy and that shortened my stay there. Trainor asked me for a rhyme on my experience of the town – I gave him the following extempore lines.

To poor Fermoy I took my course,
Where times are bad and the people are worse,
There I read the motto of die and let die –
For Misery revels in poor Fermoy,
The only way I become a gainer,
‘Twas in the mirth of witty Traynor.

Since boyhood’s earliest days I had an irresistible propensity for satirical sallies which constantly kept me in hot water with those against whom I was provoked to use such wicked arrows, but I seldom used them except when I was really injured or insultingly ignored, and then I was glad to have such ready weapons of retaliation at hand, which I too often employed with indiscretional resentment on offenders. And I had a way of blending such a ludicrous spice of good humour in those sallies that made them entirely more galling to the parties at whom they were levelled, than if I had stricken them with sharp steel. But every stanza raised up a dozen enemies in armed anger against me.

Yet I must confess that I was always as ready, to let fly those arrows to avenge an injured friend, as I was for myself. And I allowed myself to be too often used for this resentful purpose. But I couldn’t turn a deaf ear to the complaint of innocence wronged or friendship wounded by perfidy. Those things directly appealed to my indignation, and I could not refrain from striking a blow at the aggressor, no matter what result may follow.
But to return to the tale of my peregrinations, I left Fermoy and passed through Mitchelstown of bloody memory, on my way to Clonmel. I was anxious to get to Cashel, the City of the Munster Kings, to see the regal Rock with its imperial ruins and princely monuments clothed with splendid memories of the departed glories of ancient Erin. I remained three days among the venerable ruins, and feasted my fancy with the grandeur of the Past. I was alone, sitting on the thickly-ivied wall under the Round Tower. What a majestic throne for Thought. What a gloomy but congenial palace for bardic contemplation. Why, I would hardly wonder if every man in Cashel was a Bard.
As for myself, I took in more mad inspiration there than I was able to contain. In fact I was drunk – wildly drunk, the whole time – without tasting a single earthly stimulant.

Oh, would that I were transformed into one of the darkly-grand shadows so solemnly reflected from the magnificent ruins of those kingly towers—
But now the world’s “sinews of war” had become slender and feeble in my puny purse, and I must depart from Cashel and leave her alone with her royal memories of two thousand years. How often, on my way to Tipperary’s own town, did I turn to look back, with burning devotion, on the storied Rock and the towering ruins that crowned it. “Alas, for the sons of glory!”
I was, up to this time, ten months travelling about many counties and towns in the south and east of Erin. I more than once compared myself to the “Mangoir Sugach”, or the Merry Merchant, the poetic Andrew Magrath of witty memory, only my wares could not command so ready a market as his. Neither did my adventures among the maidens call for excommunication with bell, book and candle, from the altar, as poor Andy’s pranks led him into – when he confessed in rhyme that the Catholic Church turned him out, and the Protestant Church refused to have him. But I had done nothing profane or immoral, in my rambles, to offend against Canonical law, and so I was allowed to return in peace to my native City, more penniless than when I left it. I was jaded, footsore and hungry, late in the evening as I approached Limerick after walking from Tipperary. How my heart glowed with rapture when I saw, at a distance, the lamps lighting in my native town, although I had no home to turn to there, for well I knew my iron-hearted mother would

not allow me inside the door except I had the palm oil of cash to put in her hand.

But this sort of magic I did not then possess and so I dismissed the idea of going near her. That night I found a lodging with one who had only the name of friend – a coarse rascal who would do a kind act and boast of it to every one – I hated to go near him, but when need leads the devil drives.
How many, alas, by unmerciful fate,
Are condemned to subserve where their feelings recoil
From the baseness of those they have reason to hate,
And must bear the cold sneers of the worthless and vile.

On the third morning after my arrival in Limerick I went to my old employment at Newtown Pery Mills, and notwithstanding my ardent devotion and wild passion for poetry, I was never an hour inattentive to my work, and was always punctual to time. I gave my employers no fault to find with me, for I never shirked my work, no matter how laborious it may be. I gave my wages regularly every week to the person who received me into his house on the night of my return to Limerick after my ten month’s tramp about the country. I wanted to make him feel I was grateful for his kindness in receiving me when I was totally friendless. I stayed with him for four months, but at the end of that time I was disemployed, for a while, owing to the mill being

shut down for repairs.

In a few days afterwards the scoundrel abruptly turned me out, but I never knew his motive for this unmanly act until many years had past away. The fact was my plotting mother was at the bottom of it. She wanted to get me home for no other reason than to grab my wages. With her wily talk she influenced certain people who held a stronger influence over this man who dare not refuse them, and so without explaining matters he drove me away, and I never forgave him for it. I was not two hours left him when another agent appeared in my mother’s favor. He was a constant companion* and schoolfellow of mine – a double-minded young man who pretended to feel more friendship in an hour than he’d show in action for a hundred years; and many a time subsequently he gave me bitter reason to know it. I believed in him – I trusted him – I was ready to swear by him – I thought he was the soul of honor – The par excellence of manhood and wisdom – the beau ideal of generous friendship – a very model of perfect intelligence and noble unselfishness – but I was wretchedly mistaken both in my opinions and long experience of him. He made me repeated promises of undying faith and brotherly devotion, during our Sunday rambles about the hills of Clare, and along the banks of the Shannon. He seemed never to enjoy himself rightly only when he was side by side with me. Like myself he was a lover of Irish poetry and Irish history.

Our tastes in this direction were mutual, but his manners were so sanctimonious as sometimes to freeze me with doubts of his friendly

*This religious knave made a fortune by sheer parsimony. When I became embarrassed in Thomond Cottage he made me an unsolicited offer of redeeming the place by advancing me £80 but as the time arrived for the fulfilment of his promise he cold-shouldered me. Some time before this trial of his friendship he induced me to give him my harp for £5. I never again saw the harp. He made a present of it to a new order of Nuns he had introduced into Limerick. He died suddenly and the instrument remained with the community. I was lately informed that it is lying stringless in the lumber room of their nunnery.

disposition towards me; some unaccountable whisper of suspicion was constantly at my heart, saying that this young man was a veiled hypocrite – that his friendship was spurious – that his nature was selfish – that his ideas were sordid – that his friendly protests were faithless – that his patriotism was rotten, and that his whole existence was a compound of covetousness and egotism. And time proved all these things to be substantially matters of fact. In course of years this sentimental gorsoon became a merchant and grew rich, and then I saw all the true shapes and colors of his pretended friendship – A more hardened and heartless villain never profaned the sacred shrine of friendship or desecrated her youthful trust. I tried him every way to find if there was in his feelings one gleam of truth in all his former promises of good faith made to me, in the early days of our rambles by forest and field and mountainside. He was now a monied man and like the erratic and pompous “Shawn-na-Scoob”, he spurned all his old friends and associates, and sneered at them for their honest poverty. The talent which he before admired in me, he now made a jest of it, and strove to throw cold water on all my efforts to raise my poor genius up to the notice of my country. He himself wrote a volume of national rhymes, and ballads which, according to his own opinion, was the only Simon-Pure-poetry that ever came into existence since the time of Homer and Virgil.

But he would not risk printing costs to build his fame on the publication of this rare and wonderful casket of song, yet he found it cheaper to fling it into the fire and reduce it to ashes, lest the police, at the time of the Fenian outburst, may find it with him, and prosecute him before Her Majesty’s Judges for comprising such a sublime collection of Irish sedition. And thus he escaped the hateful odour of nationality, Fenianism, and the printing costs of a volume that was about to make Ireland eternally green in song. I was obliged, one time, to run a small account with him for some of his merchandise, the sum was no more than five shillings, but he pestered my soul out to get it back. And this was the sort of agent my mother privately employed to persuade me to return home. He succeeded in his arguments, and brought round a reconciliation between me and her. For a while I was treated fairly, but after a short time she recommenced her old trick of coercion, and I naturally kicked against the goad. I was always ready and glad to obey and please her in everything reasonable and just, but when she used the mastery of a tyrant over me and tried to rule me with the strong hand, I became a stubborn rebel against her unmitigated despotism. Yet I never gave her a disrespectful word except fine words nicely cast in the ready mould of quiet satire. These seemed to sting her to the soul, and then she resorted to physical force, but I made a hasty retreat from the scene. I felt in such cases that Prudence was the best part of valour, and so I took myself off in time.

But she had such an inexhaustible genius for vindictive plotting that I was never safe from the secret weapons of her relentless revenge. Sometimes she used to fasten the door early, an hour before bedtime, so that when I came home to get into bed I had no chance to enter the house, and I had to remain roaming about the lonely roads during the night, cheating the bleak time by reciting passages from the Iliad, or more congenially engaged in the construction of a new poem of my own. In the morning I would not have a morsel of breakfast to get “nor no ways or means of getting,” was her plea for this premeditated cruelty. Other times she used to steal my clothes and pawn them, and I never would see them again. I bore all those galling trials with saintlike patience, while she left no malignant word unsaid, or annoyance undone to provoke my patience into wrath, yet she seldom succeeded in doing this. And when she grew tired of tantalising me, she used to turn her bitter edge on my poor old father, and then arose a scene fit for the devil’s drawing room in Pandemonium. He had an impetuous, fiery temper, and was not a bit afraid to rouse it into a blaze. She often paid dearly for it, but she couldn’t or wouldn’t be quiet – she tried the quarrel again and again with unconquered persistency until she subdued him. Then she used to repeat a favourite motto of hers. Viz. “I’d see any man to the devil before I’d give him his own way!”

But she had such an inexhaustible genius for vindictive plotting that I was never safe from the secret weapons of her relentless revenge. Sometimes she used to fasten the door early, an hour before bedtime, so that when I came home to get into bed I had no chance to enter the house, and I had to remain roaming about the lonely roads during the night, cheating the bleak time by reciting passages from the Iliad, or more congenially engaged in the construction of a new poem of my own. In the morning I would not have a morsel of breakfast to get “nor no ways or means of getting,” was her plea for this premeditated cruelty. Other times she used to steal my clothes and pawn them, and I never would see them again. I bore all those galling trials with saintlike patience, while she left no malignant word unsaid, or annoyance undone to provoke my patience into wrath, yet she seldom succeeded in doing this. And when she grew tired of tantalising me, she used to turn her bitter edge on my poor old father, and then arose a scene fit for the devil’s drawing room in Pandemonium. He had an impetuous, fiery temper, and was not a bit afraid to rouse it into a blaze. She often paid dearly for it, but she couldn’t or wouldn’t be quiet – she tried the quarrel again and again with unconquered persistency until she subdued him. Then she used to repeat a favourite motto of hers. Viz. “I’d see any man to the devil before I’d give him his own way!”

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It was towards the end of January in 1859 when I went to look for new quarters. Tenements were difficult to be had. But a neighbour took us to one that was to let. It was a roomy cellar under a rich provision shop in Nicholas St. It was one of the most clean and comfortable of its kind in the English town. We liked it first rate, and we engaged it, and it was here my fame and fortune began to grow. My wife went, next day, to a lady friend of hers in Thomondgate, and told her how Betty Cromwell had seized on our goods and left us nothing. This lady was father Nichol’s mother, she felt the story, and on the same day she sent us a lot of furniture to replace what the Puritan robber had confiscated. I got a new lathe from Mr Hickie my new employer, together with plenty of working tools instead of the ones that my thieving mother had deprived me of. I bought a lot of fine timber, and so, as the adage says, I was completely on the pig’s back. But Betty Cromwell was not done with me yet, for one day, next week, as my wife was standing at the door, up rolls old Betty and hands her a summons against me for the sum of £1.17.6. cash, the summons said, she was cheated and defrauded by me, her son, defendant in the case.

So, in a few days I was to attend the Mayor’s Court to defend myself against

the unlawful and unnatural claims of my mother. The day came, and I appeared in court. The case was called and Betty went on the table. I followed slowly, burning with shame and anger. She was sworn, and she began a lying story enough to set a millstone mad. I swung my hands and hissed. The Mayor looked sharply at me, and said to his deputy clerk, “what are these people to each other?” “Mother and son, please your worship”, answered the clerk. The Mayor looked at her with suspicion, and he said to me “Young man! Let me hear her complaint fully, and when she is done, I will hear your defence, with stricted attention. I obeyed the Mayor and was silent during the recital of her artful lying story. He took notes of all she said, and when she was finished, he told me to go on with my defense. I explained the whole course of her ingratitude, imposition and treachery towards myself and my wife since our marriage, three months ago. “Where are these articles that she has taken from you – I never heard such a hard case in my life – what has she done with those articles? For I’ll issue a warrant to recover every one of them! Then he looked sternly at Betty, and said to her, “You are the most shameless, bare-faced villain that ever stood before me, you have seized on your son’s effects and you want him to pay

you for more than their value, your seizure was unlawful and unnatural. I have every mind to ram into the Dock, for imposition and perjury. Leave my sight, you unnatural wretch!” And so the rogue left court, muttering curses for her defeat.

PAGES MISSING: 32 – 43

... but a time may come when they shall read a different production from my pen – a production more caustic and costly than “The Anthems to Mary!”. I declare to God, I came away drunk with contempt for such shadowy men. But in a few years afterwards I paid back, with interest, all their pious compliments – in “Shawn na Scoob”.
Now I wrote to Mr. John Mullany asking how the sale of my “Anthems” was progressing in Dublin – for I gave him instructions to sell, and push the sale – He replied that the market was slow but sure, and was likely to increase. In this epistle he ask me if I had any other poems I wished to print. If so, to send the M.S. I jumped at the offer, because I thought to publish my “Lays and Legends” in Numbers. I posted the copyright of the first No. and told him to send me his estimate of printing costs for 2000 nos. He did not send it, but told me the expense would be proportionate to that of the “The Anthems”. I rested satisfied – the book appeared in a very short time. It was well reviewed by the Press, and I was very proud of my rising fame. He sent me three hundred copies to Limerick. I gave some scores of these to the book shops on sale, and nice little rill of cash began to come to hand.
All this time printer Mullany never sent his bill of costs for printing. I believed he was quite satisfied with the large amount of copies he held on sale. But at all events I had warm apartments in “Cuchullin’s Cave” - “a feast of shells and a song of harps!” and a few jovial, kindred spirits,

fiery lovers of Romance, Song and Story, wild wit, humor and frolic.

Every evening was spent after our own hearts in recitations and singing, and if it was not a genuine feast of rhyme and reason it was a genial flow of soul, Nannie was constituted Hebe or Cupbearer to the god of our social Valhalla. But those sunshiny hours were not made to last, for they soon past away like the blossoms of summer, and my merry, friendly and good natured associates passed away with them. Some of them sought other lands in pursuit of better positions and pay than their native land could afford them. Others departed to the Unknown region of the spirits, but I never forgot, and never will forget them, for I never met their like for devoted friendship and generous sincerity of soul; especially one – the large-hearted young fellow that advanced me the money to pay the printing costs of my “Anthems”. Several times I offered to repay him but nothing could induce him to accept it. He was a rare, open-minded, uncalculating and candid character – A strange compound of wild comic humor and reckless generosity – which was his besetting sin, for every knave took advantage of it, while he seemed not to care a straw about the favors he conferred in hard coin, for which he only received in return plenty of ungrateful acknowledgements, but he seldom complained of such trifles.

Now to return to printer Mullany, he came to Limerick on some plea of business, and honored me with a visit. Of course I was glad to see the genius that held so much of my future fame and fortune in his clutch. During our interview he never mentioned a word about my late printing expenses for the first No of “Lays and Legends”, but gave me a great lot of encouraging talk, and concluded by telling me to send him the copy of the second number to have it got up at once. The next day I posted it, and on the week after it was printed, he forward 300 copies to Limerick for me. I gave them out on sale, and I wrote to him for his bill of charges for printing 1st and 2nd. His reply was the same – the charge would be uniform with the first – still he furnished no bill – I grew puzzled over the matter, and I hardly knew what sort of complexion to give the affair. I felt it was best to keep silent and let the transaction work its own end.
In two months after the issue of the 2nd no. he issued the two numbers in one small Vol. with gilt edges, bound in fancy cloth and lettered in gold on the cover. This was done without my knowledge or sanction, but I was pleasantly surprised, when he sent me a few dozen copies of the little Vol. to see it so handsomely got up. It was sold at one shilling a copy, but I could never ascertain the number of copies he had done in this style. I then wrote a stiff letter insisting on him to come to some legible terms or fair understanding with me. After a long interval I got his reply.

