Seamus an Chaca

Don’t dump on the Irish or you may go down in history as “Seamus an Chaca,” translated as James the Shit.

A Catholic monarch in 1688, King James II of England put the Protestant powers in a tizzy by granting all Christians the right to worship as they pleased. A big hit with the Irish, but a job killer for James.

The Protestant establishment called on William of Orange, a Dutch Protestant, to invade and eliminate James the Free Love Hippie Flower Child. Within the elite, James was not a popular guy and had little support. It might've had something to do with him ogling their wives "mightily." Even his daughters, Mary and Anne, jumped ship and sided with William of Orange (Mary’s husband). James lost the throne and moved to France.

Pope Alexander: "What? Louis 14
was a douche."

Two years later, the Dethroned One returned via Ireland with an army of French regiments, bolstered by the Irish, often armed only with farm implements.

In 1690 on the River Boyne, north of Dublin, they hit a formidable wall composed of William of Orange’s forces, the Dutch Blue Guard, along with many Dutch Catholics. The kick in the Irish gut was William’s key ally—Pope Alexander VIII (not a fan of the French king, Louis XIV).

During the Battle of the Boyne, James’s forces were overwhelmed and the French cavalry organized a hasty, but orderly retreat. Meanwhile, King James Two hauled his butt to Wexford, then slinked back to France.



Kiss it, James.

This vanishing act did not sit well with the Irishmen who'd fought fiercely with no more than pitchforks in hand. Hence, on the Emerald Isle, James is forever associated with a stinking pile of excrement.

 

Sources: "The Battle of the Boyne." BBC News. BBC, n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2015. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/events/battle_of_the_boyne>.                         

Murphy, Colin. "Seamus an Chaca." The Priest Hunters:. Dublin: O'Brien, 2013. 33-36. Print.    

Photo: "Carfania & Marcolf: Different Positions for Mooning Judges." Purple Motes. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2015. <http://purplemotes.net/2015/05/17/carfania-marcolf-mooning/>.                                               

Connections

If you touched an item belonging to someone long deceased, would you sense his spirit? Could you experience her presence? My encounters tell me sometimes yes, sometimes no. I invite you to share your views on this subject.

The historical figure on whom I base my book, Aroon, is Father Nicholas Sheehy of Clogheen and Clonmel, who was executed on March 15, 1766 for treason. It’s not simple, but basically, like Martin Luther King, Jr., he urged the poor Irish to stand up for themselves as men.

I visited the tomb of Father Sheehy in 2005. Did I feel something? Yes. Was it overwhelming? No. Nevertheless, standing in the ancient graveyard on that misty day, while unseen ravens squawked from overhanging trees, I felt something. I was there for a reason, I believed, called to be in this place, and I would return.

Since then, I started this blog, which has put me, via the internet, in virtual contact with Father Sheehy. As I wrote in my last post, a descendant of Mr. Billy Griffiths confirmed that a cure Father Sheehy reputedly left to the Griffiths did indeed exist, even to this day. She could not confirm its effectiveness, but she assured me that, as late as the 1970s, folks still sought it out.

I have had other encounters with Father Sheehy’s footprint on this earth. A young Irish student from Clonmel, County Tipperary, the very town that held the priest’s trial and execution, contacted me seeking more information about the historical figure. I told Ciera what I knew, sent a few photos, and in return, she emailed pictures of the museum’s artifacts. Relics of which I was unaware.

These items included Father Sheehy’s signature, which once again, caused me to speculate on this legend as a flesh-and-blood man. In what ways was he just like us? How was he exceptional?

Ciera was permitted, by appointment, to view this and his purple stole. She sent me the photo she took. The symbol of his station among the common people whom he died to defend. Even gazing at the item on my computer screen, I was in awe of his courage and commitment.

On this very day, I’ve received more information from an historian from Clogheen, County Tipperary, the village to which Nicholas Sheehy ministered. I will share that in another post.

The man was real. His mission was righteous. And he paid the ultimate price.

Father Sheehy's Secret Potion

The mausoleum that Father Sheehy hid in.

The Irish are known for their whimsical stories that some even believe are historical truth. While researching the martyred priest, Nicholas Sheehy, I found my share of questionable “facts”. For instance, the landowner I based much of Aroon on, Sir Thomas Maude, wore a donkey’s tail, they say, indicating his high level of jackass-iveness. (If Shakespeare can invent over 1000 words, surely I can conjure up one.)

Another interesting account, told to me by local Clogheen historian John Tuohy, pertained to the time Father Sheehy was a fugitive from the law. Considered treasonous for his associations with the Levellers, Sheehy went into hiding. By day, he huddled in a mausoleum found in the Shanrahan Cemetery where he now lies. By night, he emerged, then crawled through a small window in the adjacent farmhouse to be fed and pampered by a Protestant couple, Mr. and Mrs. William Griffiths. There, he was permitted to secretly perform his priestly duties.


