"ON MY KEEPING 
 AND IN THEIRS 
 
.r* 
 
 "ON MY KEEPING" 
 AND IN THEIRS 
 
 A RECORD OF EXPERIENCES 
 ON THE RUN," IN DERRY GAOE, AND IN 
 BAIXYKINLAR INTERNMENT CAMP 
 
 By 
 
 LOUIS J. WALSH 
 
 Author of "The Yarns of a Country Attorney" 
 " The Next Time," etc. 
 
 (Saying cf an old Ulster fyomaal 
 
 S^ 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 P. J. KENEDY cS^ SONS 
 
 44 BARCLAY STREET 
 1922 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBUAK1T 
 CHESTNUT HILL, MASS. 
 
PRINTED AT 
 
 ctie caUdoc puess 
 
 85 TALBOT STREET 
 DUBLIN 
 IRELAND 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Foreword 
 
 chap. 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XI. 
 
 XII. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 When Day Dreams Come True 
 The Mountainy Man 
 
 In an Ulster Glen 
 
 Dublin during the Terror . . . 
 "In Their Keeping" 
 
 Prison Life 
 
 Christmas Day in Derry Gaol 
 
 b allykinlar 
 
 Camp Conditions 
 
 Some Camp Notables 
 
 Our Line Captains 
 
 A Training Camp 
 
 Educational Work in the Camp 
 
 The Shootings 
 
 The Strike 
 
 The Fight and the Peace 
 
 Getting in our Time 
 
 Strategy 
 
 Home 
 
 Appendix 
 
 
 
 u u 
 
 PAGE 
 
 vii 
 
 i 
 
 5 
 
 10 
 
 17 
 23 
 
 29 
 
 35 
 4i 
 47 
 53 
 62 
 
 65 
 
 70 
 
 75 
 
 82 
 
 87 
 
 93 
 
 98 
 103 
 no 
 
FOREWORD. 
 
 By MRS. CECIL CHESTERTON, 
 
 Mr. Louis Walsh — Irish Nationalist, Sinn 
 Feiner and author of this book — has been a reader 
 and supporter of " The New Witness " since its 
 foundation by Cecil Chesterton in 191 1 ; and 
 this although the charge against him by the British 
 Government included his possession of back 
 numbers of the paper, which in Ireland comes 
 under the heading of seditious literature. This 
 sympathy between an English paper and an Irish 
 patriot, over a period of ten years, has been 
 possible because Mr. Walsh on his side and 
 " The New Witness " on theirs accepted the 
 fundamental difference in their point of view, 
 thus establishing a basis of mutual comprehension. 
 I emphasise this aspect oj the relationship, 
 because, it seems to me, that the keystone to the 
 understanding which alone can bridge the gulf 
 between England and Ireland lies in the recognition 
 
vla FOREWORD 
 
 that they are two separate countries, inhabited 
 by different peoples with divergent traditions and 
 national aspirations. The author's inimitable 
 story of the English sergeant who took him to 
 prison, in the friendliest possible way, illustrates 
 this to perfection. It happened that on the road 
 to Derry Gaol the prisoner stood the escort a meal, 
 when the sergeant in charge solved the Irish 
 Question in the most complete and satisfactory 
 fashion. lie broke a loaf in halves, and placing 
 the two portions a short distance apart remarked 
 to Mr. Walsh : " This is my bloody country and 
 that's your bloody country, and they have both to 
 live beside each other." It is the confusion of 
 ideas that is responsible for nine-tenths of the 
 injustice of this world ; and what the English 
 sergeant intuitively understood, well-meaning and 
 muddle-headed persons of the middle classes still 
 fail to comprehend. Ignorance of history and a 
 congenital shrinking from self-examination has 
 reinforced the false belief that the interests of 
 Ireland are identical with those of England, and 
 that a demand for separate existence is as 
 ridiculous as a plea for autonomy from York- 
 shire ; and this attitude of mind has been exploited 
 to the full by the professional politicians. 
 
 It needed the tragic events of the past four years 
 
FOREWORD ix 
 
 to make plain the fact that the Irish are not merely 
 a different kind of English, but a nation as 
 foreign to our methods of thought and forms of 
 government as are the French or the Italians. 
 Even now the legend still persists in relation to 
 what is called the Ulster problem, though, as the 
 author shows us, the Protestant population of 
 the North, leaving aside the Orange city, share 
 the aspirations of their Catholic fellows. They 
 are as thoroughly Irish as the natives of Cork, 
 and, according to Mr. Walsh, far more humorous. 
 A native of Ulster, the author's testimony of 
 Protestant cohesion to the national ideal is of 
 vital importance to those who want to understand 
 the truth. His narrative destroys the shibboleth 
 current for so many years in England, and 
 elsewhere, and shows clearly and irrefutably that 
 not Ulster but Belfast is irreconcilable ; the one 
 spot in Ireland where bigotry outweighs 
 nationalism. 
 