It enclosed a bill of printing charges that nearly knocked my wind out. The bill was beautifully arranged to the melody of £64.16.10. And he very politely said in his polite letter that he could not think of coming to any tangible settlement with me until this bill would be cleared off. This was enough – all my fine rainbow structures were at one puff dissolved into clingy mist, and I literally roared with laughter over the foggy ruin that lay before me. Nannie started crying, and that was the only thing that vexed me. I saw I was sublimely caught in the sublime net of a sublime rogue – and I could not break thro’; my fate for the time being was fixed – and there could be no more about it.
The printing and binding, in paper wrappers, of 2000 copies of the “Anthems” only cost £5.10 then how in the name of common justice could he find a conscience to charge me £64.16.10 for doing an equal amount of printing and stitching [?] two numbers of my “Lays and Legends” each number only containing the same, or very close on the same quantity of pages, and paper of the same quality as the “Anthems”. He grabbed all, with the exception of 400 copies of the “Anthems”, which he sent to me at Limerick, along with 300 copies of each number of the Lays and Legends. Keeping to himself 3400 copies of the latter work, and 1600 of the former, together with £5.10.

William Fitzgerald was Mayor of Limerick the year when this cruel disappointment happened me. He was a good and just man and a consummate gentleman. I sought him and explained how Mullany had treated me. He paid marked attention to my story, and desired me to bring him the books. I did so, and he kept them for perusal, ad told me to return on the morrow when he would be able to know something about their literary worth. On the next day I called on him. He brought me into his private office, told me he was much interested in the perusal of my books and complimented me on being the author of such clever productions. He promised that he would not allow Mr. Mullany to have the whole spoil, for he intended going to Dublin on business in a few days, and he had made up his mind on interviewing this cunning printer, and if he failed to make him give me fair concessions by argument, he would certainly employ law. He kept his word to the letter. He went to Dublin – saw Mullany – and in a quiet disinterested-like manner got to the bottom of the business between us. Mullany never knew or suspected who he was speaking to until the Mayor got out of him a few admissions he wanted, and then he revealed himself. Mullany was startled. The Mayor was a powerful reasoner, and held in his possession a few business letters which came from the printer to myself. Those documents I gave to Mr. Fitzgerald who conned them closely, before he had left Limerick. On those he worked,

like a clever Counsel, and at last, succeeded in bringing Mullany to bay, for he, the mayor, made him promise to send me the best portion of my books to Limerick, only reserving to himself as many copies as would repay printing costs and commission on sales.
Mullany named a day for the sending of the books, but they never came. Mr. Fitzgerald got angry at this breach of faith, and declared he would go again to Dublin and see that the books would be duly delivered. The appointed morning for this journey came, and as he was making his toilet he fell suddenly dead on the carpet. His death caused great excitement and sensation in all parts of Limerick, for he was very much beloved by all classes of the people. I would never give a voice to my feelings on the sad event, but for several days I moved about like a somnambulist. Mullany remained in undisturbed possession of my brain-work from that day to this. I have solid evidence to show that my “Anthems” have passed thro’ several editions from his Press since William Fitzgerald’s sudden death in 1861. I did not forget his noble worth and his gentlemanly kindliness show in my interest, for I deplored his loss, in a Dirge called “The Widow’s Lament” which is enrolled among the “Lays and Legends of Thomond”. I never saw his likeness for dignity of word and action.

The gloomy circumstances which this gentleman’s untimely demise brought me into, strongly impressed me with dark presentiments of my future fate. I felt it as an ill-starred shadow of the future events which would be disastrous to my prospects and hopes. If I had the power, at that time, of seeing into the future, and surveying the hostile array of sorrows, humiliations and relentless disappointments that lay in wait for me – Had I dreamt them, or ever suspected their approach – I never would have the iron nerve or moral courage to face them – I would gladly suffer death first.
And now, one more, I had to throw off my “singing robes” and turn to hard material labour to support myself and Nannie. Again I found employment at Russell’s, but this time it was at Lock Mills. And I toiled from six o’clock in the morning until one at night, at the rate of eight shillings per week, with an additional nine pence for every half night I wished to remain at work. Ah, those were cruel hard times for incessant labour and small pay. There was a remorseless old fellow who acted as manager and clerk of this establishment, and he knew no mercy or consideration for workingmen. The harder he worked them the more delighted he was. I have often known him to make one man do the work of two. He tried the same trick with myself, but I rebelled – and told others to rebel against his tyrannical imposition. This led to my final dismissal from the degrading, cruel slave-market of Lock Mills.

But I did not forget the savage slave-driving clerk and manager. I wrote a satire on himself and his brutal tyranny over the poor workmen, and I don’t believe he ever forgot it. Of this litany I got printed five hundred copies, which flew like wildfire thro’ all the stores and mills in Limerick – a warning to every petty tyrant who had the responsibility of employing labour. I remember the concluding stanza of the tirade – Here it is.

At the gate of Tartarean region, they say,
There’s a fierce dog that keeps watch and ward over Hell -
At the gate of Lock Mills, thro’ all hours of the day,
Ould Thady can bark, bite and snarl as well.
But which of those pestilent dogs is the best -
None else than the devil the difference could know;
Yet I swear, if the two dogs were put to the test,
The grey one above beats the black one below.

On my leaving Lock Mills I prophesied that Thady the tyrant would not reign long after me, and before five months had passed away he was ignobly discharged for mathematical blunders in his books.
Between Newtown Pery and Lock Mills, I worked out sixteen years of the primest time of my life, and I left the employ as poor as if I had never earned a penny. And now my wife’s old complaint, dyspepsia, returned on her, and obliged her to resort to hospital again, while I was left, a bird alone, without a single acquaintance to converse with or a friendly hand to do a kindly turn for me.

But she returned home after five weeks in hospital. She looked pale and feeble, and my heart bled with anguish to know that I was not able to provide her with nourishment suitable to her weak state of health. Maddened by this thought I dashed off all notions of delicate reserve, and I went to a wealthy hardware merchant whom I knew had entertained a good feeling for me. To him I revealed the circumstances of my discharge from Russell’s and the barren state of my domestic affairs on that account. He was a material worldly man, peevish and full of whereas crochets, but he was not by any means as hard as his hardware. He listened to me – felt for me, and substantially helped me. Somewhere about this period I became acquainted with the Secretary of the Congregated Trades. He was a good-natured fellow, and he did me some very solid services.
In the summer of 1862, I got myself into a quagmire of trouble about loan-money which I had secured to oblige a neighbour. The sum was left unpaid by the borrower, and the lender – a hungry, pettyfogging vampire – let loose the helldogs of the law at my throat. The day and the scene is yet before my eyes, when two gallows-looking bailiffs came into Valhalla to distrain me. They appeared like the precursors of AntiChrist. They carried out all my little things on the side of the street, while Nannie was crying bitterly, and I was standing outside the door mutely looking on. I saw the stalworth amazons of Nicholas St gathering into a silent mass,

like a thundercloud. I saw the spirit of battle kindling in their crimson faces, while the ominous throng grew denser; but no move or signal was made until the bailiffs commenced to lift the things on to the car. Then a sudden angry yell resounded thro’ the street, and a charging brigade of war-goddesses fell like a hurricane on the amazed bailiffs.
They were knocked down – they were kicked like footballs – leaped upon – dragged like dead dogs through the sinks, and in less than two minutes one would think them more like shapeless masses of mud and blood than anything resembling human form. And while the conflict was raging, another section of the brigade was employed at rescuing my chattels by running away with them to places of safety. But I certainly felt delighted at the novel display of feminine faith and valour so boldly exhibited in my interest on that day. The car which the sons of AntiChrist – those bailiffs brought to carry away my effects, was smashed into smithereens – and the unfortunate bailiffs themselves were no better. They were rescued from total destruction by the police, and carried bruised, battered and bleeding to Barrington’s Hospital. With grateful courtesy I warmly thanked those warlike women for their work of love, and I need hardly say that a bailiff never troubled me again in the same quarter. But I was brought before the Chairman of the Quarter Sessions for rounding a mob on the officers of the law, thereby getting them

assaulted and battered in the discharge of their duty. The magnanimous John O’Donnell. Sol. one of the brave rebels of 48 ably defended me, without fee or reward, and actually got the whole case – loan money and all, dismissed.

Now the friendly hardware merchant to whom I have already alluded, consulted with a few friends of his, and they made up some money between them, by way of testimonial, and he presented me with the amount – it was £38. And from that day forth the star of good luck beamed once more in the zenith of my years. Valhalla was again replenished with plentiful beatitudes, and I was again remounted on Pegasus riding hard and fast into Fairy Land, and now I began in right earnest to compose the “Lays and Legends of Thomond”.
I was lucky enough to come by a copy of the Annals of Thomond translated by John O’Donoghue, and from these records I took my themes of war-fields and other warlike events which existed before and after the Norman Invasion. Week after week I supplied the columns of “The Munster News” with poems, for a period of four years, until I had completely won ear of the public as far as that journal was read. In 1863 my friend Mr. Carrick the Secretary of the Congregated Trades, procured me a position or sinecure under the Mayor William L. Joynt. This consisted of an Inspectorship of the Turf-quay. The business was small and the income was small but the chief interest was I had no one to control or com-

mand me, for I could go and come when I wished. This was the only situation in the world that suited me best, for I could spend hours during the fine summer days wooing the Muse of Thomond in her own flowery retreats on the banks of the lordly Shannon, without fear that the ugly demon, Want, would obtrude its unholy visage in the placid mirror of my visions; and for a long time I was in a dream of undisturbed rapture at my aerial loom weaving ideal themes of rainbow-texture into flowing song. And whenever I returned to my business on the quay, I had there before me a feast of native humor and rollocking wit from the prolific genius of Captain Murphy who commanded the swarthy Irish sailors of the West of Clare. This man was like myself, a native of Thomondgate. He was of fine manly proportion and had a commanding and impressive address. He was the most distinct reader of prose and poetry I ever heard. He admired satire, and was a practical lover of native farce and comedy. He carried an atmosphere of fun and humor around him, and was for years a votary of the jolly god and the goddess of beauty. One day I thus wrote his motto.
“Bold Captain Murphy, Champion of the Bog,
Renown’d for ladies, eloquence and grog.
He lost a fortune by Queen Venus – then
Her daughter came and built him up again.

In 1864 I was introduced to Peter Tait – afterwards Sir Peter – then in the meridian of his commercial enterprise and popularity. He was distinguished for his matchless goodness and large-handed liberality to everyone, independent of class and creed. He exalted and aggrandised Limerick with a new spirit of trade and industry never before witnessed in that historic City, but it is a well-known fact how the misguided people were led into the black sin of ingratitude against him and their happy domestic interests, when they, in fanatical madness, drove him in disgust from amongst them – never to serve them more.
I wrote and published a poem in the local Press, eulogising this good gentleman’s great spirit of Trade and Commerce. The production was extensively applauded, and Mr Tait himself was much pleased with it. He solidly proved his appreciation. He asked me if I had as much ready M.S. as would make a good sized volume if put into print. I answered affirmatively. He assured me that if I believed the printing of 1000 vols. would bring me profitable advantage in the sale, he was willing to advance the entire cost, whatever it may be, and he left the matter at my own choice to provide any printer or publisher I wished to trust with the performance of the Work. I thought of how Mullany treated me, and as a burnt child dreads the fire, I was resolved to be on my guard against publishers and printers, particularly those belonging to Dublin.

Francis Counihan proprietor of “The Munster News”, sent me for me,

and asked me if I would give him the preference of printing my book. He showed me how it would be not only a service to him but a great convenience to myself as I could be constantly visiting his office during the progress of the work going into type, and could have the constant opportunity of looking after my proofs and revises.
He showed me a very excellent new rolling press he was after purchasing for bookprinting purposes – but to make a long story short, his promises were most hopeful and alluring. I considered the matter and saw if I passed Frank Counihan, I might go farther and speed worse; moreover had he not published my poems in his journal for a period of four years, and although he never gave me a cent for any one of them, yet I deemed he had a better right to the printing of them, now in book form, than a stranger.
I went to Mr. Tait and told him I had made up my mind to give the work to Counihan. He did not relish my design, and said quietly he feared I may regret my choice, but told me to take my own way, so I soon got Frank’s estimate for printing a thousand copies of 300 pages, bound in fine cloth and lettered in gold. The cost was £36 and the work was to be finished in three months. Mr Tait advanced £20 as a first instalment according to agreement, the remaining balance to be paid when the book would

be ready for circulation.

Counihan immediately ordered a font of new type from London, for the printing of my book, as he said, but in reality the maidenhood of this type was used on “The Munster News” while my Copy was left lying idle on the cases in his job office. There’s not a man in the business world could blind a customer with such plausible excuses for delay of work than Frank Counihan. And those sort of excuses I was doomed to hear, week after week, and month after month, until my patience was worn to the dimensions of a spider’s thread. He generally laid the blame of delay on his innocent printer’s devils, but the fact was he never allowed a hand to be employed on my copy only at times his printers had nothing else to do. And instead of my book appearing after three months, it was two years before I saw it out of Counihan’s hands, and then only in sheets which I gave to a neighbouring bookbinder to be made up and bound after a clumsy fashion. When the work went to press I had 300 subscribers, but most of those fell away during two years’ waiting.
Mr Carrick of the Trades and Mr Tait several times appealed to Counihan to finish and give my volume but his excuse to these men was a lie – a foul lie to incriminate myself. One time he told them I kept the printers idle for copy. Another time he said that some of the poems were so immoral that he got the type broken up. Another time I neglected the proper correction of proofs

and so the entire form of pages had to be taken from the Press and revised by himself.

Another time a whole form of my poems teemed with such rank treason against the Queen and Government that he felt it his duty to have the whole thing destroyed. Such were this unprincipled knave’s calumnious complaints against me, to excuse his own dishonest conduct in the non-performance of his agreement. I could easily forgive him for the heavy losses he caused me but his cowardly slanders got up against my name to defend his own villainy, have so embittered my memory that I feel it a physical & metaphysical impossibility to forgive him. My book was botched – its ready sale was ruined, and my subscribers disappointed most shamefully. I believe I never would have got the work, even in sheets, out of his hands, had not Mr Dan Doyle the solicitor sent him a letter threatening an action for damages.
I told Mr Doyle all about the cruel way I had been wronged, deceived and injured by this savage Counihan, and he at once wrote the letter that brought the swindler to some sense of fear for his own sake, and compelled him to give me my work, as I have said, in a half finished state. Counihan had a dishonest repute, and I had no right to trust him with money in advance on a book he was not willing or able to produce in a proper form, but he was a mighty exponent of religious faith and morals in the pages of his journal, and I never doubted that so lofty a champion

of the true Christian church wanted anything called a conscience, not to talk of common rectitude at all.

But I paid bitterly and dearly for my sickening experience of his humane feelings and christian principles, and they don’t procure him the special grace of Heaven – I can’t help him.
But in some years after I had got rid of his pious dealing – I gave him a taste of the special grace of “Shawn na Scoob” that drove him roaring like a galled bear, about his hungry editorial castle.
Now please allow me to give some account of the sales of my botched work, the “Lays and Legends of Thomond”. I took my 1000 copies in loose sheets out of Counihan’s cellar under the printing office, and gave them to a bookbinder at Bank Place. I agreed with him to bind those books as best he could, a dozen at a time – for I only agreed to pay by the dozen.
I first sent as many as I thought proper to the national journals for Review, and when the weekly newspapers appeared I was fairly dazed – aye, thunderstruck with the brilliant reviews that flashed before me from one journal to another. Whole columns of some journals were taken up with critical eulogies on the native merits of my Muse of Thomond. Even the haughty London journals, including the lofty Atheneum resounded the praise of my humble work, and my simple song. Now every post brought me showers of letters from all quarters enclosing money orders for copies of my volume. I made the bookbinder

double his dozens, and week by week the demand went on, until I saw in my possession a fine bag of silver coin that would gladden Mammon himself. I trusted this money in my wife’s care as I felt it was right to honor her with it. I was prouder of my fame than all the gains; and now I began to feel the true joy of an Irish Bard, for I was fast growing into “the glorious privilege of being independent”.
It was in the beginning of 1867 a year made remarkable for the Fenian attempt at insurrection, when hundreds of arrests were made, and the country plunged a state of disorder and confusion. This outburst had a crippling affect on the sale of my books. The Post scarcely brought me six orders in a week, but after a while things grew brighter.
I sold 200 copies in one lot to a certain bookseller in Limerick. He had a binding press of his own; he bound them in right good style and laid them by until the last of the edition on my hands became exhausted; then he opened sale, and actually charged, and got double price for them. I well recollect many people coming to me from far parts of the country, offering ten shillings a copy but I had none to give. I was writing a second volume which I was determined to publish as soon as possible.
And now a domestic event turned up, and on that event hung the blessing or curse – the success or bad luck – the joy or sorrow of my

future life.