The farmhouse is still there.

 When Father Sheehy finally decided to give himself up, with the provision that he be tried in Dublin rather than locally, he had little to give his gracious hosts. So, as the story has it, he bestowed upon them a secret cure for eczema and various other ailments, with the condition that it be shared freely with the common people in need. Father Sheehy’s other stipulation was that the recipe be handed down through Mrs. Griffiths, whose maiden name was Baylor, to the women in the family.


While this is a very kind account of Father Sheehy’s love for the poor and gratitude to a generous family of another faith, I was skeptical of its truth. It sounded like the exaggerations I’ve read too many times on this journey with Father Sheehy.

Then, a most unexpected communication arrived. An American woman who’d read my accounts on this blog contacted me, hoping I had more information about Father Sheehy. But she enlightened me far more than I had her.

The woman is the descendant of the Griffiths couple who hid Father Sheehy. I was stunned when she informed me that two members of her family still hold the recipe of which I’d read, known by them as “the cures.”

Father Sheehy's grave--a double tomb
holding him and another priest.

While she did not own the recipe herself, she wrote that as late as the 70s, one relative was “actively concocting and distributing the cures. They were known throughout the region and … people were coming to the door all day and all night to request various things” which her relative mixed for them, refusing any payment. Just as Father Sheehy had specified two hundred years previously.

The hairs on my arm raised as I read her email. The story was true and, quite possibly, Father Sheehy’s gratitude is still helping the common people all these decades later, to this very day.

My new friend wrote, “I can’t speak to whether they actually could be scientifically proven to work, but I certainly can confirm that they are real and that people believed that they work.” She went on to say, “We were always told that they were given to the family by a priest who the family concealed, but we hadn’t realized what a famous and interesting priest it was until recently.”

For me, this new knowledge brought Father Nicholas Sheehy out of the realm of legend and into the real, flesh-and-blood world. I felt closer to him. And more curious. If this was true, what else actually happened? (Surely not the ass’s tail.)

Thanks to another reader, I was able to learn more of the tangible existence of this fascinating man. Look for that in next week’s post.

"I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain"*





                                                                                     Photo Credit: Herr Olson

During this month of swirling dead leaves and the zombie-like stalks of once-lush corn, the days shorten in anticipation of All Hallow’s Eve, an ancient festival of the dead.

The perfect month to research archaic burial practices, right? That’s right where I am in my book, Aroon. And boy, did I find some strange customs.

 

Ghosts and ghouls reflect the age-old fear of disturbing the dead lest they unleash their supernatural powers upon us. Many practices through the years stem from this fear which, have no doubt, is still found in many people today. I've recently moved next door to a cemetery and have been looked at suspiciously by more than one person.

 

Medieval churches throughout Europe were charged with caring for the dead, and before the services of CSI: Miami, it was the duty of the clergy to determine whether or not the death resulted from foul play. Before Christianity took hold, burials were not to take place inside the limits of the town. It wasn’t until the year 752 that the pope authorized the establishment of a churchyard where the deceased were buried in consecrated ground.

 

                                                                                      Photo by: Dean Ayers

 

In the thirteenth century, cemeteries were ordered to be securely enclosed, so that animals could not graze there. But that did not stop them from becoming a playground on festivals and holidays. Many medieval people felt that the dead were still with them on some level and would enjoy the party, so to speak.

And party they did. Rough games, dancing, and drinking led to the inevitable brawl which too often resulted in the deaths of a participant or two. As you can imagine, there was a fair amount of damage to the gravestones as well.

According to Bertram S. Puckle (really?) in his 1926 book, Funeral Customs, “the poor Vicar of Codrington, in 1862, found people playing cards on the communion table, and when they chose the churchwardens, they used to sit in the sanctuary smoking and drinking.” Ah, remember when.

 

Puckle wrote that as far back as the Iron Age, people were buried with their feet facing east, perhaps as a custom of sun-worshippers. Later, Christians have been buried facing the same way since from that direction, they surmised, will come the final summons to Judgment.

 

Another interesting custom was that people were buried to the west, east, and south of the church itself, but rarely to the north. The only graves found there were of murderers and other criminals. This is because structure of the church, like its deceased members, also faced east. Therefore, the north or left side of the altar is the Gospel side, which calls on sinners to repent. Was anybody listening?

It could get right crowded.                   Photo by: Bogdan Mugulski 

 

Sometimes a person was interred face down. If it was a first-born child, this would prevent further children from being born in the family. A very ghoulish form of birth control.