 It is these two things ivhich make Mr. Walsh's 
 book so valuable. In the first place he recognises 
 that it is the English politicians and not the 
 English people who have withheld Ireland's 
 independence. Throughout his imprisonment, and 
 the weary months passed in an internment camp, 
 his kindliness for English folk remained unspoiled ; 
 
X FOREWORD 
 
 not all the petty tyranny of malicious and ignorant 
 young subalterns, not all the harshness of camp 
 life, nor the sudden horror of the cold-blooded 
 butchery of certain of his fellow-prisoners, could 
 cloud his sense of justice, dim his belief that in 
 the ultimate the Irish people and the English 
 people must, be friends. In the second place, as 
 I have said, he utterly destroys that mischievous 
 figment of the imagination, a solid North definitely 
 opposed to the idea of Ireland free and united. 
 He centres our attention upon Belfast, not by 
 indictment but by those simple and most touching 
 glimpses of life in the Ulster towns and country- 
 side, where Protestants and Catholics work together, 
 play together and go to the same prison for the 
 same political ideals. It is worth noting in this 
 connection that Mr. Louis Walsh, himself a 
 Catholic, was returned to the County Council of 
 Antrim by the Protestant vote, and that, as he 
 tells us, a large proportion of his clients are 
 Protestant also. 
 
 For years a member of the Nationalist Party, 
 Mr. Walsh joined Sinn Fein following the Easter 
 rising of 1916. When the history of the last decade 
 comes to be written the wholesale executions 
 following on that tragic week must be recorded 
 as one of the most fatal mistakes England has 
 
FOREWORD xi 
 
 made in Ireland. The number of lives ended on 
 the scaffold, the circumstances of their death, the 
 knowledge that the victims had gladly paid the 
 price of patriotism stirred the heart of every 
 Irish man and woman, with the result that all 
 over the country, in Ulster as elsewhere, adherence 
 to Sinn Fein was registered by thousands. I do 
 not think it has ever been sufficiently realised in 
 England, or America, that the first great impetus 
 in favour of the party, pledged to secure freedom 
 for Ireland, was the result of England's policy 
 following Easter week, and it is no small part of 
 the value of this book that it shows, quietly but 
 with deadly effect, that each step the British 
 Government has taken in the repression of Sinn 
 Fein has evoked a closer loyalty ; that every 
 attempt at the destruction of Irish Nationalism has 
 made the fires of patriotism burn clearer. 
 
 The case of Mr. Walsh is typical of very many 
 others. A peace fid, kindly man, dwelling in 
 friendship with Protestants and Catholics alike, 
 he was chased out of his home to take refuge 
 among the hills, a preliminary raid having 
 warned him of what he might expect. What 
 happened to him in the weeks that followed he 
 tells with the simplicity and restraint that marks 
 fine writing. The peasants gave him of their best ; 
 
XU FOBEWOED 
 
 he sat with " bright-eyed mountainy men, keen, 
 big-hearted, strong in body, and clean in mind/' 
 They talked to him with a strange light in their 
 eyes and sometimes with a husky note in their 
 voices, of Ireland and her long-suffering. The 
 record of the days and nights that followed makes 
 one understand that there is no price too high for 
 an Irishman to pay for Dark Rosaleen, and that 
 the heavier the hand of the oppressor the more 
 valiant the resistance of the oppressed. 
 
 The distinction the author draws between the 
 conduct of the military and the Black- and-Tans 
 is most important. He shows that, in the main, 
 British army officers preserved the consideration 
 due to prisoners of war. Indeed there seems to 
 have been no confusion in the minds of the 
 commandants of the internment camps as to the 
 status of the men under their charge. The 
 politicians insisted that members of the Irish 
 Republican Army were rebels unable to claim 
 protection under international military law. The 
 officers at Ballykinlar had no such delusions. 
 The author tells how Colonel Hely -Hutchinson, 
 known to the prisoners as " Play-the-Game,*' 
 always informed newcomers that he understood 
 they were soldiers and intended to deal with them 
 as such, and to treat them as prisoners of war. 
 
FOREWORD xili 
 
 " It is^my wish that your time here should be as 
 pleasant as possible in the circumstances ; if you 
 play the game with me I'll play the game with you." 
 This effectively answers the politicians' argument ; 
 undoubtedly the attitude of the British army 
 officer influenced the final recognition of the I.R.A. 
 under the terms of the truce. 
 