I was, one day, standing on the quay, when an old friend and neighbour of mine came and called me aside. This person told me with much sympathy how my mother was suffering in dire distress. How her eldest son, my brother, had turned her out – How her third son, my brother, had turned her out, and how my sister and husband had also turned her out. This story touched me to think that in her weak age all had banged their doors on her, yet I knew full well it was more her own fault than theirs, and I knew from hard experience how hard it was to pull with her; so I could not blame them for getting rid of her.
But, with all her provoking faults was she not my mother – Altho' she had incessantly injured, wronged and persecuted me, still she was my mother – There was something so soothing – so amiable in this lovely name, that I dismissed from remembrance all the evil things she had done to me – I only thought of her wants, and immediately sent her help.
It was now seven years since she compelled me to leave her – Many a time she did the same hard thing in my younger days, and made a jest of my distress – But now, perhaps, she saw and felt her ill-natured folly and repented it. It was now in my power to do good for evil. Yes, I would be kind to her. I would win her stern nature by generous gifts and affectionate actions. I would conquer her stubborn heart all to myself by making the remainder of her years as happy as she could wish.

Yes, I would conquer her back into motherly fondness and good feeling, and this would be the most noble achievement of my life. I would make Nannie forgive her, and I would reconcile them both, and make them be friends forever. - Oh, Dream of a dream! Oh, Shadow of a shade!
Next week my neighbourly friend came again on her behalf, and I doubled my offering, and so on for a few weeks longer. Then lest anything might be astray, I went and saw my mother myself. She looked a hundred years old. I scarcely knew her she looked so worn, weak and feeble, even sickly. I greeted and shook hands with her, remarking I regretted to see her in such weak health. She said it was right good judgement on her for the wrong she did me – but she was put to it by bad neighbours. I told her to stop the subject; I gave her money, and departed, assuring her I would see her again. Up to this time I did not tell Nannie that I held any intercourse with my mother, for I feared an explosion, and I wanted to alternately break the matter to her, and at last I did. She had a hot temper but a forgiving heart, and to her heart I appealed. She wouldn’t hear me. I couldn’t blame her – I was silent – and let the subject rest for that time.
Oh good heavens, had I only the wisdom to act on my wife’s honest advice then, what oceans of trouble would I have escaped. But my good nature overruled her good counsel, and sorrowfully

did I pay for it at a future period.

About a fortnight after my chat with Nannie I called on my mother and told her that as her health was infirm I much desired she would come to live with us, as we could make matters more comfortable for her. To this she gladly agreed only she was afraid to look in Nannie’s face; I remarked we would get over all that, and invited her to come to my place in the morning at nine o’clock. When she came Nannie was out, I knew she would soon return. I seated the old woman at the table and filled a cup of tea for her. She had hardly a sup taken when Nannie came in. I can never forget that meeting of the injurer and the injured, face to face. Nannie looked suddenly puzzled and embarrassed, while the other sprung from the chair and headlong rushed out at the door. I never saw her a coward until now. I asked Nannie to follow her and tell to come back and finish her cup of tea. Generously, she obeyed me, and told the old creature to come back, saying she could not honor me if she despised the mother that bore me. And so I succeeded to all my heart’s content in making those two people friends – a union which afterwards told with a vengeance against myself. For years on years I had a very happy home, the two women – mother-in-law and daughter-in-law – agreeing and understanding each other like sisters. As for my mother she was a very model of goodness and fidelity. I was truly proud of it, for I thought I had made the conquest which I coveted, and so long desired. Everything prospered and went joyful with me – Seemingly nothing was wrong except

the old lady’s health, and she was constantly complaining of that.

She told me, one evening, there was a house to be let in Park, and if I cared to remove to it, she believed the country air would do her good. I went next day, saw the house, liked it and engaged it; and on that same afternoon had my furniture removed to my new place of abode.
With deepest regret I left my lucky Valhalla where all things had turned so well in my favor. There’s an old Irish adage which says that “one side of the ditch is luckier than the other!” And in this instance I proved it true. I removed to the country to oblige and please my mother’s wishes, and to serve her health, but instead of serving her health I lost my own. The house was a new one with a light coating of thatch. The fresh walls wept constantly, and fires had to be kept renewed day and night to warm it in vain. We settled in it about the beginning of November 1867. It was an unusually cold winter of north-east winds with heavy frost and snow, and the Rheumatism which I had contracted through years of hard work, now attacked me with a sevenfold vengeance. During seven weeks I was laid prostrate and burning in joint and limb. Dr. MacMahon, the house physician of Barrington’s hospital, attended me, and I have to thank his unsparing attention and energy of skill for the saving of my life. I was for several months ere I felt restored to

my former strength.

It was the first and last winter I spend in Park, right on the ecclesiastical premises of the Right Rev. George Butler, the mitred millionaire. The following summer I removed back again to Limerick, to a small two story house near the confines of St. Mary’s Nunnery.
This house was isolated, with a large yard in front, and surrounded by high walls. A wooden gate gave access to the place, and this we kept fastened by night. Here I went on with my second volume of Lays and Legends. I was after getting acquainted with the Kirby Brothers, Printers of Patrick St. In a friendly spirit they offered to print this second vol. I was anxious it would be sold at 2s. Per copy, in order to have the Work quickly circulated among the people. Everything relative to agreement was arranged; the names of three hundred subscribers were procured, and the printing was commenced. There was about 150 pages worked off when I saw that the funds I had on hands would not be sufficient to complete the book, for I was after encountering a financial disappointment, so myself and the Kirbys consulted as to the quickest way we could adapt to get the difficulty. One of them suggested the getting up of an amateur performance at the Theatre Royal, and to this plan all agreed but myself. I did not like it, yet I did not wish to openly oppose it, in respect to the young men whom I knew meant well for my good. The matter was immediately pushed on under the patronage of

Mr. Tait, the then mayor.

But Mr. John Quin, High Sheriff of Limerick at that period, indignantly refused to permit his august name to appear on the bills in such a paltry local enterprise – although a week before he allowed his name to appear on the playbills of a strolling English actress of questionable character. And now there were hundreds of circulars* sent among the little aristocratic citizens of wealth and influence, appealing to their spirit of patriotism to encourage the forthcoming performance to uphold native talent. Mr. Joseph Fogarty gave the theatre free of all charge, for which he has my genuine thanks to this moment. The night came – the performance went on – the noble working people attended in hundreds – but devil an aristocrat, male or female, was to be seen in the house. Pit and gallery were crowded, but stalls, boxes and dress circles were remarkable for being full of emptiness. When all expenses were paid off next day, I was master of a balance of £10. This was about one third of the sum the finishing of my book required. I stopped the printing, and got the printed portion bound in No1., and disposed of them as best I could. Yet many hundreds of those copies were never sold, or at least I never saw any return for them. With resentment red hot for the insulting neglect shown to me and my Theatrical Performance, I began to meditate on the most satisfactory way of firing a shower


*It was in the delivery of those circulars among the high-toned people the provoking insult that called forth “Shawn” was given. The documents were flung back in the messenger’s face, and he was told be off with this damned nonsense. The man returned to the committee in a rage – threw the circulars on the table, and refused to go on any more errands of that sort.

of burning satirical darts among the arrogant and worthless caterpillar-aristocrats of my native City.

I handled the tradition of “Shawn-na-Scoob", a common fellow who, when he became rich by a sudden whim of fortune, didn’t know himself nor anyone else. This then was the anvil on which I forged my arrows, and unerringly hard and hot did they strike. The Kirby Brothers agreed to publish the first No. of this satire, 2000 Copies for £10 printing costs. There was a small room or office adjoining the printing department, and in this Sanctum Sanctorium I wrote the matter as fast as two devils could drive it into type.
They had much laughter over the copy as they worked along, but they never thought of the furore that that copy was destined to provoke the moment it would get into the clutches of the public. It was scarcely three hours on sale, when a general rush was made for the pamphlet, and day after day the rush increased, until there was nothing talked of in all parts of the City but “Shawn na Scoob”. The people wanted something to make them laugh and be merry, and now they had got it. In fact, myself became astonished at the wild uproar this unpretending production created.
It was all well for every one, but those whose characteristics were unsparingly dealt with. They had no cause to laugh, for they saw themselves too distinctly in the mirror I held up before them, but the only thing that made me repent of holding up such a faithful mirror was that at the first view of their own moral images, one or two of my living models lost the machinery of their heads and were taken to an Asylum.
Attorneys were consulted, and they in turn consulted counsel to know what legal action could be done to suppress the little book, and punish the

offending author. The wise advice of learned counsel was given in these sentences, or nearly the same. “That as the author of the damaging work was possessed of no world property, chattels or estate, to be made amenable to legal action, the only next thing to be done was to take criminal action against me, at the cost and expense of the plaintiffs, whereby I would be punished by a certain term of imprisonment.
But in this case the remedy was worse than the disease, for if they entered into criminal action against me in court, it would great injury to themselves, for it would give a tenfold impetus to the circulation of the evil complained of i.e. my book, and furthermore, if they succeeded in getting a verdict of imprisonment, it would only serve me by arousing public sympathy in my favor. So whatever way the legal breeze would blow, it was sure to be in my favor. And thus the angry descendants of “Shawn the First” were obliged to chew the cud of their spleen in spiteful silence as far as legal satisfaction was concerned.
People who knew them well had least sympathy for them, but privately rejoiced at the chastisement their mushroom arrogance met with. I offered them bouquets of native poesy and they, like thoroughbred gentlemen and scholars, flung them back in my face, with a ceremony of insulting remarks capable of driving the entire

Nine sacred Goddesses to take up arms against the bombastic ignorance, and presumptuous dullness of arrogant scoundrelism made rampant by the miserable possession of questionable and transitory wealth.

I believe I properly suited their fine qualified tastes in presenting them with a plentiful supply of thorns after they had offensively refused the flowers.
There were seven lofty characters of eminent commercial fame, roughly handled and brought very low in my first Number of “Shawn”. And now as the Law of the State could not give them satisfaction for the wicked onslaught I had made on their Honor’s honor, they appealed to the protecting charity of the Church which too often evinces such profound respect and dogmatical consideration for rich favorites of Mammon. On the Saturday, ending the first week of my stormy publication, two of the most influential of the castigated “Seven” waited on the Most Rev. George Butler, Bishop of Limerick, to grant them the special grace of instructing his City priests to denounce “Shawn-na-Scoob, and his Author, from their altars on the following day (Sunday). The Bishop wisely advised them to “keep silent on the matter and allow it to gradually die out; for the more they noticed it the longer it would live!!!” Not satisfied with the Bishop’s wise counsel, they proceeded to the Rev. Father Scott P.P. St Mary’s, in whose parish I was then living.

This Clergyman always gave his parishioners ample evidence of his parsimony. He was a thorough respecter of wealth and wealthy people. Then it was very natural that this priest would take sides with rich men against poor ones, as he did in my case. During the week he had read “Shawn na Scoob” and laughed heartily over it, for he saw nothing against “faith and morals” in it.
But now when the rich complainants laid their case before him he saw the whole thing through their green glasses. “Twas uncharitable - ‘twas wicked - ‘twas villainous, and that godless book, and its unholy writer must be denounced!!! And the people who sell it, and those who had bought, and still continue to buy it, must be denounced, and warned of their peril, under penalty of mortal sin!”. So on the next morning “Shawn-na-Scoob" was the gospel of the day, at first Mass, on the high altar of St. Mary’s. And the Bard of Thomond who introduced “Shawn” to public notice, was deserving of unreserved excommunication with bell, book and candle, and the Pope’s curse. And those who bought “Shawn” committed a mortal sin, and they that read him committed two mortal sins!!! The congregation that heard this nonsensical piece of pulpit oratory were both amazed and offended at their pastor’s silly denunciation of a little philippic which afforded many of the hearers a great deal of innocent merriment during the past week.

Next day (Monday) the enormous demand for “Shawn” could hardly be supplied, there was such an enthusiastic rush for it during the entire day. Until a few local attorneys appeared on the scene and threatened the poor printers with action for damages if they persisted in selling the book.
The Kirbys were intimidated. There was a brother of theirs at Maynooth, in training for the priesthood, and they were threatened with the certain dismissal of this young man from College, and his future prospects in life, if they did not at once, and for ever, give up “Shawn” and his brooms. Father Scott was an uncle of the Kirbys, and he succeeded in terrifying them with this piece of clerical revenge which closed the reign of “Shawn” in their shop, but not elsewhere. Although every book-shop in the City was warned that if a single copy of “Shawn” was known to be sold on the premises, the law would be put in force against the vendor. In six days the Kirbys sold 1500 copies, and after paying all expenses I was master of £30, ten pounds more than poor Burns had by the sale of his first edition of his immortal poems. And had not coercion interfered with my printers, “Shawn” would have travelled thro’ a second edition before a fortnight.
The local press made some very pleasant comments on what they designated “Father Scott’s new Dogma”. One journal said, it was the cause of much surprise to the moral public to know why my version of “Shawn-na-Scoob" was not immediately dispatched to the Index Expurgatorus

in Rome.

A paragraph in the Cork Herald remarked “that poor Shawn met with a very rough clerical handling in his native city where great and more notorious offenders were day getting off Scot free!”.
At any rate I found myself very popular all at once, and in a little while farther on I was presented with a handsome testimonial by many public men of our City, some of the subscribers belonging to the class that I so severely flagellated. Now I saw I was directly encouraged to go on with the goodly work. I soon commenced to write a second number; and had it ready for Press in a week. But there was no chance of getting it printed in Limerick – they were too much afraid – So I turned my attentions to Cork and there I found the printer I desired. I was strong in the sinews of war, and I couldn’t be cowed or repulsed. I also had established incog in Limerick, a Committee of Inquiry composed of some of the oldest citizens who knew the rest, and was well read in their antecedents.
From those men I collected all the information I wanted concerning the characters deserving a place in “Shawn’s” pictorial Gallery of Fine Arts! I was now at a serious loss to know how I would dispose of my new numbers which I expected to hand in a few days. Every bookshop in town was closed against me. I was advised to give my ware to the news boys who would be glad to dispose of it.

When my pamphlets came to hand I employed those boys and paid them 2s a dozen on the sale. So fast were they disposed of that I was fairly tired from counting dozens to supply the young sellers, they came so quickly for them.
Yet in spite of all my vigilance those little thieves defrauded me of many a sterling pound. With their ragged forms, dirty hands and faces, I found them to be clever flatterers in blarney and smart attorneys at roguery.
The appearance of this second number created a furore as great as the first. Fifteen hundred copies were sold in a fortnight, and no altar denunciation followed, altho’ I gave some theologians a taste of “political Scoobology” in a few pages. Now that my satirical ventures proved a decided success in bringing me fame, and fortune, I was naturally highly jubilant over it.
My little fortress was plentifully stored with all the comforts of life, and Nannie was honorary treasurer. My mother seemed much pleased at my good fortune but she was strangely taciturn. She shared our good things equally with us, and I could not see the smallest shadow of a reason why she should not be the happiest mother in twenty parishes. Any wish she expressed was at once complied with – any reasonable command she uttered was strictly acted on.
I always had a passion to live near the lordly Shannon in some little place I could call my own – this cherished daydream was constantly rising before me, and now I felt a strong hope that this airy vision may soon become a substantial fact, since I had acquired solid means to realize it.

In 1868, my generous friend Mr. Tait stood as candidate for the representation of Limerick. No man living had stronger claims on the gratitude and trust of the city, yet the clerical party with their worthless nominees contested it hot and bitter against him, and he was defeated by a very trifling majority due to mob law and intimidation.
I took only a moral part in the stormy contest, and watched, with keenest attention, the actions of the political and fanatical demagogues on both sides. This formed the subject matter for “Shawn the Third”.
In a few months I had it ready for Press, and it was printed in a very short time. I had good reason to think that all the city anticipated its coming, but in this I suffered an unexpected disappointment. The printer’s name and address in Cork was only known to myself and another person whom I could not help taking into my confidence; and he secretly betrayed me. The printers were Messrs Henry Coghlin, Cook St, Cork.
Just as they finished the printing of my book they received a furious threatening letter – anon of course – terrifying them with prosecution and penalty for libel if they allowed that book to appear in public. Other letters of a fierce threatening nature followed by next mail, and on the succeed-day a crowd of police invaded the printing office. I received a telegram announcing that my printers were in trouble, and could not let me have my books, altho’ I had paid half the printing cost in advance.