 

Witches were often buried this way in an effort to keep their spirits from causing trouble. During a serious cholera epidemic in Hungary, they determined the cause to be a particular witch’s curses. Her body was quickly exhumed and she was re-buried face down. Oddly enough, that did not curtail the spread of the disease. They dug her up again and turned her clothing inside out. Even that didn’t work! Once again, she was brought up from the grave, this time to cut out her heart and divide it into four pieces, each of which was burned at a corner of the village. I'm assuming that did the trick.

At times, criminals and other sinners were forbidden from the consecrated burial grounds of the righteous, so they were planted at a crossroads. Apparently, this was an effort to confuse the vengeful spirit (who was hopefully directionally-challenged) and prevent him from returning home to torment family members. His heart was anchored with the ever-popular wooden stake to keep him firmly in the grave.

 

As a final effort to keep this pissed-off ghost off kilter, the funeral procession would arrive at the burial site from one direction, only to return home a different way. That ghost would have to be one smart cookie to have found his way back after all those safeguards.

This is one of my favorite old traditions. It was believed that a “newcomer” to the cemetery was to act as watchman until an even more recently deceased person showed up to take his place. In some parts of Ireland, a pipe and tobacco were left so the person could have a smoke during his watch. Always hospitable, those Irish.

 

Nobody wanted this post, so if two new occupants arrived at the cemetery simultaneously, the funeral processions would rush to get their guy into the ground first. This led to harsh words, which developed into the inevitable free-for-all, the corpse set aside until the matter was resolved. No occasion is too solemn for a good fight.

Also in Ireland, if you were plagued with warts, you need only grab a handful of dirt from under your right foot and throw it on the funeral procession. Voila! No more warts. But you might get a mighty beat-down from the mourners.

 

In Brittany, France, it was believed that once dead, you must eat as much dirt as the bread you had wasted during your lifetime. That’s one way to get the kiddies to eat their crust.

"Eat yer grub."   

 

*Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems

 

Photo Credits:

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/herrolsen/5042335699/">Herr Olsen</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">cc</a>

 

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/deano/167117371/">Dean Ayres</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>

 

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/migulski/2890674178/">Bogdan Migulski</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">cc</a>

 

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/8765199@N07/4292214097/">One lucky guy</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>

                                                        

Aarrgh!

I love onomatopoeia.

You remember, words that sound like their definition. In writing my book, I needed my character to wail in anguish. I needed a really strong onomatopoeia.

The internet is a wealth of amazing information. Yet, I have to wonder who puts in the countless hours in front of a screen plugging in this drivel--I mean, data. I don’t know who you guys are, but I’m grateful for your time and personal sacrifice.

Here are a couple of interesting websites that helped me this week. First, check out “Written Sound: How to Write the Sound of Things” at http://writtensound.com. You can peruse an alphabetical listing of all the collected “words that imitate sounds.” Or you can search them by topics such as Weather, Music, Explosions, or Gas.

Check it out. These words can be fun. You’ll find the old stand-bys you studied in fifth grade such as buzz, giggle, and hiccup. And a couple I would challenge as onomatopoeia at all, like oops or cliche. (Really? A worn, played-out phrase sounds like cliché? I can’t see it or hear it.)

Gwuf, gwuf

But then there are the unique and intriguing ones like …

           Flibbertigibbet: a flighty, gossipy young woman          
       Gwuf, gwuf, gwuf: footsteps (Can’t you hear them?)
           Kish, kish: ice skates during a hockey game

And, although I’ve never been on a subway during an important announcement, I can imagine the loudspeaker sounds like “thisshig rrrerrk.”

But what about wailing in anguish? I found “argh,” which according to one entry on Urban Dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/), is “the correct version of an expression of frustration or anger.”

The sample sentence given is "No brigette, argh is spelled with an h and not just arg."

You would think someone so concerned about the correct spelling of a word like argh would know to capitalize a proper noun. More than that, as it turns out, the word arg or argh has more spellings than you can possible imagine.

For that, may I direct you to “The Aargh Page” at http://osteele.com/words/aargh#? On that page is an impressive chart of all the possible spellings of aargh, along with how often and where each spelling has been found in print—from argh to (I kid you not) aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!!

Whoever put this together, I commend you while I urge you in the strongest possible terms to get out more.

As for my story, I had my character cry, “Aarrrrgh,” showing he is obviously in pain without being, you know, too splashy.

Ahem. Anyway, in order to avoid too much babble and blather, descending into gibberish—you know, yadda yadda yadda--I believe I’ll close. 

Pirate Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/earlg/

Eighteenth Century Desperate Housewives

You’re a Christian in eighteenth century Europe. Life becomes so unbearable that you don’t want to live. According to your religious beliefs, however, when you commit suicide, you are damned for all time. What to do?

