1829.] : in the Irish Rebellion. 371. 
infant, and the other children followed us, the little one clinging to my 
gown. My brother William had already been in Enniscorthy for more 
than a week with his corps; the female servant went with us, but Mar- 
tin, who, with his mother, lived in a small cottage on our ground, staid 
behind us: and when we again saw him he was an armed rebel. Yet, 
from his humanity to us, I cannot think that he ever was guilty of the 
same cruelties that were committed by his comrades. 
When we entered the town, we went to the house of a relation, whose 
name was Willis, who instantly received us, but when we entered, we 
had hardly room to sit down, it was so full of the Protestant inhabitants 
of the neighbourhood, who had fled into the town for protection. Few 
of these had had time to save any thing, and those who, like us, had 
brought food, immediately gave it to be shared in common. My father, 
on seeing us safe in the house, immediately went and enrolled himself 
amongst the Supplementary Yeomanry, and was provided with a musket 
and cross belts, to wear over his coloured clothes. ‘There were more 
than two hundred of the neighbouring gentry and farmers armed hastily 
in the same manner. Our regular yeomen, who were clothed and dis- 
ciplined, amounted to about as many more ; we had one company of the 
North Cork Militia, ninety-one in number; and it was this handful of 
men, not much exceeding five hundred in number, that, in our sim- 
plicity, we had imagined could conquer all the disaffected in the county. 
Excepting the few militia-men, all our little garrison were neighbours, or 
friends, or near relations, who now knowing the immense force of the 
rebels, which was well known to exceed ten thousand, and their bar- 
barity, for they gave no quarter, knew they had no choice between 
dying like men with their arms in their hands, or standing tamely like 
sheep to be butchered. Scarcely one of these men but had every one 
that was dearest to him sheltered in the town he was about defending ; 
and yet it is this very circumstance that was one of the causes of their 
losing possession of it, as I shall explain shortly. 
When my father left us, and we had unpacked our furniture, my 
sisters and I were at first so unconscious of any immediate danger, that we 
were rather gratified by the novelty of our situation, and passed some 
time leaning out of a window, looking at the horse yeomen passing 
hurriedly back and forwards, and disputing between ourselves which 
man looked best in his uniform, or sat best on his horse. A very short 
time, however, changed our feelings, when we saw seven or eight men 
covered with blood carried into the house, and were called to lay down 
our beds for them to lie on; these were yeomen, who had been skir- 
mishing in the neighbourhood, and who, full as the house was, were 
brought into it for present relief. I now began to see, for the first time; 
some of the miseries that threatened us; and thus passed a few anxious 
hours, when it suddenly struck me that our cows would be injured if 
they were not milked again, and the servant girl and I set out about six 
in the evening, and without meeting any thing to injure us, we got safe 
to Clevass ; we found all as we had left it, with the poor cows standing 
lowing to be milked; we brought home a large pitcher each, and, on 
our road home, met several Roman Catholic neighbours, with whom we 
had lived on the most friendly terms, we spoke to them as usual, but 
they looked in our faces as if they had never seen us before, and passed 
on. I have since thought they either looked on us with abhorrence, as 
those devoted to destruction in this world and in the next, or, that know- 
3 B2 