I took the next train and in a few hours I stood face to face with my intimidated printers, and insisted on getting up my work. They showed the threatening letters, and at once I recognised my traitor-friend's handwriting.
I made light of it and assured them it was only a mere bugbear that they had no cause to fear; but all my argument was useless. I saw my books lying in a big pile on a bench; they were all finished except the wrappers. I told Mr. Coghlin I would not return to Limerick without them. He took a copy and asked me to go with him to an attorney. We went to Mr. Julian, Solicitor to whom the copy was handed for perusal in order he would mark the libellous points and pronounce the legal danger that may attend them. The attorney read the copy with an amused look and suppressed laughter, until he got through. Then he asked if Mr. Coghlin and his partner had given a written agreement to print the book, and if they had taken money in whole or part payment of the work – He was affirmatively answered.
Then my advice to you, said he, is to give up the books to the owner – they are his real and lawful property, and you have no right to detain them for one day beyond your stipulated agreement, no matter what issue may turn up. I went back to the printing room rejoicing.
I paid the remainder of the costs and demanded my books, but all I could get that evening was three hundred copies, with an assurance that the rest would be finished next day, and sent after me to Limerick.

I took my parcel and ran to catch the five o’clock train; I was in Limerick at half-past eight. I now had a mart in a central part of the city to dispose of my bombs. The veteran patriot of 48, stern, irrepressible Charley O’Neill of no. 50 Thomas St had given me the free use of his shop to sell my “Shawn”, and thither I face with my parcel.
I found a crowd of purchasers already on the premises waiting for me, and before ten o’clock I had not one copy of the three hundred but was bought up at a shilling each. Next day the place was literally besieged for numbers – I had none – I telegraphed to my printer to send on the remaining copies at once. I received a reply assuring me they would be sent by the evening train. That day my loss was great – I could have sold a thousand copies had I them at hand. Next day I got a card from Mr. Joseph Murphy, Solicitor to the corporation informing me that a large parcel of m books had been directed to him, and was in his office. I immediately saw through this trick – it was a dodge of the printers. They thought that by delivering my works into the hands of the corporation lawyer they would escape any legal storm that may impend.
I lost no time in going to the office, demanded my parcel and got possession of it. The sale soon reopened and the books flew out in scores. Never was anything like it seen in Limerick. I was hailed

on every side with merit for the vivid picture I had portrayed of the election and the contending electors. They called it a triumph of genius.
I revenged the insults which beastly ingratitude had wantonly and cruelly piled upon my matchless, generous friend, Sir Peter Tait, the Scotchman who lifted me up when my own countrymen abandoned and forgot me. No wonder I was well satisfied – thirteen hundred books were sold in seven days, and I found myself the possessor of as many shillings.
I now had an abundant stock of friends. Men of wealth and position were proud – or pretended to be proud – to know me. But I had taken a lesson from the life of Robert Burns, which taught me to keep myself respectfully aloof from the houses of the rich. I only made them subscribers to my “Scoobs”, and they subscribed so liberally that I received ten times more than the printing of any number of them cost me. It is proverbially said that “when it rains it pours”. When fortune comes she comes with a rush, and when misfortune comes she brings a train.
It was so with me, but I must tell how it happened. A place by the Shannon’s side was the ambition of my life. There was a holding – a very small plot – to be sold by the leasee, an old friend of mine. I went to see him about it, and we both completed a bargain. This place had on it the ruins of a dwelling house with about nine perches of a little garden to the rear. I often played in this place when I was a child; it was within a hundred yards of the house where I was born, and reared by the

lordly Shannon. The surrounding scene was the delight of my youth. The fields where I gambolled and hurled when a boy, were still vivid with their radiant emerald before me. The fresh-green banks where I loved to wander in the enchanting summer evenings, to coin some sweet image into song, were still there beautiful and glowing as the resplendent river itself. Old Killeely Churchyard with all its grey tombs and weird memories lay within a gunshot of the site where I intended to build my new home – where I fondly dreamed of spending my life to its last moment. Yes, this little spot had a special charm for me beyond every other spot on the face of the earth. Besides was I not lovingly devoted to fishing – and there was the fishfull Shannon flowing at the end of my little garden; and would not Nannie rear fine flocks of ducks and geese to sail about that friendly river and feed along its weedy borders.
This was no fanciful speculation – no daydream of a delusive nature – it was a real one – yes, one as substantial as the ground on which I stood. But, oh good heavens! There was a wicked, envious Demon watching my thoughts and sneering at my premeditated plan of happiness.
I went at once and paid the owner of the place the sum he demanded for it – it was £12, a mere bagatelle to me, considering the immense value of the little plot in my own estimation. I would not give it for the best farm in County Clare. I got up the lease and placed it in the

hands of a lawyer for the drafting and engrossing of an assignment; and in a few days more I found myself master and owner of the only little spot in the whole world where I could be happy, truly and entirely.

There was a head rent of £1 yearly to Lord Limerick, but that was nothing – the place legally belonged to me and my heirs or assignees for ever. This happened in March 1870.
On the first of April I contracted with masons, and set them at the building of my house, which was finished in the following August. I gave it the fanciful name of “Thomond Cottage” and I believe it is known by it yet. I say without a shade of mistake or exaggeration that a strong house for its size was never built in the ancient premises of St. Leila. There’s a proverb that says “Fools build houses for wise people to live in!!!” In my case it turned out true. But now while my fortress was in course of erection I was introducing “Shawn the Fourth” into Limerick. I had changed my printer, and there was not such good material by way of the typography and paper in this issue as there was in the others. However the little thing sold well. Nine hundred copies being disposed of at one shilling each, and four hundred at sixpence.
Charley O’Neill was incessantly threatened with legal proceedings. He was a man of responsible property, and as long as he had nothing to do with the sale of any single one of my pamphlets, he defied the angry threats of legal bugbears, and their instructors. He was a bold, brave, daring man, and would not, for a moment, calmly listen to the language of intimidation.

But he was completely beset by people instructed to catch him. For when I went home in the evening, after every day’s sale, a crowd of would-be admirers of poor “Shawn”, used to resort the shop requesting to have copies and pressing the price of them on Charley, who instantly discovered the dodge, and sternly refused to be trapped. He knew some attorneys clerks among the crowd. He cleared them out, telling them to come when myself would be there. Intrepid, noble Charley! I remember him with gratitude and honor. Had I given up all the money I realised in his shop, into the hands of his care and confidence, it would be a million times better for me.
But instead of doing that I took it all home and honored my wife with the possession of it. About this time I got acquainted with the Venerable Archdeacon Goold, a thorough gentleman of the highest literary attainments and most liberal principles. A correspondence sprung up between us which lasted to the very day of his death.
He admired the independent pluck of my “Scoob” publications, and “The Lays and Legends of Thomond”. In him I found one of the most practically generous friends I ever knew in this world.
In August 1870, I removed into “Thomond Cottage” where I gave a social house-warming to my friends – my deadly friends who secretly envied and hated me simply because I was able to raise such a fine residence, and be my own landlord. Alas, for the treachery of worthless relatives, and the littleness of ignorant human nature.

I dreamt I was now at home – happily and securely in the home of my heart – seated joyfully at my own fireside and under my own figtree.

I was enthusiastically grateful to the Great Almighty Maker who gave me talent and circumstances to achieve the building of my little palace.
I could love the whole world for His sake, and I could clasp every poor man to my heart as a brother. “Come to my bowl – come to my arms, my friends! My brothers!!” My funds were now running low on account of my stone and mortar outlay, but I knew the way to replenish them; for before the Christmas of that year I had “Shawn the Fifth” in the market. This number had a sweeping sale – Fourteen hundred copies, at a shilling each.
I now rested for awhile on my laurels, and turned my mind to the improvement of my premises. At the rere of my garden lay a wide space of rocky shore which could be embanked and added to my plot. To do this would be at the risk of immense labour and cost. The former owner from when I built the place made several strenuous efforts to embank that wild shore, during many years, but he sadly failed to complete the job. I was a stripling then, and living near, I often gave him a helping hand at the work. But the part that he raised during the summer was doomed to be demolished in winter by overwhelming floods. I now surveyed the shore to see what conquest I could make of it. My decision was at once taken to go on with it. I was vigorous and hardy and feared no labour, no

matter how excessive. Besides I had an irresistible will and a hopeful mind. And before I tackled the work I addressed the noble river in dramatic verses, beginning with “Your dominions are ample and grand, my lord”. This racy production is in the second edition of the “Lays and Legends of Thomond”. One would think his azure Majesty heard me, and made things propitious for me; because during the many seasons I was employed at raising my embankments I was troubled with very few opposing floods and storms. I paid my brother £1 a week for helping me, but he deceived me in the construction of the work.
For when he left me, after twenty six weeks, to go into a more easy and suitable employment, I was compelled to have all his stonework pulled down and re-erected by a more scrupulous and competent person. I had sure proof to know that the work my brother did for me, was done with bitter envy. But it was not the first ruse that this Bochilleen down played off on me.
A selfish person can never be sincere to another. His pretended interest in my affairs was only to draw as much as he could out of my pocket; and he did not care by what principle he accomplished that. There are some people, if you gave them all Ireland for an estate they wouldn’t be satisfied until they’d get Scotland for a deer park.
And this loquacious fellow was one of that ilk. I saw through his thin unprincipled schemes, and I began to dislike and avoid him*. But


*This brother in which I place the most loving confidence behaved a perfidious traitor to my interest. I gave him solid reason to believe my affection but he turned against me simply to please his wife who bitterly envied my wife because she possessed more worldly means than herself.

I sincerely confess that if he had acted in an open, honest spirt of fair play I would gladly share with him all I was worth. Even I had my mind fixed on leaving my property to some one of his children.
About six months before I began the building of the garden, my mother called me, one evening, and seriously advised me to start a liquor trade. She said there was no house in the parish so well suited and no man so popular to draw custom as I was. She painted things in such glowing rose-colors that I listened with much interest, but I did not consent at that time. A few days afterwards she open-counselled me again, and was backed by my wife. I could not resist the appeal of both women, so I consented. They promised that the bar would be strictly cared and minded between themselves, and that I never need take any trouble by attending there, or lose a minute’s time with it. All I had to do was to order the different liquors from the city, and they’d guarantee to retail it with prudence and profit. All this was very superfine, yet I knew that if the business was well attended to, and properly conducted, a fortune could be realized in a very few years. I had no house-rent to pay. The valuation of my premises was moderate. I was aware I could procure a low license, and so I did. My lower apartments were soon converted into a shop and a sitting room, and plenty of stock and stuff were rolled in. There’s no trouble in doing things any place where there is plenty of money. I never doubted my wife’s correctness and prudence in this new enterprise; and to encou-

rage her I told her to keep all the profits of the business, and lay it by for herself.

Furthermore I made her a present of my house and garden by a solid title-deed duly registered in Dublin. This Debenture drawn and engrossed by P.J. Connolly of George’s St. Limerick, cost £23. Along with this gift I willed her every other thing that was mine viz my furniture, my harp, my library and the right of my literary works published and unpublished. After those generous presents who could or would dare to doubt a woman or wife’s fidelity and gratitude; yet those rich gifts were like pearls to hogs, wasted on perfidy and baseness; as I will soon show. My mother was now well nigh 72 years old, and was in weak health – or actually pretended to be so – while I felt the fullest compassion and sympathy for her feebleness. Her manners had taken a new dye of seriousness and devotion. She spoke solemnly of her approaching dissolution which she assured me was not far off. But she used to console herself by saying that her famous son, the Bard, would give her an honorable wake and respectable funeral!!”
This grave sentiment was daily and nightly on her lips. Who could, for a moment, suspect that hypocrisy and treachery were lurking like black snakes under such a solemn sentence. Yet the fiend of lying deceit was there. I should have remembered that some people are never too old at doing the devil’s bidding, to achieve sorrow for others.

But I sincerely protest that in this case I could not lend myself to the merest suspicion that my mother was acting. What was her object, her reason, or motive, or what had she to gain by acting so awful a part? She had the good things of life to enjoy, without interruption or hindrance; then, why would she act to turn death into mockery, or make a farce of her good health?
It could not be – and I would never believe it – yet a little while farther on, I got right hard reason to believe it – to my imperishable grief. One time she’d try how she would look in a fainting fit – another time she’d imitate a weak, little baby learning to toddle about, catching at the furniture and holding by the wall. Then she’d pretend to rally and grow somewhat stronger – sit and rest for awhile – take a half glass of old brandy – or maybe a whole one – rise up and toddle about again with some locomotive improvement; and by small degrees get into the grove of her old vigour. I employed Doctor De Landre to investigate her ailment, but that skilful practitioner could make no hand of her. He came to see her more than a half dozen times, and yet her malady was a mystery. The entire fact of the case was that she had practically deceived the practitioner.
I got a cholic in my heart from her incessant sickly tricks and complaints, especially the moment she’d get up in the morning she was sure to give us a nightmare by telling two or three terrible escapes she had from dying during the night. Still – fire or knife – nothing would deter her from going inside the bar to help her poor girl, as she affectionately termed my wife.

This sort of imposition went on for two years without any of use taking the least suspicious notice as to what was really the matter with the aged patient. We truly believed that her infirmity would soon end in death, and we carefully avoided giving her slightest trouble or annoyance, but pleased and tended her as best we could. Still she was able to move about; and often at her own request my wife used to send her on errands into the city. I sometimes saw her there, and hired a side-car to bring her home. Every Monday during the fine summer weather, I engaged one of those vehicles to take her out into the country – Myself and wife accompanying her – thinking the rural air would do her much good. And so the farce went on for two summers. During those seasons I was hard at work constructing the last and most difficult part of my garden pier. It extended out to the extremest low watermark in summer-time.
In winter the depth of the tides at this point was eighteen feet. The down torrent was strong and rapid, so that my embankment must be of the most endurable strength and solidity to resist it.
So intently and anxiously was all the power of my will and energy set on this enterprise that I was rarely seen in my house except at meal-times. From sunrise to sunset the pick-axe, shovel and wheelbarrow never left my hands, only while I was changing them.

So excessive was the labour, and so incessant was my sweat that my shirt became reddened on my back. And this desperate toil went on for years until I finally conquered the mighty Shannon, and planted my summer-bowers in the midst of his rushing tides. Of course I had to engage help – My whole outlay, including house and all, was £430.
Notwithstanding all this continuous toil I composed and introduced Shawn the Sixth, into Limerick, in July 1874. There was an amazing demand for this number. Fourteen hundred being sold in a fortnight, at a shilling a copy. And at the finish of my Shannon enterprise I had “Shawn the Seventh” prepared for publication. The subscriptions for those Numbers generally came thro’ the Post, and I had always a surplus sum often three more than the printing cost. In the present instance I had fourteen pounds more than I wanted. This sum I counted before my wife and I secured it in the drawer of a bureau in my bedroom. I told her to keep the door locked and allow no one into that room, except herself, during the time I would be away in Cork. After four days absence I returned to find the money gone. I asked my wife about it, assuring her that if she had possessed herself of it, I’d consider it safe, and say no more, but she positively declared she had no knowledge of it. A rapid presentiment of wrong and robbery flashed on my mind, and I immediately began an investigation, only to find that my wife had not one pound

to show out of all the principal and profit of her shop, for two years, including some large sums of cash* I left in her care, from time to time. I was thunderstruck. But what good was it for me to fly into a rage and commit violence. The bad neighbours would be glad of it, and in that street very few good ones I had around me. As for my supreme old rogue of a mother she pretended to look puzzled, and quite stupefied at the story. She said I was acting on false fancies, for my wife never had any money at all belonging to me – only what I took from her and squandered myself. Then I knew that this terrible old hypocrite and fraud was truly the thief, and my faithless wife knew it, and connived at the robbery. But that was not all, for looking over documents of goods delivered, and sold in my house, I found myself saddled with a debt of £140. I was literally distracted.
Now when the old Cromwellian vulture whom I trusted and honored as a mother, saw that she was unmasked, she assumed a face of iron to brave the consequence. She was no longer sick and feeble, but suddenly grew bold, robust and vigorous. Whatever fiendish method she had used in cajoling and corrupting my idiot of a wife to ruin me, she adopted a similar system in destroying the good opinion of the public against me. She had slanderous agents instructed and employed to traduce and defame my character around the parish, for a full year or more, ‘ere I chanced

*My mother made a private trustee of a neighbouring farmer placing in his hands a good sum of money which she had pilfered from my wife. The trustee died suddenly and the money was never recovered by her. It seemed as if a curse had followed her robbery.

to discover her robbery and perfidy. The money was gone – irrecoverably gone – without a hope to regain one pound of it, or even a shilling. But the desperate calumnies she had set afloat about me, crushed my spirit lower than the big breach she made in my hard-earned fortune. I traced the slime of her whispered venom among men, women and children, in three parishes, namely Parteen, St. Munchin’s and St. Mary’s. Those ill-minded people were glad to endorse in their memories, and to propagate with their tongues, the vilest slanders that man, woman or demon could invent and circulate about me; and I found myself tangled in a ramification of calumnies that had no end anywhere I turned. No one dared to doubt the dark lying stories so mechanically spun and woven by my own dear good mother. She made the public believe that the big sum which I charged her with stealing from my wife, was actually squandered by myself in nightly riot and debauchery. I did not try to refute any one of her dreadful slanders. I would be only throwing oil on fire. But my heart bled and my brain burned when I found myself robbed of both character and purse by the infernal duplicity of this terrible, old Puritan Fox who, I sadly believed, was dying in my house for years. Oh, but if I had known her dodge, I am sure I would not have been so respectfully observant of the Fourth Commandment.
But as the vexatious drama did not end in gory tragedy, I am well content. Another heavy purse was stolen from her by a woman with whom she lodged after I had put her out of Thomond Cottage. Other sums were closed on by people to whom she lent them. An ill fate pursued all her thieving speculations.