 

But wait! Not if you murder someone else. You may be hanged for homocide, but you can repent on the gallows, obtain absolution, and spend eternity with Jesus in heaven. Voila!

This was the reasoning of a number of people from around 1612 to 1839. They no longer wanted to live, but in order to avoid an eternity of hellfire, they decided to commit murder instead.

But these were not uncaring people. In their “kindness,” they often killed an innocent child, one whose pure soul would enable him to go straight to heaven himself. (One woman slit a boy’s throat so severely, she said she could “look down into his neck,” in her own words.)

Once the deed was done, they immediately went to the authorities to report their crime, and await execution. A win-win.

I first heard about this convoluted thinking on PBS’s This American Life. Last August, the episode entitled “Loopholes” featured Kathy Stuart of the University of California Davis who has researched this phenomenon known as “suicide by proxy.”

Stuart discovered about 300 of these cases that occurred over 200+ years, usually committed by women. Some, she noted, did not even express regret over what they did. So how did that work? If they were not sorry, how could they be forgiven and escape damnation?

The priests or ministers at the gallows would often ask, “Do you think God can be fooled in this manner? You know that by doing this you actually have committed suicide.”

The perpetrators agreed, according to Kathy Stuart. But the accused merely confessed these crimes as well—and then repented. Problem solved.

Officials were frustrated by this trend and, in 1702, made the executions more painful and shaming. Nope. Didn't work. These people were looking to die; they didn’t care.

In 1767, courts went so far as to take away the very incentive for the horrific crime—they removed the death penalty altogether. That should have stopped the behavior in its tracks. And yet, it continued.

Beyond understanding, the practice did not end until the next century. “It really seems like people didn’t get the memo,” Stuart says.

Sooo, they killed a small child, confessed, repented, and spent their even more miserable lives in some hole of a prison. Obviously, these “desperate housewives” were not as clever as they thought. The "dumb criminals" of yore. 

Who You Calling a Paunchy Toad-Spotted Harpy?

In my book, Aroon, there’s a heck of a lot of animosity between the characters as there is in any self-respecting plot. Hence, I need tons of insults and they had to be current in 1750. You’d be surprised which of our libelous vocabulary is relatively recent.

A mild word like “jerk” has only been around since 1935. “Jackass,” meaning stupid person, only came to prominence in 1823. Can’t use it.  “Bastard” has been in use since the thirteenth century, but I need some variety in my abusive language.
 

Imagine my glee when I googled “Medieval insults” and found the Shakespeare Insult Kit at http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/shake_rule.html. Check it out. They give three columns with words in each taken from the Bard’s various plays. Start with the word “thou,” then choose one phrase from each column. It’s fun. Here are two I’ve put together:

 

Thou frothy flap-mouthed foot-licker. (I love alliteration.) OR

Thou yeasty onion-eyed pignut.  (Now I didn’t actually know what a pignut was, so I looked it up. It’s the tuber of some European plant. Which isn’t bad either: You yeasty onion-eyed tuber!)

If this isn’t fun enough—and it is—try the Shakespeare Insulter at http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker/index.html. Here you hit a button that says “Insult me again” and a bonafide slight straight from one of Shakespeare’s plays comes up. And let me tell you, he was the master of mockery. Here are a couple I got:
 

“Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins!” compliments of Richard III
“We leak in your chimney.” from Henry IV, part I (Now I’m not positive what that means, but it certainly sounds gross and demeaning.)
“Thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up, And howl’st to find it.” –Henry IV, part II (Ewww)

And you thought Shakespeare was too highfalutin for you. His plays have been around for four hundred years for a reason. Needless to say, our modern-day mud-slinging now seems mundane and repetitive. Where’s our flair? Where's our creativity?

As in all areas of life, when in doubt, turn to the master.

"Poetry in the Raw"

Do you have children? If so, you have been awarded the delicate task of naming a human being. This seems so simple to middle school girls; they can discuss the names of their future sons and daughters for hours. In the fifth grade, my daughter was to be named Abigail. I had three chances to use that name and it never happened.

One thing little girls forget is that their child will have a father, who may not have sat around his boy scout campfire comparing names with his buds, but who has definite ideas about the names of his own children. And sadly, he does have a say.

For better or worse, people have impressions about who you are as soon as they hear your name. As a kid, I once lamented to my mother that no famous person had my name, Mary Beth.

“Oh yes,” she said. “There was an actress named Mary Beth Hughes. But she didn’t fit the name.”

Mary Beth Hughes:
the Anti-Me

Me: “What do you mean?”

Mom: “She was very glamorous.”

Thanks, Mom.

According to Confucius, “If names are not correct, language will not be in accordance with the truth of things.” So I guess my Plain Jane name is in accordance with the truth of things. Sigh.

