1829.] in the Irish Rebellion. 375 
close to them. Concealed in a chimney, at the corner of the lane, we 
were now about to enter, there was a yeoman, .who, it was said, fired 
away more than an hundred ball cartridges at the rebels in the square 
below, and made every shot take effect. He at this moment took aim at 
a pikeman within a few paces of us, who staggered some steps, and fell 
dead across my mother’s feet ; she dropped in a dead swoon beside the 
corpse. I turned to raise her, and to lift the infant from the ground it 
had fallen on, and I thus lost sight of my father, and the fearful pike- 
man who followed him: I never more saw him alive. But Providence 
thus kindly spared me the sight of his murder, by the very man that 
drew his first nourishment from the same breast with himself. He fol- 
lowed him, as I afterwards heard, into Barrack-lane, and killed him at 
the door of a brewery ; a man, named Byrne, who had the care of it, 
saw him, through a crevice in the door, commit the act, and saw him, 
too, with his leather-cutter’s knife disfigure the face of the dead, after 
plundering him, and stripping him of the new coat he wore. 
In a few minutes my mother came to herself ; she arose, and we both, 
unconscious of our loss, went with the children towards the river, think- 
ing that perhaps we might rejoin my father there. My mother was 
now quite bewildered, and unable to speak to, much less to advise me ; and 
I, though born so near the town, had never been in it, but to church or to 
market, and was totally ignorant whither to direct my steps. We asked at 
many doors would they admit us, but were constantly driven away, and, 
for the most part, with threats and curses. At last we came by chance 
to the house of one Walsh, a baker, who knew my mother, and spoke 
compassionately to her, but we had hardly entered, when five or six 
pikemen followed, and ordered him to turn us out, or they would 
burn the house over our heads. He dismissed us unwillingly ; and 
we then followed some other desolate beings like ourselves, who led 
us into the garden of one Barker, that held a high command among the 
rebels. His family seemed not to notice us, and we here sat down, with 
many more, on the bare ground under the bushes. All were women 
and children, some, from their appearance, seemed to be of a rank far supe- 
rior tous; and I have since heard that forty-two widows passed the night 
in that garden. Many of these knew their loss, yet fear had overpowered 
grief so completely, that not one dared to weep aloud. The children 
were as silent as their mothers, and whenever a footstep, going to or 
from the house, was heard to pass along, we dared not even look towards 
it, but hid our face against the earth. The moon shone brightly, and 
I at one time saw a man led along, pinioned, but Barker, who was then 
in the house, was so humane as not to put him to death amongst us, but 
ordered him off for execution to Vinegar Hill. 
As the night advanced, a rebel, named Lacy, observing my mother to 
shiver violently, went out, and, soon returning, threw over her shoulders 
about three or four yards of coarse blue cloth, speaking at the same time 
some words of pity to her. She, in her frantic terror, endeavoured to 
cast it away, lest, as she said, she should be killed for having what was 
not her own, but I, with some difficulty, made her keep it, and, except 
the clothes we wore, it was the only covering by night or day we had 
for ten weeks. 
In the dead of the night I began to take somewhat more courage, and 
hearing a strange noise in a lane, which was divided from the garden 
only by a low wall, I crept to it, and saw a sight that soon drove me 