On looking over my bills and receipts I found out that her robberies were much larger than at first I reason to suspect. The trade and business done in my house were three-fold of anything like it done in any three houses in the district. During five years the principal and profit of all this business were covertly and cunningly thieved away.
Many of my hopeful neighbours not only suspected but well knew that my mother was robbing me, but they knew how to be silent on the matter. I got some hints about if from two of those folk, but the hints were so masked and mystified that they were quite unintelligible to me, for I could not be persuaded that my wife and mother would think of injuring themselves my injuring me. One rainy night I got both of them face to face, and alone, in the shop. I commenced to examine and cross-examine the wife to know where she was, or what doing or thinking of, when she allowed all this money to go from under her hands and her eyes. She had only one answer i.e. “That old woman, your mother, induced me to drink, in your absence, and while I was drunk she was robbing the place!!!” I commanded the old woman to give up the plunder before I’d give her into the clutch of the law. She answered me in a fierce, defiant tone. “You have no proof against me – you never found me stealing anything from you, and I defy your wife – when didn’t she mind your means when you trusted her!

- but don’t you ever trust me, for I’ll leave no stone unturned to ruin you every way I can do it!!!” Holy Heavens! How was I to bear all this pronounced, daring perfidy? I could no longer maintain the balance of my patience under this tirade of defiance and insult added to injury! I roughly grasped the incorrigible offender and hurled her headlong into the rainy street. I reproached my wife for her unfaithful conduct in betraying the trust I reposed in her, and showed her the impending ruin that her heartless folly brought on us both, and on the handsome home which cost me so much toil and treasure to build. I never abused, or struck her, for I always had an abhorrence of wife-beating, and felt it as the most ignominious and cowardly act of blackguardism that any man could disgrace himself with. If his wife refuses to listen to calm, sensible advice from his mouth, then on his peril let him not use physical force with her, if he has any forbearance or common manly sense! Let him not degrade himself by striking her, for by that blow he breaks a chord in her affection that never can be tied again; and she will brood over the tyrannous insult, watching her opportunity of retributive revenge. And she must and will have it; for the slumbering lioness of pride in her nature, has been fiercely awakened by that wicked blow.
I now rejoice to think, that, notwithstanding all the seas of evil, trouble, losses, and heartbreaking sorrow my foolish wife entailed on me, I never gave her a single blow, but reproved her more in a spirit of sorrow than in anger.

To use a nautical illustration, a man’s house is like a ship. Himself represents the Captain – his wife the pilot, and his children – if he has any – the crew. No matter what his skill and prudence in navigation might be, the pilot can run his ship on the rocks in spite of all his judgement and vigilance. And that’s the way my ship, “Thomond Cottage” was lost, because the pilot permitted pirates on board, while the unsuspecting Captain was in the cabin looking over his charts. Many a fine domestic barque was steered to ruin in the same manner. But this sort of vain moralizing only interrupts my story.

Let me now tell of an attempted murder. A few nights after I had evicted the old Fox, I was sitting by myself in the kitchen. I was very much worried and sick. I was in the city all day, and had paid off an instalment of the debt which my mother’s thievish practices had saddled on me. I was nodding asleep in front of the fire, when she softly stole into the room. She took a heavy chair and placed it behind me, facing one its corners towards the centre of my back; then, with a vigorous dash, she flung me from the chair I occupied, backward against the angle of the one she had place behind for the purpose of breaking my spine. I fell helpless, and the sharp corner deeply wounded me within an inch of the backbone. I rolled disabled and almost insensible on the floor. She threw

herself on her knees on my stomach, and fastening her bony fingers into my windpipe, commenced to strangle me*. I was so hurt and dazed by the fall I was unable to raise a hand to save myself.
I felt, with a horrid affect, my lungs nearly bursting with suffocation, while her strangling grasp was growing tighter on my throat. I felt a buzzing sound in my ears and head, as if the noise of a waterfall was ringing in my brain. Just at that moment my wife came into the room, and saw the murderous old wretch at her deadly work. She grasped her and dragged her off my body. I was completely deaf to the words that passed between them. But my worthless wife allowed the diabolical monster to get off scot free. During a fortnight afterwards I was not able to walk erect – the pain in my back was fearful, and I suffered with a choking soreness in my throat. Had she succeeded in killing me she would assuredly lay the blame on Nannie, get her arrested and prosecute her for the deed. Then she’d have no fear of being exposed by me for her unnatural conduct, and she would have my place without gainsay or dispute. But now think of her matchless daring and unheard-of effrontery to come to me in few days after her hideous attempt on my life, demanding wages for all the time she lived in my house – yes, wages for corrupting my wife, making her a drunkard, plundering me of my living, and blasting my credit and


*Among her evil-minded associates she boasted of this murderous assault and regretted its failure.

good name in country and town. And surely if her abominable actions deserved wages I was powerless to foot the bill as I would wish. But I know the sort of wages I’d like to pay her – a lunatic Asylum for inexorable wretches – and no more!!! I now had my house happily rid of her, but I knew she would continue to do me all the mischief in her power, with that persuasive lying, slanderous tongue of hers, and that ingenious brain always fertile with treacherous plots. Her next move was to become an inmate of the Workhouse. She appeared before the Board of Guardians to know if they would compel me to pay 5s a week for her support, but in this her scheme was defeated. However she soon hit upon another plan. She got on a wretched garment of rags, and went from house to house, begging about the parish. In this she had a fine field to exercise the ready weapons of her calumny.
Her complaints and appeals were eloquently doleful, and scores of credulous people were deceived and cajoled by her lying stories. Here is a little sample. “My bad son kicked me out of his house, after making a common slave of me for years: and because I am now too old and feeble to work any more for him, he has beat me away to look for my bit among the good neighbours – May God do to him as he has done to me!!!” This was a nice plea for a begging imposter that could lay her hand on more than six hundred

pounds of stolen money.

When some people would tell her that it was believed she robbed her son! Her ready reply was “How could I cheat or rob a fellow that never had anything, and was never able to have anything, only what he got by begging; and sure he squandered that same among bad women! Sure he was always bad! He’d drink Loch Erne to the bottom, and no one that has a soul to save could live with him!!!”
Such was the public litany of falsehoods preached every day against me by my hopeful mother; and for every one that turned a deaf ear to her wicked slanders, a hundred believed her. Give a dog a bad name and every one will have a kick at him. What made the affair worse, my selfish, envious, worthless brother endorsed all her evil reports and crowned them with additional illustrations; just because I had a better place than he had, and was on my guard – altho' too late – against his covetous speculations. His wife and her people followed suit in doing me harm. The police* through misrepresentation were set to watch my house, as if I were a coiner or distiller of potteen.
My yard and garden were plundered at night – My boats cut loose and turned adrift – My wife abusive and neglectful of her house.
It was only a sympathising Providence that kept me within the common bounds of sanity. I did not know where to turn – how to act, or what to do – Yet I was resolved to hold my fortress against all storms.


*A sergeant of police named Charley Tynan was set on me by the lying stories of those domestic relatives and he mistook his duty in giving me annoyance and trouble to please them. He was very nearly coming to grief, one day in court, over this affair, were it not that the slavish magistrate hushed the complaint to save him.

Ah, this was a terrible page in the volume of my life – I remember it with shuddering horror. Now and then I turned on strong drink to make myself reckless, but I could not continue any time at this brutal indulgence, without paying a sore constitutional penalty – so that I never could become a drunkard – altho' my mother branded me with the beastly name – and worse. I always enjoyed a social glass with a friend or two, but seldom went farther, tho’ frequently pressed by surrounding company. It made neither a devil or a saint of me but an extravagant merryman. I could not write a sentence under its influence, and I hated it for that. Thank heaven, I was a slave to nothing but Love and Beauty, Goodness and Generosity – and there I confess I was an unmitigated idolater. And I could love all those people around who were maliciously doing mischief to me.
I never disobliged them or refused to do them any favors that were in my power to grant – yet if I gave them all I possessed in the world, I never could make true friends of them or make them speak kindly of me – They couldn’t and wouldn’t understand me – They hated me for my prosperity, and for the talent that created it, and their eyes were hot to see the hour of my downfall – Oh, what a heart-breaking agony it was to see my own wife banded with such a villainous herd of perfidious wretches. I adorned her with gold and

jewellery, and gifted her my place, and made her the honored custodian of all my wealth, yet she rebelled against my good counsels, insulted my generosity, betrayed my trust and trampled on my confidence.

Without word of information conveyed to me, she listened to my mother’s evil inventions about me – drank in the corrupt venom of her traducing stories – allowed her to plunder my house until I was a bankrupt before I knew where I stood.
Strange positions make strange conduct, and she, indeed, got a position that was strange to her; she did not know how to keep her brains or her balance.
I ought to be flogged for my softness of heart, and hanged for my child-like confidence – But my trials were not over yet – another invading army of misfortunes was crossing the border. After I had evicted the old plunderer, my wife persistently refused to mind her business any longer. She retired upstairs and lay down on the sofa in the sitting room, and no amount of persuasion could induce her to attend her shop. I could not do it myself on account of defective sight which was always naturally short. I would gladly give up business altogether at that time but I had given the Messrs Caffery of Summer St. Brewery, Dublin, a pledge that I would continue dealing with them because I owed them £100. And they had given a guarantee on their own part not to take any legal proceedings to recover the debt until I was able to liquidate it whole or by instalments. (This debt was a part of the money that my honest mother had thieved from my wife).

Under those conditions I was compelled to keep on the liquor trade or run the risk of loosing my property, for the pledge I gave my creditors was my wife’s lease because she seemed to be totally ignorant of its value. But they knew it, and of course were completely satisfied. Now when she refused to interest herself in helping me to pay off this little encumbrance brought on by her own faithless neglect, I was bewildered as to how I’d act regarding the management of the shop. Maintime there was a young fellow, commonly called Whopper O’Brien, paying daily visits to my house. He was after arriving from America. I had known him since he was a little boy and always proved him to be a very sincere fellow. He enlisted in the British army and spent his term of ten years in the service; and after his time been expired he emigrated to the United States where he remained for six years, and then returned to Thomondgate his native place. This very experienced traveller saw the desperate fix I was in between wife and mother. He with profound dissimulation sympathised with my trouble, and seemed willing at any moment to risk his life to redeem me from my embarrassment. He modestly told me he had run a bar in Boston for five years, with great advantage to his Boss; and if I would trust him with the management of my business, he did not doubt but he would render a good account of it in a short time. He asked nothing but his maintenance and lodging for his time

and attention to make my affairs better. I had no choice but to accept his offer so unselfishly given, as my foolish confidence led me to believe. I then forewarned my wife that if she any longer refused attending to her business I would certainly employ this man. She defiantly told me to employ who I liked; and so the Whopper was installed.
After a fortnight matters began to flourish and look hopeful. My mind began to settle and grow easy, like a sea after a storm. It was the first glow of peace after a turmoil of years; but my evil genius said NO, it must not be!! My mother thought of a new plot of torment and humiliation to my goaded and perplexed heart. She bought a basket of periwinkles along with some shell-dilisk to the other side of the street, nearly opposite my door, and there she sat to vend her beggarly merchandise. The shabbiest pauper that ever strayed from a poorhouse looked a queen in comparison to her.
She had attired herself in a Babel of old rags that were actually confusing each other as they fluttered around her wretched form. They appeared like a mass of ivy leaves on an old wall quivering and shaking in the wind. I knew she had no other object in rigging herself thus, and coming there, than to shame and scandalise me. What could I do? I couldn’t use force to remove her, neither could I employ the law to do it. Killeely Glebe House was at that time untenanted, and there at the lawn wicket she located herself on neutral premises, and no one had authority to turn her away.

I was almost sure the cold weather would finally expel her, but in this speculation I was deceived. For two year she occupied that bleak position, and never quitted it even for an hour up to the very moment I left my Cottage, to return to it no more, then she gave up her miserable occupation, well satisfied and in high glee. During those two provoking years she left no device untried to outrage my patience. She tried to prevent many persons from dealing in my shop, under the threatened penalty of her avenging curse. She slandered, belied and denounced me to everyone that passed by. The bad neighbours exulted at her unnatural villainy, and used to bring her scraps of food, by way of alms, just to taunt and humiliate me. To avoid looking at those disgusting scenes I often ran into the city and remained away all day. Every morning before she attended her periwinkle mart, she gave a round of begging about the neighbourhood – With a little tin plate in her hand she begged for tea-leaves to restew for her breakfast. This mean piece of hypocrisy would make me laugh but I was too much hurt. All those shabby tricks were performed to cloak the robbery she perpetrated in my house. I saw she was deceiving the public as she had deceived myself, and I did not envy them for it. Yet I was mad to think that her lying stories were able to rouse up such a wild sea of prejudice against me, but I bore it with a silent, immovable resolution. I waited for the advocacy

of Time the alleviator of all injuries and evils. And now in the midst of all my perplexing difficulties the crushing news of the venerable Archdeacon Goold’s sudden death reached me. My best prop – my noblest, truest, steadiest friend whose munificent heart and hand were always open to me. His unexpected demise was the most desperate affliction of all I had encountered yet. Now I had real reason to give up the world’s conflict and fold my arms in dumb despair. For two gloomy months I could not be held responsible for word or action or mine, for my existence was like that of a moody maniac or a night-walking somnambulist. But no one knew the deep heart-ache that made me strange and silent. I was heedless, reckless and stolidly indifferent to everything. The practically shrewd Whopper O’Brien keenly watched my movements and turned them to good advantage for himself. His wife was after arriving from America. He had privately paid her passage out of my money, but I was ignorant of it; because I didn’t care to watch him as he had watched me.
Behind my back a swindling combination was hatched between this foreign damsel and himself. She had taken up her quarters along with her husband in Thomond Cottage, I did not question her right, but she soon assumed more imperious authority than my wife, and really the goose-minded neighbours paid her off with more difference. She was the genuine Ban Theirna of Thomond Cottage, but the rightful mistress

was no where – Och, the devil mend Nannie her for this insulting, usurping assumption of her position in her own house. She permitted those insolent, dishonest villains to take her place, and treat her like an inferior servant. I was regretfully proud of her humiliation, but she didn’t seem either to feel it or understand it. I never saw, or heard, or knew anything like it. They say marriages are made in Heaven; if so, then those who made my match there played the devil with the job by choosing for me a bigger fool than myself.
I had a notice from the Cafferys, my creditors, telling me that their agent was to call in a few days for an instalment of my debt. This gave me no trouble for I was prepared. On the following night I came from the city, about nine o’clock. Mrs O’Brien and my wife were standing behind the bar, but I missed the Whopper. I asked where he was, and his wife answered. “You are boss – My husband cannot attend here any more! He has gone to another employment!! He gave up your keys to Nannie!!” I was struck speechless for I knew I had been betrayed. I ran upstairs to the bureau in my bedroom where the drawer that contained the money in his charge was. It was open and empty. He had robbed me*. I looked about confounded and bewildered. Good God, I sighed in agony, are earth and hell – men, women and devils combined to ruin and destroy me for ever!!!


*At this time he had joined the nationalists of Limerick to fortify himself with their sympathy. He played off this piece of cunning policy so well that he was considered as an injured and betrayed man, and of course I was generally censured for the arrest of this thief and imposter.