A quote from W.H. Auden: “Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.” I like that, too. It emphasizes the important task one has when naming someone.

It is not trivial, then, to consider the names of the characters of your novel. This chosen name will carry a piece of their personality to the reader. There are blogs and websites galore to help authors choose the perfect name, and an entire book (Character Naming Sourcebook) on the matter. When I googled it, I got over twelve million hits.

So I took it very seriously last week when a member of my critique group questioned the name of one of my main characters, Margaret or Marg with a hard G. It sounds too close to her antagonist, Maeve, for one, and the female lead should have a softer sounding name, for two.

I brought this up to my husband, who said, “I never liked that name.” Oh.

I first went to Ancestry.Com to look through the names of my paternal ancestors, almost all of whom were Irish. I came up with Ann. My husband vetoed that. Too plain, he said. The part he did like about Marg was that it was not ordinary.

Next, I googled "Irish girl names" and found  www.babynamesofIreland.com. This is a very marvelous site. Not only do they have lists of girls’ and boys’ names, they have the Gaelic version (with far too many consonants. sorry.), as well as the English versions, and their meanings. As a really cool bonus, they have Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes, read each name so you can get the actual pronunciation. I love it!

My husband and I agreed that, of my short-list names, the best is Eveleen (pronounced Ay-Vleen). It is not too strange since Evelyn is another version of it, but has enough of the exotic to be, as Auden says, poetry. And it has no hard sounds; it is soft and melodious. So Marg becomes Eveleen. Um, it also has the benefit of being close to the name of my sister, Evelyn, and I owe her. But that’s a story for another day.

iPod Research

Mumford and Sons

I am going to confess to a guilty pleasure: I am enthralled by American Idol contestant Joshua Ledet’s performance of “When a Man Loves a Woman.” Maybe a better verb would be ‘obsessed.’

Since his Wednesday night performance, I have watched it online more times than I can comfortably admit. If you haven’t seen it, it's worth the five minutes. Click here.


Joshua Ledet

I am hypnotized by the passion in his voice, but also by his body language, and the intensity of his facial expressions. Every atom in his body is expressing the powerful emotion of this song. He brings chills to my spine and tears to my eyes.

It is my dream to engross my readers in the emotions of my characters in much the same way. Obviously, a very tall order.

While Google searches, interviews, books, and newspapers are great research tools for information, I find music is one of the best resources for the emotional tone of my writing. My iPod has African drumming for my Stono Rebellion research, Colonial music for my Revolutionary War story, and Gregorian chants for the Middle Ages.

As you can see in the sidebar, my story, Aroon, has the clash between the poor Irish and the English gentry as its primary theme. While walking this morning, I listened to the contemporary music of Mumford & Sons, introduced to me by my daughter. “They’re an Irish band,” she said. “You’ll love them.”

She got that half right. I do love them, but they aren’t Irish. They’re from West London, yet I believe they have an Irish flavor. My favorite song, “Dust Bowl Dance,” is speculated to have been based on Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Reportedly, the band has said they’ve been influenced by East of Eden, which I reviewed, ironically, in my last post.

However the writers were inspired, I find it speaks to my book and the struggles of the poor Irish during the time of the Penal Laws. The intensity of emotion in the song helps me imagine the suffering of my characters. Have a listen:

　
To me, both the music and the lyrics express the anger, despair, and even desperation of the oppressed in a way that cries out to the heart over the head.

That is why music is a critical resource. It immerses me as a writer into the feelings that create the emotional core of the story. In short, music will help me write the way Joshua Ledet sings. 

Execution by the State

Because he had expressed sympathy for the peasantry of their distress, Father Nicholas Sheehy was convicted on a trumped-up charge of murder, in the town of Clonmel in 1766, and was hanged, drawn and quartered. His grave in Shandraghan soon became and place of pilgrimage, and his death provided later generations of Whiteboys with a patron saint.
--“The Course of Irish History”, page 186

The above is the catalyst for my journey to discover Father Sheehy. That’s all that was written about the martyred priest in this history, but as I’ve told you before, my curiosity was piqued.

I had read the expression “drawn and quartered” before this, but to be honest, did not really know what that meant. What was the procedure for this form of state-sanctioned execution?

Well, if anyone tells you we are a more violent society now than the good old days, feel free to use the classic Joe Wilson line, “You lie!” We are justifiably squeamish about the electric chair (see The Green Mile) and unsettled over lethal injection. But a mere two hundred years ago, a more heinous method of legal extermination than many of us can imagine was performed before entertainment-hungry crowds.

If a person was convicted of high treason against the crown, he was first drawn by horse or sledge to the place of execution. He was hanged, but not until dead. Still alive, he was cut down so that his intestines could be pulled out and burned before his very eyes. I can only imagine the person became unconscious or dead at this point from pain and loss of blood.

