124 Ti^^^ Course, the Camp, the Chase 



victims. Perhaps it may be forgotten what the meaning 

 of " carding " is. It is this. If a man was suspected 

 of having paid his rent, some ten or a dozen of his 

 neighbours paid him a visit at night ; he was then stripped 

 naked, and held down by three or four men. Other fiends 

 in human form then tore every strip of skin and the 

 quivering flesh off his back, and frequently off his stomach 

 also, with a wooden board about a foot long studded with 

 large nails, and they did not leave their wretched victim, 

 writhing in his agony, until he was almost dead. Even 

 women, the wives and daughters of honest tenants, were 

 sometimes subjected to this torture ! A person who had 

 been thoroughly carded never really recovered from the 

 ferocious treatment to which he had been subjected, even 

 though he might escape with life at the time. Perhaps it 

 was more humane, after the peasants had regained 

 possession of arms, to shoot a man dead on the spot, though 

 in many cases they only mangled their victims, shooting 

 them in the limbs instead of in a vital place. "When I 

 was living in Mullingar a tenant was shot in his cottage 

 in the main street of a town containing 8000 inhabitants, 

 only a few doors from the house I was inhabiting. He 

 was suspected of having paid his rent, and though he 

 strenuously denied the charge, he was made to hold out 

 his right arm, and the muzzle of a revolver was placed 

 against it, the trigger pulled, and the Kmb shattered to 

 pieces. Another afternoon, when a fair was being held, 

 the bailiff of Mr. Smythe, of Gaybrook, was shot dead, 

 while hundreds of people were only a few yards distant. 

 The murderer was seen waiting behind a short piece of 

 wall in the churchyard by numbers of people, who, though 

 they knew the object for which he was there, neither 