I made no outcry but waited quietly until next day to consult a lawyer. I could not tell the exact sum the fellow had embezzled, but I could give a near guess, it was more than £90. When I saw the lawyer on the morrow, and stated my case, he advised me to ascertain the real and exact amount of the sum stolen from me. I could not do this without conning over receipts and other documents. Connected with my business during the time the rogue was in charge of it.* But on looking through those I found he had destroyed the greater part of them, and the rest were so confused in dates, and the items so blotched, torn and blotted that no one could make anything out of them. While I was engaged at those papers the iron-faced thief himself walked in and coolly presented me with a bill for ten months’ salary for services rendered according to agreement.
Could any member of the legislative assembly of Pandemonium act with such calm daring effrontery, after robbing me of every penny I had. I asked him where was the money I left under his care in the drawer. He replied he gave the keys of that drawer to my wife, and she was the only one that could account for the money. I saw this scoundrel’s treacherous drift, and I said no more. But the farce was not ended – he insisted on remaining in my house until I’d pay him his demand, and so brazenly persistent was he in keeping forcible possession that I was obliged to bring legal authority to eject the clever villain and his equally

*These were five pigs reared in my yard during the time this fellow was in my house. When fit for sale, I told him to drive those pigs to the market and dispose of them. I met him in the city on his return from the fair. He said he had got £15 for the pigs. I told him to take it home and lock it up with the other money in his care – I never saw it more. He closed....[bottom of page worn away, illegible]...[note continues on following page]... To a section of Fenians in Limerick. His experience as a British soldier procured him this position among the Brotherhood along with their firm confidence and patriotic esteem. They slandered me for the arrest of this favored drill sergeant. But for all his pupils, if he thought he could enrich himself at the cost of ... [bottom of page worn away, illegible] ...

clever Jezebel. Then as if to defy and annoy me he rented a house on the other side of the street nearly opposite mine, and there he located himself with all the swaggering insolence of a scandal-proof pickpocket after escaping the jail. Oh, now was I not happily fixed looking across the way at this robber standing defiantly at his own door, and at my thief of a scandalous mother sitting in rags over her shabby mart of periwinkles etc, not forty feet away from him. Ah, this indeed was a galling, stinging trial that no one felt but myself. My wife seemed quite indifferent – nay thoroughly insensible – to all this. She appeared like a being whose nature was frozen up, and her heart calcined to metal. In my desperate agony of spirit, I curst human nature.
Many an avenging murder was committed for a myriad times less provocation. But what entirely envenomed my torture was that the neighbours acted and spoke in full sympathy with those two criminals – Those thieving dissemblers – Whopper O’Brien and my mother. But still I moved amongst them with silent, cool, contemptuous disdain, and quiet scorn. There is a class of people in this world, and if you serve and oblige them they never will forgive you. This was the sort of class that formed my neighbourhood, with very few exceptions. I could not much longer breathe the same unholy atmosphere with such a reptile herd. I at last formed a resolve to sell my Cottage and seek a home elsewhere.
[footnote transcription on previous page]

But before I’d do anything in that way I was determined to grip the Whopper* in the machinery of the Law and punish him for his breach of trust and embezzlement. He thought he could safely defy me since he had ruined the accounts, but I went to the stores where the goods that he retailed were got, and I obtained a correct summary of them all. I deducted the profit from the principal, and was not the least surprised when I found – after giving him the benefit of every fair allowance – he had robbed me of £96. To this sum I was prepared to swear with the full sincere conviction of my knowledge. But he took the wind out of my sails by making himself a military prisoner.
He deserted from his Regiment in England and flew to America. When he returned home and came to me I was profoundly ignorant of this transaction. Maintime there were some companies of his Corps stationed in Limerick. Some of the men saw and recognised him in the street, and he was arrested. He had his own motive for going in their way, and that motive was to disappoint me in my civil proceedings, for a good long term at least. He was tried by Court martial and received six months’ hard punishment, thus depriving me of the luxury of having him pulled up in another court. But at the Christmas before his arrest he left me an additional token of his marauding ruffianism for he visited my summer-houses at the midhour of Christmas Eve night, broke down my bowers, and stole away the seats and tables, and smashed them to atoms in his own house for firewood. That summer-pavilion

*He tried to induce an attorney’s clerk – an acquaintance of his – to forge a document to ensnare me into a fabulous sum of cash lent to me by him that would give him power of procuring an execution on my place in order to possess it. The young man whom he tempted informed me of the wicked plot.

stood at the extreme end of my garden in the Shannon, and it cost me a long course of time and toil to erect and mature it. On Christmas morning I saw it laid in ruins by his accursed hands. Several eye-witnesses saw him at the work of desecration, but not one would give information about it. There was too much regard for him, because he made many friends by treating them slyly at my expense. And now when he was in the military prison some of those cheap-bought friends went to visit him. The lying hypocrite told them it was I myself informed on him and caused his arrest; just to avoid payment of a big sum of £150 - cash lent – that I owed him.
Hurroo! Mad dog – off went the scandal resounding thro’ the city, like a funeral-cry thro’ a churchyard. I was condemned and curst, denounced and excoriated in all directions for informing on the poor deserter. While I, the real dupe of his deceit and treachery – the only suffering victim of his perfidy – held my tongue and was speechless. I allowed the prejudiced storm, raised by idiotic malice, blow itself out. But the bold Whopper bore his penal term bravely, rejoined his Regiment and died suddenly. And as he didn’t leave it in my power to say anything good of him while living, I’ll say nothing at all to his clay. Let him rest, Amen! He was too profoundly wise for me, and I was the devil’s shallow fool to trust him.

I saw plainly it was worse than useless to struggle any longer to keep my beloved home. I was made to suffer, and was suffering, too much there to risk any more torment. The neighbourhood became disgusting and detestable to my heart. My relatives were a clan of moral assassins to me, and if I were destined to enjoy the blessings of peace and amity it was by clearing away from amongst them. They were decidedly ill-natured, envious and ignorant, and I could never induce them to know me in my natural sphere*. My wife also continued her folly – She wouldn’t mind her house, in spite of my constant counsels and warnings. Oh, what a fine place and a comfortable living she despised and abused. While hundreds and thousands of people were forced to leave the country to seek a home in foreign lands, she wantonly refused to attend the duties of her home; and I knew she would soon be very justly without it. The profits of her shop averaged more than £100 a year. The garden, carefully tilled by my own hand, yielded abundant vegetables during the whole year round. The Shannon afforded me such a big supply of fish that I frequently shared it with the neighbours. There was in my yard a good flock of ducks, along with a number of hens, that could give us more eggs than we wanted. Pigs were also reared in that yard, so that I never need be without a plentiful supply of fine bacon. But old Betty Puritan during her time in my house utilised all those profitable opportunities for her own greedy self. Vegetables, eggs, fowls and porkers were, from time to time, sold

*Not one of them could read or understand anything I wrote or published. They nursed a deadly jealousy against me for the literary base opinion were crimes deserving punishment.

by this inexorable imposter who slyly hoarded the proceeds in some dark mysterious hiding place. My unworthy spouse saw all this thieving going ahead, and never tried to prevent it or inform me about it. She fearlessly told me she well knew that the desperate old witch was plundering the house – That she frequently caught the theft in her possession – that it was she stole the bundle of pound-notes from the bureau – and two years before that time she procured a key for the old rogue’s box and found in it a heap of silver along with a purse of gold, and left it as she found it, but said nothing about it. Yet the inspiring excellence of all this robbery was the whiskey stolen* from my stock-casks, and sold in full quart-bottles, and gallons, in the small public houses of the City – yes, sold at less than half value – of course my honest mother was the thief – and she paid another thief to sell it, and be silent.
As no wreck is found until after a storm, so ‘twas by intervals I was finding out how my means were wrecked. No wonder I left Thomond Cottage poor, and with a bleeding heart; but I rejoice to think I did not leave a shilling due to any one. Now before I auctioned my place I rigged up “Shawn the Eight” and introduced him to the people of Limerick. In the composition of this Number I was half satirist and stoic. I dashed it off at one effort, and printed it just as fast. It went off well, yet not so well as the former ones did.

*During five years this nocturnal robbery went on. My wife being a stranger in the liquor trade did not miss this stolen property, neither did myself suspect that anything like such plunder was going on by own mother, who had no other reason for it but to please her natural love of theft and covetousness.

Before I wrote this eight catechism, I got rid of the cowardly Cafferys by paying them off every cent of their debt. They were taking dishonest advantages of me, and pressing me unmercifully. I mortgaged my place for a hundred pounds which I handed over to them. They owed me £20 commission on sales of their goods; they promised to let me have value for that amount, but soon after they turned bankrupt, closing on £30,000. It was only another drop of bad luck in my overflowing cup. I now advertised my house and garden for sale, and on the 26th of October, 1879, it was sold by public auction for the sum of £260. A man named William Higgins of Mulgrave St. Limerick was declared the buyer. My attorney was not there that day, he only sent a legal agent to represent him. But Higgins stoutly refused to pay down one fourth of the money either to this agent or to the Auctioneer, declaring he’d give the cash to no one only the attorney himself who he intended to see on the next day. The whole affair seemed to me like a conspiracy – and to this moment I believe it was nothing else. On the following day Higgins declined his bargain for no other reason than he didn’t want it. My lawyer sent him notice that if he didn’t stand to his agreement, the place would be resold at his risk.
He employed P.J. Connolly to defend him in this case. Now Mr. Connelly was the very person that drafter and engrossed my freeform lease, and handed it to me as entirely correct in every part, but now he picked a

quibble in it, and pronounced the document as imperfect. He wantonly did this thing to injure me by making my lease worthless, simply because I happened to have a trifling misunderstanding with him. Then the lease was sent to Dublin, to the office of Lord Limerick’s law-adviser, for examination at my expense. After a delay of three months it was returned, proven solid and bona fide.
Again my place was auctioned, but now at Higgin’s risk. A fortnight before this sale, the auctioneer processed Higgins to the Quarter Sessions for his fees amounting to £12.10.0. The Chairman asked who employed him? The auctioneer replied that I employed him. The Chairman dismissed the case, remarking that since Higgins broke the bargain the auction man's claim was rightly on me, and that I could sue Higgins for the amount of my losses. The direct crookedness of this decision stultified me. For on the day of the first sale, the auctioneer had sold to several bidders the furniture of my shop and sitting room, and my gardening implements. The sale of those things realised the very sum that Higgins was to pay the auctioneer; and the wary salesman held a firm grip of it until he heard the decision of the court – then he made it his own.
But now the day of the second sale came on. It was the 2nd of January 1879 – At Norton’s mart in Bedford Row the sale took place. This time my solicitor attended. The bidders formed a suspicious

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...and Connolly before the Chairman of next Quarter Sessions. He repeated his promise over and over, and although I appeared satisfied I was unhappy at heart, because a painful suspicion was haunting me. Maintime the sessions came and nothing was done to bring on my case. I grew wild at this legal neglect while my wily law-adviser took the affair quite easy. He said ‘twas time enough - ‘twas all for the better. My faith in him began to totter and go down. Yet what could I do but cling on to him to the last.
My work in Dublin was finished, and I had no resource to keep my part of the contract. Hell and fate seemed against me. About this time my intrepid friend, Charley O’Neill, died after a long illness. I could no longer fling satirical bombshells from his shop about the city, for his place had fallen into other hands. One evening my solicitor came to my room in Ellen St. He told me he had devised a better and surer plan than a lawsuit to give me a lift. I asked him was it from the ground to the gallows. I am resolved said he to raise a testimonial for you that shall realise a sum four times larger than you could gain by bringing your case into court. The law continued he, “is very uncertain and slippery, but the testimonial will surely be a success. I intend sending circulars to all my friends and acquaintances. Myself will act as treasurer, and without loss of time or trouble I will be able to place three or four hundred pounds in your possession. I weighed his proposal, but

I saw evidently he wanted to shelve my case. I knew that a sort of free-masonry exists between attorneys, and I also knew well that this legal dodger would never wage an open, professional combat in court against another legal dodger. I felt plainly I was trapped, doomed and done. What consideration could I hope from fellows whose relentless souls were corroded with the iron rust of the Law, without a redeeming particle of justice or mercy to qualify it.
Their conscience is easily set at rest regarding wrongs and injuries inflicted in an underhand way on trusting clients, as long as they have Reverend brothers and friends in the Church to oblige them with ready-made absolution. I had many doubts about this proposed testimonial but I had no choice left. I gave a sort of careless consent. Circulars were printed and issued. After a month I called at his office to know how matters were progressing.
He rose in a hot rage of affected indignation, stating that the donors to my testimonial were insultingly assuring him that it was to him and not to me they were subscribing. I saw his paltry dodge, and I told him to wash his hands out of the miserable affair. That ended it. To his great relief and satisfaction he had triumphed in violating justice and faith with me, and had knowingly sacrificed me to the private spite of an unprincipled

and malicious clique. Those snake-like wretches always keep in the dark while they can get the venomed work of their ungodly spite done by unscrupulous instruments of this man’s legal ilk; I felt ashamed to think that he who bore one of the most honorable old Celtic names in the records of Erin would stoop to lend himself to do so cowardly an injury to an Irish Bard. I was aware that the publication of “Shawn” had stirred up an adder’s nest against me, and now I began to feel the affect of their atrocious stings; yet I had still spirit enough to defy and despise them. I now found myself impaled on the lofty horns of a perplexing dilemma; I had not a single avenue thro’ which I could redeem my Books lying in the hands of Messrs. Gill of Dublin. I sent them orders to go on with the sale of the Work until I’d look around for some chance to keep my part of the bargain. At this tangled crisis of my pain and perplexity my bold Cromwellian mother opened a new campaign. She vigorously extend her begging operations into the very heart of the city where I was then living. She had procured some bad-minded person to act her amanuensis in filling a sheet of foolscap with the most infamous calumnies about me.
With this infernal document she went from house to house and from street to street, requesting everyone to read it out for her. This fiendish game she industriously continued for months until people began to shout and cry her down. Ah, the devil may be black but I was painted blacker.

I was now so embarrassed that I was glad to go back to old place on the Turf Quay which six years before I had resigned in the interest of my co-partner, named Tom MacMahon. My old jolly friend Captain Murphy welcomed me heartily back to the Bog where I was duly installed by Dr. O’Sullivan the then Mayor of Limerick. My poor colleague, MacMahon, was at this time dying with a lingering disease, and during nine months before he died I never coveted or touched a single cent of the fees – I allowed all to go to him. Captain Murphy generally paid those weekly sums. Although I was often hard up for a shilling I would not accept anything until after poor MacMahon was dead and buried.
And I truly say, without a shade of the smallest egotism I never set any value on the wealth of this world although my well-judging enemies branded me as mercenary; but no man know his own mind better than himself, therefore I say with confidential boldness that no treasure would be large enough to buy my fidelity from any one in whom my love or friendship had settled. Ah, if I were mercenary I never could be so easily defrauded and robbed as I have been. If I had cared as much about pounds as I knew others to care about pence, I would never have an empty pocket; yet I never foolishly wasted money on anything, neither did I ever misapply it or turn it to any evil account. The only thing with which I charge myself is I did not

know how to secure it for myself. If I were only wise enough to be my own pursekeeper I would never come to grief; but too much confidence in the seeming honesty of others proved my ruin. I fear I never will get a chance of acting wiser. During those years of my unremitting disappointments I had consoled myself at the composition of a new work, entitled “The Snow Queen of Ardcuilen”. It was a structure of fancy founded on some very old traditions which I had picked up in my summer excursions into the Co. Clare, after I had installed myself in “Thomond Cottage”. And although I had long planned in my mind the groundwork, machinery and action of this ideal production, I never wrote a line of it at the Cottage – because I was too much beset and worried by domestic serpents hissing around me there. But in two years after I left that ill starred place, and settled myself to live in the City, I commenced and finished “The Snow Queen”.
The mental delight I drew from the varied construction of this wild Romance yielded abundant balm to my lacerated spirit, and while I was engaged at it I forgot the world that inflicted so much injury and trouble on me. I knew right well that if fate would kindly afford me a chance to publish this new creation of mine it would surely win admiration from the lovers of the pure and beautiful, and add another blossom to the garland of my poetic fame – Besides repairing my broken fortune!