But he then had his head cut off and his body ripped into four parts (quartered), usually with an arm or leg in each. Sometimes horses were tied to each limb and driven in different directions in order to tear the body apart. The heads were then spiked and left to rot in a prominent location--a grisly example to others.

Father Sheehy’s execution was held on March 15, 1766 (Beware!), the day after he was sentenced. According to an account by Jerry Griffin of Clogheen, he was brought out of the jail where he blessed the people and proclaimed his innocence. He also said of his persecutors and jury, “I forgive and pity them all, and would not change places with any of them.”

Since the hangman’s noose was directly across the street from the jail, it is doubtful he was drawn on a sledge. He was hanged until dead, so did not have to witness the burning of his entrails that followed. He was quartered and his head spiked before the jail for twenty years.

This horrifying death was typically reserved for treason. Yet, Father Sheehy had been charged, tried, and acquitted for treason. In evidence of the hatred toward this man, although the charge was murder, he suffered this most grievous punishment.

Below is a clip from the series, The Tudors, in which Catherine Howard’s “playmates”, Culpepper and Dereham, are executed. The first was fortunate enough to be decapitated, but the second endured the same terrifying execution of Father Sheehy. The clip portrays the horror of this death without showing the most gruesome parts.

The John Tuohy Files: Final Chapter

Saint Mary's Church, Clogheen*

I stood outside St. Mary’s Church of Clogheen, studying the monument built to Father Sheehy’s memory in 1991. Each side had symbolic reliefs, which I was photographing when John Tuohy and Caspar strolled up.

This was John Tuohy’s church and his passion; he had already told me much about it and his diocese. It was built in 1864, nearly a hundred years following Father Sheehy’s execution, but the martyred priest’s church no longer exists.

Monument dedicated to
Father Nicholas Sheehy

On our way inside, Tuohy pointed to a young tree, still held up with cables to steady it. “We planted that tree in honor of the victims of 9-11,” he told me. I stopped and looked for a moment, stunned really. So caught up in the tragedy ourselves, I was reminded that the whole world was affected. The little tree touched my heart.

Inside, the sanctuary was larger and more ornate than I expected. It held a medieval beauty with its very high ceiling and statues atop each pillar. John Tuohy showed me images of Saint Patrick, of course, and Saint Cataldo, a monk native to the area who became shipwrecked in southern Italy following a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He settled there and became as beloved, they say, as Saint Patrick is to the Irish.

The view of the church from
the choir loft*

“Would you like to see the choir loft?” he asked after the sanctuary tour.

Of course, I would. He unlocked the door with an old skeleton key and up we climbed the narrow staircase to the balcony. This was an unexpected treat. The view of the church from there was gorgeous.

He brushed some papers from a stool beside the organ and invited me to sit. It was then I learned that my tour guide was none other than the church’s organist. He offered to play for me.



Monument panel:
Fr. Sheehy saying mass
3rd from bottom

Wow! He played “How Great Thou Art” and two other hymns. I was certainly taken aback and resolved never to forget it. “Reality check,” I remember thinking. “You are in Ireland, in a small town’s beautiful church, in the choir loft, while the organist plays music just for you.”

Life takes wonderfully unpredictable turns.

John Tuohy reminded me of one of my favorite people, my grandfather, Luke Pryor. Both seemed to live rich, full lives in very small towns. Each were somewhat absent-minded, funny, and brimming over with fascinating stories. Without a doubt, during my fantastic two-week stay in Ireland, my day with John Tuohy was my hands-down favorite.

*Photos with asterisks are from the parish website at http://www.bcparish.com/?page_id=14&album=3

The John Tuohy Files: Discovering Nicholas Sheehy



Shanrahan Cemetery

 John Tuohy spoke of many things, some of which related to Nicholas Sheehy, the subject of my interview. A man of many interests, his mind jumped from topic to topic. (A touch of ADD, perhaps?) I furiously scribbled notes, sometimes to discover he was telling a totally unrelated story.

Yet, once the side stories were weeded out, I learned many intriguing bits of information. He described some of the backbreaking Penal Laws of the eighteenth century:

• Catholic farmers of substance were required to split their land among all children, creating smaller and smaller plots.
• They could not own a horse worth more than five pounds Sterling.
• Tithes had to be paid to the state church in addition to their own Catholic parish.
• Curiously, Catholics could not erect tombstones to their dead.



Cornelius O'Callaghan mausoleum

• But most devastating of all, common areas were fenced in by the gentry, eliminating grazing land for the poor.

According to Tuohy, these unbearable laws were designed to push the native Irish out to the mountains and bogs. As a push back, large gangs of men known as Levellers, or Whiteboys, rode at night in white tunics, knocking down (leveling) the offending fences put up by the landowners.

