] 831 .] The Ghost of Kilshcelan. 641 



who they want most before I'm a day oulder an' for me to be drivin' 

 in a coach them that brought him into a scrape, and now wants to swear 

 his life away. Oh ! but wasn't it hard fortune that I should ever know 

 a cow from a garron, when it's four o' them that I'm drivin' this blessed 

 day to please the murderin' rapscallions, Fitzgerald an' Ryan." 



" Assuredly," said I, " you are not vexed with those two wretched 

 men, if they now are instruments in bringing to justice the murderers 

 of an innocent, an unoffending, and an industrious man. It is true, that 

 they were wicked enough to combine with other miscreants to deprive 

 a human being of life ; but that is a crime of which they have repented, 

 and they are now endeavouring to make every reparation for it, by the 

 prosecution and conviction of the assassins of Mora." 



" It's 'asy seein', that it's little you know o'them, or the counthry. 

 I'll tell you what, Sir, that you have in the coach two boys, that if they 

 were out, an' free, would be afther doin' the same thing only for the 

 askin'. Sure, all they did was only for a rvornin, that neither kith nor 

 kin of any informer should dare shew his nose in the bounds o' the 

 county. And as to ripintin' what would they ripint of? Is it that 

 there was put out o' the way a man that was doin' as all the tyrants 

 in the land are doin' takin' the places over their heads raisin' the rints 

 on them, and lavin' them as they are this day, with two of the bloody 

 lubers beside them. Ripint ! the devil a ripint they ripint. I be bail 

 you, they never tould long Jack convarsible, an' full of discourse as 

 they are for him where they hid their arms last. No and now mind 

 my words, that, except the poor lads they're afther gibbettin', the never 

 a man more will ever be got by them. The rest o' the sufferers are safe 

 any way.* 



" Then you have not, I perceive," said I, " any great respect for an 

 informer." 



" Respect !" cried the coachman, " no, the devil a respect but as this 

 is a long stage I will tell you a story about what rve call an informer, 

 and which I know to be a real truth in a manner. 



" It's something more nor forty, or five-and-forty years ago, that there 

 lived in Kilsheelan, in this very county of Tipperary, a real old gen- 

 tleman he was one Major Blennerhasset one of the real old Protes- 

 tants. None o' your upstarts that come in with Cromwell or Ludlow, 

 or any o' the blackguard biblemen o' them days for the only difference 

 between a bibleman now, Sir, and the biblemen o' former times, was just 

 this that Cromwell's biblemen used to burn us out of house an' home, 

 while the bibleman now only tells us that we are goin' to blazes so, your 

 honour, you see they were determined to Jire us one way or another. 

 Well, as I was telling you, Major Blennerhassett was a real old Protestant, 

 and though he'd curse, an' swear, an' d n the Papists when he'd be in 



* The coachman was correct both in his opinion and his prophecy. It appeared 

 at a subsequent assizes, on the cross-examination of Ryan, that he had informed 

 the government of every matter connected with himself but one the place where 

 he had his gun concealed. This was a secret which he said he never would dis- 

 close to them, and he also declared, on his oath, that he hoped to live to be able 

 again to use it ! None of the murderers of Mora, except those first apprehended, 

 have yet been taken. One of them, Edward Kirby, defied for several months all 

 the plans and stratagems of the police to arrest him. He was, at length, shot acci. 

 dentally by one of his own pistols, as he was leaping across a hedge, and at a time 

 when the police were not in pursuit of him. 



M.M. New Series. VOL. XI. No. 66. 4 N 



