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Updated: May 15, 2025
I began to try to remember how many there were before we arrived at Claremorris, the station at which I was going to get out. Half an hour afterward the train slackened, the porter cried out "Ballyhaunis."
They both thought Kelly's Court rather dull; but then they had known nothing better since they had grown up, and there were some tolerably nice people not very far off, whom they occasionally saw: there were the Dillons, of Ballyhaunis, who had three thousand a-year, and spent six; they were really a delightful family three daughters and four sons, all unmarried, and up to anything: the sons all hunted, shot, danced, and did everything that they ought to do at least in the eyes of young ladies; though some of their more coldly prudent acquaintances expressed an opinion that it would be as well if the three younger would think of doing something for themselves; but they looked so manly and handsome when they breakfasted at Kelly's Court on a hunt morning, with their bright tops, red coats, and hunting-caps, that Guss and Sophy, and a great many others, thought it would be a shame to interrupt them in their career.
And then the starving people are blamed for finding fault, and for being suspicious. What else, he asks, can they be? How can a man dying of starvation have patience? The chief places he visited were Balla, Claremorris, Ballyhaunis, and Hollymount. The scenes he witnessed were, he says, scarcely if at all less harrowing than those which had been reported from the locality of Skibbereen.
There had been, so he was told, a few demagogues in Galway town, American chiefly, who had come thither to do what harm they could; and he had heard that there was discontent in parts of Mayo, about Ballyhaunis and Lough Glinn; but where he lived, round Lough Corrib, there had been no evil symptoms of such a nature. Now suddenly he found himself as though surrounded by a nest of hornets.
"We didn't mean to tell you," said Guss; "but I and Sophy are going to work two sofas for the drawing-room in Berlin wool, you know: they'll be very handsome everybody has them now, you know; they have a splendid pair at Ballyhaunis which Nora and her cousin worked." "But we want to know what pattern would suit Fanny's taste," said Sophy.
Another time, when returning to his house in Mayo from Ballyhaunis, on a dark night, my son Maurice found a wall built, about eighteen inches high, across the road, for the express purpose of upsetting him. It was only by the grace of God as they say in Kerry and his own careful driving, that he was preserved. In those same Land League times, my son was a prominent gentleman rider.
This was welcome news to the whole neighbourhood. It was only on the Sunday evening that the sportsmen got the intimation, and very busy most of them were on the following Monday to see that their nags and breeches were all right fit to work and fit to be seen. The four Dillons, of Ballyhaunis, gave out to their grooms a large assortment of pipe-clay and putty-powder.
Their property had extended from Dunmore nearly to Roscommon, and again on the other side to Castlerea and Ballyhaunis. But this had been in their palmy days, long, long ago.
And then, Ballyhaunis was only eight miles from Kelly's Court; though they were Irish miles, it is true, and the road was not patronised by the Grand Jury; but the distance was only eight miles, and there were always beds for them when they went to dinner at Peter Dillon's. Then there were the Blakes of Castletown.
Peter Dillon stayed to have a few last words with Sophy, and to impress upon her his sister Nora's message, that she and her sister were to be sure to come over on Friday to Ballyhaunis, and spend the night there. "We will, if we're let, tell Nora," said Sophy; "but now Frank's at home, we must mind him, you know."
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