Father Sheehy said that everyone had a right to commonage. John Tuohy told me, “He believed that natural law overrode man’s law.” Nor did he object to the practice of leveling fences, although Tuohy said he did not direct Levellers to do so.

Adjacent farmhouse--the Griffiths?

For these reasons, Nicholas Sheehy was accused of treason. To avoid arrest, for an entire year, he hid out by day in the mausoleum of Cornelius O’Callaghan, a Catholic who converted to Protestantism to keep his land. Today, this mausoleum is only a few yards from Sheehy’s final resting place.

At night, he came out to be cared for by the Griffiths, a Protestant family living in a nearby farmhouse.

An hour into the interview, John Tuohy’s sister interrupted, insisting they go to the bank to sign important paperwork. Another person exasperated with poor John. I went alone to the cemetery at Shanrahan, a mile outside Clogheen.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was overwhelmed to be at the actual grave of Father Sheehy. Only that day, however, did I discover that it was also the location of Sheehy’s grisly hiding place. The misty weather, the ruins of an ancient church, and the hacking of raspy crows created the ambiance of a Poe short story.

I felt a connection to the place. It was not déjà vu; it was a sense of being where I was supposed to be and one to which I would return.

Shanrahan Cemetery. Father Sheehy's grave is at
the base of the tower.

The John Tuohy Files: Caspar

John Tuohy & Caspar

One of my husband, Wendy’s, pet peeves is the overuse of the word “surreal” during any and nearly all celebrity interviews. So I’ll describe my interview with John Tuohy as phantasmagoric. (I DO love my thesaurus.com)

After my dubious introduction to John Tuohy, the local historian with expertise on Father Nicholas Sheehy, I followed him into his shop--a shabby, cluttered room with a counter to the left. Behind a rack of postcards was a copy machine covered by a bath towel. Those were the only clues that I may have been in a place of business.

In all other respects, this was someone’s home. In fact, there to the back was the irritated fellow who took me to Tuohy, still grumbling in the kitchen.

John Tuohy and I went through a doorway to the adjoining shop which was, actually, a sitting room. These places were row houses built in the shotgun style; that is, they were narrow, with each room directly behind the other. John Tuohy’s shops seemed to be two of these that had a door cut between them.

I sat on the sofa as invited and met Caspar, the friendly dog. The old, old friendly dog. He was as serene and placid as a Buddhist monk. Yet, John Tuohy went off like I was being smothered by an wild-and-woolly Saint Bernard.

“Down, Caspar! Get down! Caspar. Lie down. Lie down, I said!” The man was frantic.

“He’s fine. Really,” from me. I am not an animal person. I hate when dogs jump all over me, which they do once they sense that I’m not interested in them. But, believe me, it was fine.

Poor Caspar could not jump up on me if he wanted to. The geriatric pooch just sat there, peering at me with his wishful-thinking eyes, almost apologizing for not being able to mount a more enthusiastic welcome. Out of respect, I tried not to pity him.

Finally, he lifted his paw and placed it on my leg. The shin, not the knee. It could have been a giant Q-tip for all the impact it made.

John Tuohy freaked. “Get down, Caspar! Lie down!”

The dog removed his paw and lay down.

Phew! The flustered Tuohy could finally relax; the danger had passed.

Somehow, Monty Python's Flying Circus came to mind.

The John Tuohy Files: We Meet



The Truman Show: Is this for real?

Have you ever felt like you’ve stepped into some version of The Truman Show? By that, I mean you unknowingly became part of some crazy TV series. With the historian I interviewed, John Tuohy of Clogheen, I almost wanted to look for hidden cameras.

With “Main Street” being the only address I had, a guy in the grocery store directed me to two brown doors across the street. While they looked like residential-style doors to me, they were described as John Tuohy’s shop.

I knocked on the first. Nothing. I knocked again, and a third time, before I heard the shuffle of an approach. A small-boned, slightly disheveled man opened the door.

“John Tuohy?” I asked.

“No, he‘s not here,” he grumbled and stepped into the street. “He’s the hardest man to find. Always in and out,” he said, clearly annoyed at him or me or both.

I followed him two doors further down the sidewalk. Obviously agitated, he went on, “I’m trying to get some work done in the back and he’s not there…”


Clogheen, Co. Tipperary



I mumbled my apologies, but it was now clear that Tuohy was the target of his wrath. He pounded on the new door. “John!” A responding grunt from within. “You’re wanted out here.”

“Alright,” came the reply.

The frustrated man mumbled something sarcastic about Tuohy’s unreliability and wished me luck getting anywhere with him, then went back to his work.

A tall, white-haired man dressed in all black emerged. I introduced myself.

“What is your surname?” he asked.

“Gibson,” I repeated.