The daughter of my lamented friend, Archdeacon Goold, had come to reside on her father’s estate at Athea. She was famed for high literary taste and attainments – In a word, she was splendidly accomplished – generously good-natured and practically patriotic – a worthy daughter of a worthy sire. I began a correspondence with this rare lady, and was honored with some interviews. I told her about my new work “The Snow Queen”. She wished to see it – and I gave her the M.S. It was written in a plain hand, as easily read as print. It was of a considerable size, and she desired to retain it until she had perused it through. During the period of perusal I had frequent audiences with her, and each time some new expression of her admiration of “The Snow Queen” was on her lips. At length she proposed to have it sent to Press at her own expense. I thankfully accepted her very generous offer, and said that I would gratefully dedicate the work to her!!! - Two years had passed since I had dedicated the new edition of my “Lays and Legends of Thomond” to the Marchioness of Queensbury. I had her letter of permission for doing this. When the book came out I ordered my publisher to send me a volume bound in best artistic style. I presented it with my autograph to this celebrated lady, through the Post. But I was not a little amazed to find she did not acknowledge its receipt. Now I must with all the sincerity of my soul confess that it was

solely in honor of the Marchioness’ good feelings towards Ireland that I inscribed my work to her, and I did not want nor expect anything from her in return. I merely meant to compliment her for her patriotism and no more. Perhaps (I said to myself) her great ladyship of Queensbury may think I intended to flatter her to notice me by this dedication – because rich birds perched on high pinnacles hold very eccentric and indifferent opinions of poor birds below – but I regret I did not inscribe my book to some worthy peasant girl in Thomond. Now when lady Augusta Jane Goold offered to print my “Snow Queen”, I felt assured that no change of thought or turn of mind could overthrow the honor of her promise. The intended publication and Dedication were duly ‘announced’ in the local Press. I had collected about three hundred subscribers for the Book – When lo, a lady friend of mine received an unexpected letter. She read it, and brought it to me with a perplexed regretful look. It was from Miss Augusta Jane Goold – its tone chilled and stultified me – she had ignored “The Snow Queen” on the plea that certain respectable persons had complained to her of my furious conduct in levelling vituperative satires at big magnets. On that account she could have nothing farther to do with my works. Now I saw the whole matter in a nutshell – the mean malicious clique that persuaded my attorney to rob and swindle me by slyly shelving my honest lawsuit, and lyingly frustrating my testimonial, had now secretly tampered with this lady to corrupt her good intentions from

serving me. I now got a right clue to their darksome evil work, and I traced it thro’ its gloomy and wicked ramifications – springs within springs and wheels within wheels. When I was slashing the gods of Scoobdom I did it openly and independently – Everyone saw me. But now the petty avengers of Scoobdom were tracking me in cowardly assassin guise thro’ every alley and avenue of the dark. There’s nothing savours of the romantic so strongly as Truth itself. I was fully convinced I was watched and secretly beset and injured by a heartless unprincipled gang of respectable sleeveens whose pride was unholy and whose spite was amiable.
I had fished up incontrovertible proofs that it was this self-same pious clique of moral conspirators poisoned the Marchioness of Queensbury by plaguing her with infamous letters about me. They worked a similar defamatory correspondence with another noble lady residing in London, because they believed she was or might be my friend.
They worked with unsleeping industry worthy of the ingenious devil himself, in many other directions to damage me, and even went so far as an attempt to deprive me of my miserable last position on the Turf Quay, where I had only about four shillings a week to live on.
Their excellent Christian object was to snatch the last crust from my mouth, and let me die in want and obscurity, as a warning

to all imprudent bards who rashly hold up the mirror of truth, instead of humbly bowing before the self-exalted idols of Scoobdom.

I know every blessed one of this most praiseworthy and diligent clique; and as the labourer is worthy of his hire, I trust I may at a future time feel able to reward them by meritoriously introducing them and their antecedents to the notice of posterity.
But thank Heaven, all my friends were not dead or estranged yet. A few of wealth and influence were yet remaining, and to those I revealed the story of my persecutions. The result was that one of them remitted a cheque for £42 to my publisher, thereby bringing to my possession 824 volumes of my book, at the other presented me with £20 to help me on.
The great number of my copies were delivered in trust to the proprietor of a lithographic establishment in George’s St. by order of the gentleman who redeemed them. This shop-owner was deputed to sell as many as he could, and being in a popular position, a smart sale he made. Myself on the other hand was not idle – I had my agents employed – I was flush with funds. One morning I was somewhat startled to learn that my lithographic bookseller had suddenly decamped to America – and as he didn’t take another man’s wife, he took other men’s means; along with £12, the price of the books he had sold for me. The remainder of the copies were immediately withdrawn from his place. The meeyah was determined to stick to me – even in a goldmine.

Many an hour during my midday rambles on the banks of the Shannon did I stand looking across the river at Thomond Cottage, in the possession of a sordid, worthless stranger – A soulless fellow that made gold on his country’s misfortunes; while I who lovingly burned the midnight oil for her sake, glorifying her history and traditions, was a homeless wanderer.
Oh, who could blame me if my heart was changed into wormwood and my blood into gall when I think of how mechanically I was swindled out of my lovely home. What saint or sinner could blame me if a dark, bitter malediction formed itself in my drooping soul, and carried out all this treachery and evil against me. But I am half satisfied to think that some of them have met with their reward, and more them will yet meet it – for God pays debts without money!!
Something whispered in the ear of my mind that I could not stay long in my native land except at the risk of becoming degraded by the shelter of the abominable poorhouse. As soon as my volumes would be all sold off I saw nothing before me but the Atlantic ocean with America at the other side. I always entertained a settled horror against going to America with all its boasted freedom and enormous wealth.
I knew there never could be a flower garden for my soul in that tremendous land of strange, heterogeneous nationalities. But like my

ancestors in the days of Cromwell, I had my choice, either to go to Hell or Connaught! And as neither of those places held out anything but the very quintessence of atrocity to my thoughts, I resolved on coming to the Land of Dollars as the least of the evils. As if to stimulate my resolve in quitting my native land for ever the Nationalists of Limerick began to show me the cold shoulder. Their patriotic principles were so lofty I was far too humble for their dignified notice; and so they shunned me to show the soaring nobility of their patriotism. In the maintime I received intelligence of the sudden demise of another unflinching friend of mine, the Rev. Edward O’Shaughnessy P.P. of Miltown Malbay, Co. Clare. He was at Lahinch when he died. He was a genuine Soggert Aroon of the grand old type, who was always prepared to share his last pound with me, like the faithful and eloquent Father Jerry Vaughan of Barefield Ennis, whom death had also snatched away, a few years before.
A friend in New York had offered to send me a sailing ticket, I wrote my acceptance, the ticket came and I at once prepared to face the wild Atlantic. All interest and love of home had turned into bitter hatred in my heart. My whole nature was poisoned and disgusted against my own worthless people; and I longed for thousands of miles to intervene between myself and them. I spent the Sunday, before I left, taking a last farewell of the Shannon and its shamrock banks; the scenes of all the loving daydreams of my life. I visited the

weird and solitary Avon Down, and lay, until sunset, on its mossy banks, feasting my soul with sorrowful reflections. I was homeless, friendless and alone in the land I loved as heaven; and was soon to become a forlorn exile for ever. It was the evil work of those who took treacherous advantage of my simple confidence – I felt all the dark enormity of their baseness and their hideous ingratitude; and the detestable weight bowed down my embittered spirit to the dust. As I returned to the City along by the side of the river, St. Mary’s glorious “Bells of the Legend”, peeled out an enchanting diapason over the blue bosom of the Shannon. I stood enraptured drinking into my heart every tone of their delightful melody.
I had heard their majestic chimes since my childhood, but until then, I never heard them ringing with such deep mournful sweetness.
I imagined they were playing me a farewell anthem, and I blest them with all my soul. When the chimes ceased I turned to take a last look at Thomond Cottage, across the river. I felt uncontrollably, a burning malediction shooting from my eyes on the fraudulent party who had usurped my room and right there. But I quickly walked away in tears leaving the matter in the just hands of Heaven that only saw the cruel wrong that was inflicted on me in that quarter.
On the following Wednesday I left Limerick for Queenstown. I bade adieu to no one for no one came to bade adieu to me.

Altho’ the city was thronged with patriots and nationalists, yet I did not see the face of one of them coming near. I took their absence as another proof of their magnanimous devotion to Ireland and her cause. A few years ago I would have a host of them around me on such an occasion as this. But now I did not miss them when I remembered the changeful and brittle temper of that sensitive article called Irish patriotism. The parting with my poor, erring wife was painful and distressful. In an agony of sorrow she owned it was all her fault – she did not guard herself against the wicked machinations of old Betty Cromwell; and now a just punishment, in losing me, had fallen on her for acting on the corrupt and evil counsels of that fearful old witch.
I released myself from her as gently as I could, and bade her a friendly goodbye. I made my way towards the train as fast as I could hurry on.
My memory shrinks to ponder on that dreary and desolate day. I had no luggage but a travelling bag in which I had packed a few shirts, four pairs of stockings, some handkerchiefs, forty four copies of the “Lays and Legends”, the M.S. of “The Snow Queen”, and a copy of poems recently composed.
Oh, how my spirit fainted at the bare idea of going to America. I felt like one under sentence of death on his way to the place of execution. But the iron edict of destiny was on me and I could not turn back. My heart may bleed and burst but my spirit would still be unquenched, and unconquered, altho’ I had no love of life to sustain me in the ordeal.

Luckily for me there were two other passengers with whom I was well acquainted bound for America along with me. Under the failing state of my eyesight I never would have ventured alone on shipboard, amongst strangers, but the company of those two persons encouraged me, for they promised to stay near me to then end of the voyage. On Friday, Sept. 19th 1886, I departed from Queenstown on board the steamship Britannic. It was 3 o’clock a.m. when the gigantic vessel impelled by her tremendous machinery glided steadily out into the might Atlantic. It was dinner time, and all the passengers had disappeared from deck to enjoy their meal.
I remained alone leaning against the bulwark, intently watching the retiring shores of my native land. Oh, the blood-sweating agony of that terrible hour. But I was cheered by the voice of a kindly old sailor who said to me in friendly way, “Sorry after your country, mate, but don’t mind, you won’t be long getting over this bit of a duck pond!”
I couldn’t refrain from bursting into a fit of laughter to hear him call the Atlantic Ocean, a bit of a duck pond. But I got more than enough of the duck pond before I was halfway over it, for on the following Sunday night a strong head wind began to blow from the south-west and increased into a fierce tempest till the ensuing Wednesday. There were a thousand passengers on board and all were secured under hatches. I had the good luck to have a berth near one of the windows from

which I incessantly watched, with awful delight, the tempestuous play of the mighty ocean. Looking out on that dreadful wilderness of wrathful surges I often repeated poor Frank Davis’ noble lines -
“And the was like warrior-spirits in their darkly-gleaming shrouds,
Rose and flung their silvery helmets in the pathway of the clouds.”

And whenever a tremendous billow struck the gigantic iron steamer and lashed her quivering on her side, I gloried in the wonderful genius of man that invented mighty engines well able to contend against the raging power of that overwhelming sea. On Saturday, Sept. 26, our good ship swam into the bay of New York, and I was amazed to see hundreds of small steam crafts racing to and fro as if they were all frantic. At sunset the big vessel was towed in alongside the wharf, but the passengers were forbidden to leave the ship until the next day (Sunday). So we were eight days running across the “duck pond”. As night set in I remained on deck looking towards the great Empire City all blazing with gas lamps and electric lights. My heart turned cold and heavy as lead as I said to myself, “what business have I to venture into such an endless wilderness of a city? Who’ll notice me amid the sweeping rush of human affairs that are every hour being transacted there? O God, I wish I were back again in poor Limerick, and living in the meanest cabin on the banks of my native Shannon!”
Next day a tugboat took us to a Castle Garden where we were delayed for hours before our names were registered.

On my exit from Castle Garden I met one solitary friend who was instructed to convey me to Fordham where lived the man that paid my passage.

When I looked up at the elevated railroad on which I was to travel, I was thunderstruck at the dare-devil speculation that achieved such an airy enterprise – a railroad running parallel with the house-top sixty feet above the level of the streets; but when I climbed the long stairway that led up to the platform, crowded with a busy human mass, so high above terra firma, I was puzzled to understand how such a thing could exist without some desperate accident occurring daily. When I took a seat in one of the cars and was whirled along the sky like Juno’s Chariot, my wonderment increased as I looked down on stores and salons, and the heedless throngs that surged to and fro beneath quite careless of the thundering train of vehicles that passed over their heads. I thought America out-devilled the devil, and so it has. That night in Fordham confirmed my worst anticipations of the repulsive sort of people I was doomed to herd among. A small crowd of the elite of them came to give me what they call a reception, but their low slang and the coarseness of their manners was everything but edifying to my taste. They were all Irish Americans of the Tammany Hall grade. Politicians of the most illiterate type expecting to become assembly men, Congressmen, aldermen and City Commissioners where political influence and dollars bear a supreme sway. No learned

worth or ability are required to make a Congressman or assemblyman in free America. Ten square acres of solid ignorance – real personal estate – hedged with swaggering effrontery and political influence, are the only worth and merit capable of pitchforking bombastic bosthoons into positions worth thousands of dollars yearly. Hence politics have become a predominant rage with the people, and God pity any poor honest Wight who fails to make himself rogue enough to go with the sordid crowd. The man who paid my passage, and with whom I was to be a guest during my stay in America, was a professional pugilist and politician; and these attainments procured him an easy sinecure worth eighteen dollars a week. He was commonly called “The Brute” by the people of Fordham, it was a most appropriate cognomen, for he possessed all the brutal propensities of a red Indian savage. He was by birth an Irishman of Cromwellian extraction, and whatever America gained by his emigration Ireland lost nothing.
I knew I’d have a bad time with this political savage, his neighbours told me so, and it turned out to be true. He only wanted to use me for mean political purposes alike abhorrent and revolting to my nature.
I always detested politics and politicians since I saw patriotism turned to well-paying profession in Ireland, but now in America I found myself in the very centre of the corrupt element I hated most. ‘Twas merely out of the frying pan into the fire with me.

Oh how I longed and prayed to place my foot once more on my native heath, where I could purely breathe God’s celestial air of mountain fragrance. I was now like a bird in a net, I did not know how to break loose or where to go. My eyesight was nearly gone and on that account I felt myself a prisoner in a foreign clime. Yet I was sternly resolved to free myself from the Brute’s detested yoke even at the penalty of my life. I was not long in his house, or rather shanty, when, one night, an incident occurred that brought me right in collision with him.
A party of neighbours had assembled at this place discussing politics, dollars and beer. A lot of wild boys were playing outside, and some one struck the door with a stone. The Brute ran out mad to chastise the offender. The youngsters ran off and escaped except one, a delicate little fellow about five years old, whom he savagely clutched, and sent for a policeman to arrest him. The child cried for pity in vain; a woman ran to his rescue, but the Brute threatened to smash her face, and he got the poor wailing little fellow arrested. I lost all patience at this unmanly action, and I gave him a tongue-flogging for it. His reply was a threat to kick me out, at which I sprung up and struck him a blow on the face. As quick as lightning he returned the compliment and I went down. Every man in the house was at once on his feet to take my part, and the Brute fell in for a very rough handling. One of those men

took me home with him for the night. Next morning I returned to the Brute’s place to get my books and M.S.S. He was gone to work, but his wife told me he had seized on all my things and had them secured in some unknown place.
His wife was a native of Connaught; her hands and face displayed the marks of many a hard beating from his big, cruel fists, so that she looked as battered as the walls of Limerick after the pounding of Dutch Billy’s guns. She was an honest, good-natured woman, and she felt deeply for the misfortunate position her tyrant husband had forced me into by inducing me to come to America. I had a letter from Patrick Ford of the Irish World, inviting me to see him at his office, no. 19 Barclay St. A friend volunteered to conduct me to his place. I went and after waiting some time, the great Irish Patriotic Journalist appeared. His address was cold and reserved, and I felt I was in the presence of a hard, selfish calculating man of the world whose own darling interest was his only gospel beyond all other things.
I told him my reasons for coming to America – that I had great hopes in Irishmen of far-famed national principles such as he professed, to give me some encouragement to publish and circulate some M.S. works written on Irish subjects I had brought with me. He asked me what was the real literary principle of those productions. I explained them, and offered the M.S “The Snow Queen of Ardcuilen” gratis, to publish in weekly parts in the Irish World. He said he would gladly accept my

offer but that the supporters and readers of his journal were all practical politicians who would have nothing from him but articles illustrating political matters. I replied I often read stories published in his paper. He said that was certainly the case, but he lost more than five hundred dollars by publishing such things, because his political readers rebelled against them. He asked me if I had any desire to return to Ireland, if so he would procure me a free passage. I said I was not at present prepared to return – and then I parted from him, grieved and disappointed.
Ah, those Irish braggart patriots in America are surely composed of queer absurd elements. They readily subscribe for dynamite to blow up English cities but they have no friendly hand for a poor fellow countryman lost about friendless, homeless and forlorn. I returned to the Brute’s den with a view of getting back my books. He came home at nightfall with the dark countenance of a disappointed demon. I demanded my books and he replied he meant to keep them as a guarantee for the repayment of the sum he had expended on my passage across the Atlantic; in the same breath he ordered me to quit his wigwam, and go to the devil or the poorhouse. I told him I had the letter he sent me to Ireland containing false promises that induced me to come to America – particularly one in which he promised to send me home again if I did not like the country. I farther told him I would show those letters to the Commissioners of emigration,

and insist on them to compel him to send me home. This threat seemed to quieten him a little, but he savagely muttered he’d make a cripple of me before I’d leave America. Some influential neighbours stept in and made him ashamed of his base conduct towards me; yet it was not ashamed he was but afraid. However peace was made for that time and I got my books. I sold thirty copies to the people of Fordham, at a dollar each, and I remitted half the sum to wife in Limerick, altho’ I was suffering on account of her folly.
The winter was now setting in and I saw no chance of escape from the Brute’s wigwam, until the springtime. I wrote a letter to John Boyle O’Reilly, another great Irish patriot of the almighty dollar-stamp. He is a distinguished poet and editor of the Boston Pilot. I explained my position and asked for his advice. I mailed him a copy of the “Lays and Legends” inscribed with my autograph. He deigned a reply damning the book “with faint praise”. He said he did not know what I could do with such a work in America. However he promised to devote space in his journal for a review of the book, but the review never appeared. I never believed a true poet could be a knave till then. At the wind-up of his epistle, which was a short one, he strongly advised me to return to Ireland. That’s all the proof I experienced of the genuineness of his patriotism. An American winter is a hard time, but this was the most dreadful winter to me that my darkest imaginings could paint.

