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Once again as we watched him we anathematised the emigration which has so steadily been bleeding the veins of our poor country. We all thought of Mick the next morning, and imagined him on the various stages of his journey to Queenstown, and the big liner. For a week or so we did not see Mrs. Sheehy, but heard piteous accounts of her prostration. The poor woman seemed incapable of taking comfort.
Go home, ye silly talkin' woman, go home an' confess. "'Come away! Come away! sez Judy, pullin' her mother by the shawl. ''Twas none av Terence's fault. For the love av Mary stop the talkin'! "'An' you! said ould Mother Sheehy, spinnin' round forninst Dinah. 'Will ye take the half av that man's load?
Father Sheehy had long been fixed upon as their victim: largely connected with the minor gentry, educated in France, young, popular, eloquent and energetic, a stern denouncer of the licentious lives of the squires, and of the exacting tithes of the parsons, he was particularly obnoxious. In 1763 he was arrested on a charge of high treason, for drilling and enrolling Whiteboys, but was acquitted.
I can't tell how it came about, but BEKAZE I had no thought for anywan except Dinah, BEKAZE I hadn't slipped her little white arms from my neck five minuts, BEKAZE the breath of her kiss was not gone from my mouth, I must go through the married lines on my way to quarters an' I must stay talkin' to a red-headed Mullingar heifer av a girl, Judy Sheehy, that was daughter to Mother Sheehy, the wife of Nick Sheehy, the canteen-sergint the Black Curse av Shielygh be on the whole brood that are above groun' this day!
Sheehy represented herself to pious Protestant ladies, for about a radius of twenty miles, as a Papist, who might easily be brought to see the error of her ways, and as one who for her liberal tendencies was much in disfavour with the priests. I know that to her co-religionists she complained that Protestant charities were closed to her because she had become a Catholic.
Probably, however, the best diagnosis of the situation immediately preceding the outbreak was the letter published by the New Statesman of May 6th, that had been written as early as April 7th, and which, coming from the most eminent victim of the danger so clearly foreseen by him, must have special force at the present moment. It was from no less than F. Sheehy Skeffington.
Now we always thought that Mrs. Sheehy must have suggested Mick as an emigrant, for he was distinctly not eligible. But it was very easy to puff up poor Mick's mind with pictures of America as a Tom Tiddler's ground, and the mother did this in private, while in public she wrung her hands over the wilful boy that would go and leave her lonesome in her old age.
We have exchanged rumours, and found that our equipment in this direction is almost identical. He says Sheehy Skeffington has been killed. That he was arrested in a house wherein arms were found, and was shot out of hand.
There was undoubted madness in the Sheehy blood, but in this sailor son, so long as he kept sober, there was no manifestation of it except it might be in a dreaminess and romanticism uncommon to his class. He was an olive-skinned, brown-eyed fellow, with such a refined face as might have belonged to an artist or musician. He had the mellow colour Murillo loved.
Presintly, quiet as a cat, ould Mother Sheehy came in velvet- dhrunk. She had her daughter's red hair, but 'twas bald in patches, an' I cud see in her wicked ould face, clear as lightnin', what Judy wud be twenty years to come. I was for jumpin' up, but Judy niver moved. "Terence has promust, mother," sez she, an' the could sweat bruk out all over me.
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