Main Street, Clogheen*

“I wrote down a G but I couldn’t read the rest of it. I looked at my calendar yesterday and saw it.”

Oh boy. After that less-than-glowing recommendation from his housemate(?), I was beginning to worry a little about what would come of this. John Tuohy was my one big Nicholas Sheehy expert on this trip.

As we walked back to his place, he told me he had been watching the home where I found him for the lady who owned it. That’s a kind thing, I remember thinking. Only later in the interview did I discover she had been dead for two years.

Had I been dropped into some wacky British comedy? More to come.

*Photo from Wikicommons, padraigobrien

A Tale of Two Cities

Before my trip to Ireland, Michelle Stafford of Clonmel’s Main Guard contacted John Tuohy, a local historian from Clogheen (the town near Sheehy’s grave), who would be a willing wealth of information. She emailed his address--simply Main Street--and his telephone number.

Before school one morning, I called and, as an older person, was astounded that he answered the phone without any operator involvement whatsoever. We made an appointment to meet at 10 A.M. on my third day in the country.

My sister, Barbara, bought two copies of Frommer’s Road Atlas, one for each car we rented. This is an outstanding resource in itself and I highly recommend it. What I particularly like is that each page contains a section of Ireland in minute detail. Every four centimeters represents five miles--in American, that’s a fraction over an inch and a half.

If you look on the page of the map I was using, you can see the road follows a loop around a mountain. I had previously driven to Clonmel to the east of the Comeraghs, so this was my first time going this way. Being a responsible person, I left early.

As I zeroed in on my destination, I found myself driving back and forth, back and forth between the blue lines I’ve marked on the map. Where Clogheen should have been, was a field and a small hut of some sort. That certainly was not right.

Therefore, I was no longer early--I was now late. I became frantic. I had looked forward to this interview most of all and was blowing it. Oh--and this was before I owned a cell phone.

Not knowing what else to do, I decided to go into Clonmel and get better directions. Before reaching that city, a road sign said, “Clonmel--4 km” pointing to the right and “Clogheen--21 km” pointing left.

Even though that did not jive with the map AT ALL, I chose to follow the signs. At long last and thirty minutes late, I drove into Clogheen, which was larger than I pictured. I got directions to John Tuohy’s place and, once meeting him, started apologizing profusely for my tardiness. Which he hardly seemed to notice.

I explained my confusion about the map, to which he replied, “Oh. You were going to the wrong Clogheen.”

“The wrong Clogheen?"

“Yes. The one you were looking for is no more than a field.” (No joke!)

Sure enough, when I spread open my map book, there sat the TRUE CLOGHEEN.

Unbelievable.

Drinking In the Atmosphere



My mother and brother-in-law,
Tom Halligan, at Carrigeen Farm House.

 In Ireland, I wanted to inhale the air, crumble the dirt in my hands, and listen to the birds and whatever insects they may have. I mean, the internet offers a wealth of information about these places, but I wanted to know what it felt, smelled, and sounded like to actually be there.

Upon arrival in Dublin, we drove to the Carrigeen Farm House, our rental outside Kilmacthomas (about fifteen miles from the city of Waterford, of cut-crystal fame). The farm was in a most lovely rural setting tucked in the foothills of the Comeragh Mountains. Our landlady called it a “pet day,” meaning it was sunny with cottony clouds. This weather turned out to be fairly rare, as I later learned watching rain clouds roll in from the hills.

The drive to the farm house

While the others were napping from jet lag, I took my notebook and walked down a most picturesque two-rutted dirt road. I jotted down as many sensory images as I could. Here are a few:

TOUCH: “Briars lie hidden under the beauty of the wild flowers, patiently waiting for their prey; they then laugh while the victim sucks the blood from his throbbing finger. Mean-spirited vines.”
SMELL: “The rain splats into the dry, thirsty dust of the road. It smells like new life. It smells like hope.”
SOUND: “a donkey braying frantically with the heavy breathing of an asthmatic old man”
SIGHT: “a bird confidently shows off his masterful dance over a field of young grain”



Me and Tom on the footpath
to Mahon Falls

Apparently, I didn’t taste anything of note. These were written about six and a half years ago, and I now notice I have a tendency toward personification.



Another day, we went to Mahon Falls, not too far from our home base. It was not a pet day. Although it was June, I wore a flannel-lined raincoat as we trekked through a brisk, foggy drizzle. The craggy landscape was dotted with bleating sheep and goats. Gorgeous. It was like waking up in Jane Eyre, or any other gothic romance for that matter.



My mom and sister, Barbara
Halligan, at Mahon Falls

For my writer self, this was a godsend. While my primary purpose was to learn as much as possible about Nicholas Sheehy’s story, soaking up the countryside with all of my senses was priceless.