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Daniel O'Connell, son of the great Dan, stood for West Kerry as a Unionist, he was warned by the police officer that he could not be answerable for his life if he came into Cahirciveen, for he had only twenty constables to protect him; and his wife a most charming woman when driving through the town was surrounded by an insulting mob, members of which actually spat in her face.
He sat on a Board of Guardians with a man I knew four years ago, and one day he read out his own name, 'James Griffin, among a list of applicants for relief at Cahirciveen. The chairman looked up, and said, 'Surely that is not your name you are reading, is it? 'It is, indeed, replied Griffin, 'and I am as much in need of relief as any one! Perhaps you'll be surprised to hear he didn't get it.
The principal outbreak was to be in Killarney, and they plotted to attack the police barrack at Cahirciveen, because they had an ally in the son of the head constable.
At that time there used to be a steamer going in and out trading in Valentia and Dingle and Cahirciveen, and when she came into Dingle, two or three days after, there was my man on board her, as hearty as a salmon.
Beside the grievances already enumerated, and only felt in their full poignancy since the establishment of a branch of the Land League at Cahirciveen, the Valentians now complain that their land is "set" too high. Amid the mass of conflicting evidence and the diverse methods of calculation, it is very difficult to arrive at any conclusion on this point.
Baron Dowse, a man who had no fear of unmanly criminals, justly styled this a reign of terror. Kerry is divided into six Poor Law Unions, three of them Kenmare, Cahirciveen and Dingle are very poor districts; but there was practically not an outrage in them.
Some of them marched rather downcast towards Killarney, and on the road they met a mounted policeman riding to warn Cahirciveen of the attack which was to be made against the barracks, for every movement of this silly rebellion was known to the Government. They called on the man to stop and deliver up his despatches.
At Cahirciveen anti-landlordism is as vigorous at this moment as at Tralee, or even at Ennis itself, albeit violent personal outrages have not been perpetrated in the immediate neighbourhood. A resolute and influential leader of the people declared to me yesterday that the spirit now aroused would never be quelled but by a full and generous recognition of the claims of the cultivators.
It is curious to hear that two eminent patriots of the period, Daniel O'Connell and the Knight of Kerry, were both middlemen, and in the case of Cahirciveen had one of the Blennerhassets as a co-middleman under Trinity College, and that the compact was only finally annulled by the resolution of the latter to have no more to do with it.
The tenants had for the most part paid their May rents, and the situation therefore afforded little scope for agitation; but the subtle spirit which spread instantaneously from Tralee to Cahirciveen quickly traversed the ferry, and now the Valentians are as keen on the subject of their grievances as anybody else in the western half of Ireland.
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