The Brute was on one of his periodical “bums” and it was then he was a brute in earnest – nay, but a brutal devil downright. Day or night he allowed no one to rest in the wigwam. He turned it into a roaring Pandemonium. The sky froze and snowed with a vengeance, and he kept drinking bad whiskey with a vengeance. It was enough to disgust the devil himself to listen to that incorrigible ruffian’s obscene ravings.
This habitual beastliness continued day and night during a whole month, until the hell-broth sickened him so badly that he was unable to go farther with it. Then there was peace in the wigwam while he was cooking himself back to his former health. Christmas came – the first I ever spent out of poor Ireland. Oh, what a desolate, weary, gloomy Christmas for me. The dreary sorrow and crushing despair that tortured my heart were too terrible and tempestuous for any studied thoughts of mine to delineate. Oh, how vengefully I denounced the relentless fate that drove me from my native land. If I could only cry it would give me some relief, but the fountains of my heart were all as dry as the sun-parched bed of a summer-brook. On Christmas Eve I saw no mould candle, no holly and ivy, no Christmas block in the fire, no congenial greeting, no friendly hilarity to honor the sacred festival, such as I always saw in the Old Land. And at twelve o’clock that night not a bell was rung to hail the holy time of the Lord’s nativity. How sorrowfully I missed the harmony of St. Mary’s sweet-toned bells. Three thousand miles of a dreary ocean

lay between me and them. I flung myself into bed with an additional pang in my heart. All the remainder of that savage winter I tried to cheat time away by writing poems and letters on Irish subjects, and mailing them to The Clare Advertiser, at Kilrush, for publication. I never wrote a single line for any American journal. I felt a settled aversion against those scandal-mongering newspapers, and their mercenary reporters. Neither could I set myself to write anything on any American subject whatever. My feelings were frozen dead against the country and the disgusting, dollarized manners of its people. The month of February came slowly, drearily on; and I hailed it gladly as the advent of my redemption from the insulting thraldom of the Brute of Fordham. One Sunday, about the middle of the month, a Limerick man came up from New York to see me. This man was many years in the empire city. He informed me that he read notice of my arrival at New York, in a few of the local journals, but they were silent about where I was staying, else I would have many visitors. I asked him to go to some of those newspapers and get inserted a small paragraph with my present place of address. This he did, and on the next Sunday I had more visitors than I could talk to for the day. I received many invitations to visit the homes of my new friends, but I accepted none save one, and this was from a native of Kilmallock, Co. Limerick. I appointed the following Tuesday for it, and true enough that day he came for me, and I gladly went with him to Williamsburgh in Brooklyn where he lived with his wife

and family. This gentleman’s name was Edward G. Fitzgerald – in heart, soul and action a thorough Geraldine of the fiery and friendly stock of Desmond.
I had a slight personal knowledge of his wife, Marcelle, when she was a young girl in the city of Limerick. When we arrived at the house she received with a heart-warm “cead mille fealtha” that awakened in my mind all the honest, friendly sociability of the Old Land. She had a goodly party of Irish people assembled in her parlour to welcome me, and I had scarcely time to be introduced when a reign of jolly festivity, truly Irish, commenced and continued to a late hour in the night. I never felt myself so joyfully at home. An atmosphere of native good humour and generous friendship was around me, and I was happy for the first time during many years. The frosty clouds and chilly icicles of Fordham suddenly melted away from my heart; and I felt as if aroused from a wintry stupor into the midst of summer roses and joyous sunshine. I remained three weeks with Mr. And Mrs. Fitzgerald, for the very idea of returning to the Brute of Fordham nearly chilled me to death. I told them my experience of this unmitigated Ogre, and they told me that if I wished to avoid him and remain with themselves during my stay in America, I was heartily welcome to my choice. My decision was swift. But unfortunately I had to go back to Fordham to bring away a few trifles belonging to me, such as books, M.S. and letters. Mr. Fitzgerald came with me but returned home without me, for the Brute was drunk,

and he received me with his natural savagery of vulgar invective. He truly conceived and expressed a desire of beating Mr. Fitzgerald, who merely laughed at the rowdie’s coveted exploit. ‘Twas good for him that he didn’t provoke a pass of arms, else he’d soon find that the Geraldine blood had more lightning than Cromwell’s.
Next morning his wife told me she intended going to Brooklyn, and remaining there until the Brute would become sober. This news alarmed me to think I’d have to stay in the place alone with the drunken wild beast. I hastily wrote a few lines to Mrs. Fitzgerald telling her the bad fix I was in. I requested of her to inform her husband of it as soon as he’d return from business in the evening – let him come for me. This note the Brute’s wife posted on her way to Brooklyn, while I found myself all alone in the Cyclops’ den. Luckily, the beast lay snoring in his kennel all day while I used the opportunity of gathering all my little things into a bag which I stowed away in a small room near the front door. The day was the saddest I ever spent. The Brute did not awaken until nightfall; then he roared for his wife to bring him more whiskey. I told him she was gone to Brooklyn. He swore he’d smash her when he’d lay hands on her. He got up and dressed himself to go for a bottle of whiskey to a liquor store. His movement pleased me infinitely, for I expected Mr. Fitzgerald would come during his absence. He was away an hour when a car stopped opposite the door and my rescuer leapt off. I took my travelling sack and met him. At that instant the Brute appeared, at a distance, coming zigzag along the sidewalk. My friend and myself hurried away to board a car that was coming on to New York. We got into it, and I bade Fordham and the Brute farewell for ever. I thought of poor Red Hugh’s flight from Dublin Castle to the

country of the hospitable O’Byrne where no Saxon foe dare to follow him.

I left all my American troubles behind me in Fordham; happiness, peace and contentment awaited on my visit to the hospitable Geraldines.
They were plain, friendly people after my own heart. They were honest, good-natured and intelligent without pretention. They were spirited, independent and truthful without affectation. In all my life I never met people so congenial to my thoughts and tastes, and so socially kindred to my heart’s wishes and feelings. Had I known such people in Ireland it would be a physical impossibility for me to become an exile in America – They would not permit it; but now meeting them in America they shared their comfortable home with me and made happier than ever I felt in all the sunniest period of my days. Life, which sorrow was fast sinking into the sere and yellow leaf of decay, revived with its former, fresh green vigour, and spirit of song retuned to its throne in my heart, with all its ancient, loving fire.
In August 1889, we removed from Brooklyn to a handsome country cottage in Corona, L.I. where a very pretty garden surrounded the house. I was always an ardent lover of rural scenes, and here I had a calm landscape mirror that reflected the smile of Nature in a quiet way. I did a good deal of Irish-song-work here, because the failure of my eyesight made me incapable of enjoying any other pursuit. There was nothing to ruffle the harmony of my peace, only the thought of having no chance of publishing a volume of my works in America. My Irish countrymen

were too much engrossed in politics and place-hunting to pay me or my national literary efforts the slightest attention, but still they are mighty, distinguished patriots for all that; where the charm of dollars has the biggest attraction.
American publishers pay nothing for original copy because they rob the Works of European authors, and sell them at low prices – There exists no international law to prevent them. With such principles against me I was utterly powerless to make any advance in the book world at this side of the big fish pond. But I consoled myself in thinking that if Moore, Burns or Byron had been in my place they would be honored with the self-same notice.
But my time of exile in America was drawing to a nearer period than my hope led me to dream of. I had a friend in Limerick – Mr. John Hogan, Sec. To the Congregated Trades, who wrote me a letter of encouragement to return to my native land. For that generous purpose he started a testimonial. Many people of local influence aided him in his noble efforts to bring me home.
There was a fund of £84 realised. It could not be more for there were many testimonials going on at the same time for patriots who were after coming out of prison where they had spent some months for loving Ireland wisely and well. But not one of the mighty Irish party would acknowledge me. They had too much love for Ireland to pay me the least attention. And when they fell out at the time of Parnell’s little mistake, and commenced to tear each other like mad dogs, I looked on at their disgraceful brawl with indifference and disgust.
On the 20th of November 1889, I bid farewell to my friends, the generous Geraldines, and left New York on the steamship Germanic, and arrived at Queenstown, after a calm passage, on the 29th. On that night I found myself at home in my native City of Sarsfield. I met Nannie my poor wife, with a forgiving spirit. My wicked-minded mother who was the solid cause of all our misery and suffering was still living but was in the infirm ward at the workhouse - a place a million times too good for her.
... [illegible, hole in page] the request of many citizens – heavy rate payers – the Corporation granted [illegible] a week for ranging the Island Bank. The sinecure was a most kindred [illegible] to my spirit. And after many years of desolation and pain I began to breathe the sweetness of life, peace and enjoyment once more.
But the memory of past wrongs and undeserved injuries had so deeply chilled and embittered my nature that the sunshine of real happiness could never reach my heart again, and I looked upon everyone with a feeling of doubt and revulsion akin to absolute hatred. I lost faith in everyone but John Hogan and a few others.

Yet there was no affliction gave me more pain than the failure of my eyesight. I felt it with intense sorrow, particularly when I felt a desire to read or write. These delightful sources of the soul’s pleasure were cut away from me. And whenever I went on the Island bank I could not see the glory of the meadows or the hills. A dim veil of obscurity hung between me and the grandeur of heaven and earth. But as long as the Corporation gave me a little way of living it assuaged a great deal of the pain cause by this calamity.
My wife was disabled with a bad sore leg nearly since I returned from America. She was powerless to do anything like domestic business. She was at all times a truly unfortunate companion for me. I flung by all hope of knowing comfort on earth anymore. I became callous and careless of earth and heaven. All my interest in song and lore died away and I waited quietly as a prisoner to hear his sentence.
In 1892, in April, my brother died, after a lingering illness. I was not sorry for him because he acted for years a faithless brother to me. I once loved him with a deep and strong love but his cruel and heartless conduct towards me in my crushing trials and sorrows extinguished in my nature every pulse of love for him. God forgive him, he foolishly quarrelled with me to gratify the ill-feeling of others, and this kindled in my head a deathless dislike against him. He hated me for my short-lived prosperity which I was ready to share with him, short or long, and worse than all his ill nature, he publicly exulted over my troubles and made a laughing jeer and jibe of my misfortunes for which I pray God to forgive him as I do from the centre of my heart.
I now found myself along the last of my race – the last of five brothers who never sympathised with me nor I with them because their pursuits and manners were entirely foreign to mine. The dishonest feelings and teachings of their ill-natured, Cromwellian mother were too repulsive for me to fraternise with, and so I found it best for myself to keep aloof from them and keep my own company. I passed the years of my life living in solitude amidst a crowd.
In the August of 1892 my cruel mother died in the hospital of [illegible, hole in page]. Her last breath was given in slander against me. She gave some money to a female [illegible] bury her but this wretch denied the money, and closed on it. And so she was buried at the expense of the Union. I would not go to her funeral which was attended by only a few.
She was buried in the parish churchyard of Killeely alongside my faithless brother. Peace to their shades, they were two of the most dreadful scourges of my life. They were the last two of the ten conspirators that cheated me of Thomond Cottage. The just judgement of God fell visibly on them all, for they all died with a short period of each other.

In the August of this year, 1892, I was living with a bookseller named Moore. He was the landlord of the house in which I occupied a room. He was a very sweet mouthed fellow. But his wife was gull of religious rectitude and eloquence.
He encouraged me to get the second Vol of Lays and Legend of Thomond published. I agreed, promising him half the profits. I happened to get ten pounds from M.H. Gill of Dublin, proceeds of the year’s sales of my first Vol of Lays & Legends. Of this sum, I gave £6 in trust to Mrs Moore, with a view towards the printing of my new book. The prospectus was printed and some copies of it was in circulation, when suddenly Moore and household hocked it off to another City, leaving me minus of money and publications. No matter, sure I can look at the M.S. still in my desk.
In the early part of the past year I had a few visits with Mr. A.P. Graves author of Father O’Flynn and other Irish lyrics. I felt very glad to know him for I liked him well for the gentleness of his manners.
I am now far advanced in the sere and yellow autumn of life. I have run thro’ sixty five years of life’s journey and I feel I am near the end of an existence made up with toils, trials, disappointments and troubles, brought on me by the ill nature of others helped by my own trusting good-nature but my greatest grief is in the afflicting failure of my eyesight. Farewell to the enchantments of Irish Song.

ADDITIONAL NOTE
[This narrative appears in the memoir, written upside-down, on 2 pages after page 56 – it appears to be an additional note, giving more details of Hogan’s bankruptcy. Its position within the manuscript is mysterious].

How I was made a bankrupt after a few years in business.
My treacherous mother [never] ceased advising me to open a liquor trade in my new house. I consented to her dangerous counsel, she painted my success in such glowing rose colors. I knew my wife was a simple country girl without education or calculation. But my old Cromwellian rogue of a mother assured me that she would help her and teach her to get through the business faithfully – and so she did. I was to have no trouble with the matter and to leave it all to herself and to my wife. I let things go on as the old thief desired, but I saw too late I was cursedly trapped. There were hundreds of pounds received on the sale of every kind of liquor but when I required money to pay the bills I had not a single shilling to look at, the old robber had it all grabbed to herself. My house was involved a hundred and twenty pounds to one firm – the Cafferys, porter brewers in Dublin. Hundred[s] of gallons of whiskey were stolen from my stock casks and privately sold to a certain publican in the city, at a low price, by this thieving reptile, my own mother. She placed the proceeds of her unmaternal [unnatural?] robbery in the hands of a neighbouring farmer, a man of honest repute and religious name, who knew she had no way of getting this money but to steal it from me and my wife. He died suddenly without a will and the old thief never recovered one penny of it. When I found myself ruined I flung my monstrous mother out on the roadside, years too late. But the demon only went out to do me more injury.

I lived among a herd of evil minded people who envied me for the success of my industry, but none was more bitter against me than my own brother Matt, with whom I affectionately shared my success. This ungrateful wretch joined my unnatural mother in her hellish slanders against me and my wife. They got up a conspiracy of bad neighbours against me. Day and night I was plundered by those devilish vampires. They ate my vitals, and in sick despair I left my dear new home to the accursed jackals and went to live elsewhere. Corbett, the greedy rent warner secured my house and garden for a friend of his own, and the hard industry and sweat of my life were gone for nothing. In a few years afterwards the judgement of Heaven fell on those unjust people. Every one of them died an untimely death in the prime of life. But if they died a thousand times a day it would not repair the grievous injury done to me.
After my return from America I saw my faithless brother and cruel mother laid in one grave in Killeely Churchyard. My heart refused to say a prayer for their souls’ rest. They were the first and last of the base conspirators that robbed me of all my earthly happiness.
My unprincipled brother whom I believed was my best friend, was really my deadliest enemy. He was mad with envy against me for my good luck altho’ I shared it with him. His wife was also an envious, malicious wretch and joined him in injuring me and my wife.