 Of the months he spent in the internment camp 
 the author writes with invincible courage and 
 humour. The native genius of the Irish for making 
 capital out of England's mistakes enabled the Irish 
 Republican Army to use Ballykinlar as a training 
 ground for recruits. The prisoners were drilled 
 every morning by one of their own officers, and 
 went through evolutions for which they would have- 
 got two years' imprisonment outside the wires. 
 Finally the authorities woke up, and drill was 
 prohibited. This however did not prevent the 
 teaching of the various technical subjects that 
 helped to make our men more efficient soldiers. 
 Apart from military training propaganda was 
 carried on effectively among those prisoners not 
 yet attached to Sinn Fein, and as the author says, 
 hardly one of them but were converted during their 
 stay. " And the grand thing about it was that 
 the British Treasury paid for it all." 
 
 All that the author has to tell us of the heroism 
 
XIV FOREWORD 
 
 of the Irish people under the British army of 
 occupation is of historic significance — as showing 
 the impossibility of crushing the soul of a people 
 by brute force. His adventures have that touch of 
 romance and sense of breathless escape which we 
 find in those tales of the Middle Ages, where 
 Christian knights fought their way to freedom 
 through barbarian hordes. And the same chivalry, 
 the same quiet faith in the eternal justice which 
 armed the old heroes for their fight animates the 
 Irish of to-day. For Mr. Louis Walsh, quiet 
 country solicitor as he describes himself, shares 
 with the men who have perished on the scaffold, 
 the soldiers who have fallen under British bullets, 
 that spirit of high heroism which cannot be 
 defeated. And with that heroism goes a kindliness 
 of heart, a tender charity which looking beyond 
 the bloodshed of the past, sees in the future a free 
 Ireland, living side by side with a free England, 
 united by the good-will of their separate peoples. 
 It is a remarkable volume, and though it is hard 
 reading for the English man or woman conscious 
 of the horrors done in their country* s name, it is 
 written with so complete an absence of ill-feeling 
 that the most prejudiced must realise its candour. 
 The simple eloquence of the story, the sudden 
 beauty of those passages wherein we see the little 
 
FOREWORD XV 
 
 homes scattered among the Antrim hills ; fugitive 
 figures stealing through the mists at night, out- 
 lawed and hunted from their own firesides, is 
 almost unbearably poignant. I have always been 
 a fierce fighter for Ireland's freedom, realising to 
 the quick the long tales of her wrongs, but I did 
 not, nay, I could not understand all that it means 
 to live under an alien rule until I read On My 
 Keeping. / could wish that everyone of Ireland's 
 friends — and Ireland's enemies as well — would 
 read it also. 
 
"ON MY KEEPING." 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WHEN DAY DREAMS COME TRUE. 
 
 Aix my life I have loved and yearned for the mountains 
 and wished to wander over them as it pleased me, without 
 thought of time or tide. The valley which held my child- 
 hood's home and whither I have now returned is begirt 
 with blue hills ; and as a child it was my fond ambition 
 to climb each distant peak and gaze therefrom at the great 
 outside world and see the wonders of the mysterious Beyond. 
 But school and examinations and the routine of little duties 
 cramped my boyhood, and before I knew I was tied to 
 a desk in a musty office ; and the years crept on and the 
 hilltops beckoned me in vain. I had entered on the dreary 
 middle years, and had, perforce, to put away from me 
 many of my dearest dreams. I was becoming prudent, 
 practical ; and the costs-hunger began to corrode my 
 poor attorney heart. Then, one September morning, came 
 the great change. I shed the years as if they had been 
 but a coat of feathers, and my day dreams began to come 
 true. 
 
 It was all due to David Iyloyd George and Viscount 
 French and Sir Neville Macready and Sir Hamar Greenwood. 
 They had determined to present Parliament, when it met 
 on October 19th, 1920, with the accomplished fact in 
 Ireland of " a broken movement and a cowed country " ; 
 
-AND IN THEIRS 
 
 and they did me the honour of thinking that Ireland would 
 not be finally conquered whilst even poor, insignificant I 
 was left to bleat my pettifogging plea for Irish freedom. 
 So their soldiers had raided my office that morning, and I, 
 having been informed of what was taking place and realising 
 what it all meant, felt myself at last free to turn, without 
 any qualms of conscience for my unfulfilled tasks, to the 
 hills I loved. I had my anxieties, to be sure, for I have 
 many responsibilities ; but I did not fear, knowing what 
 constant intercession is made for me from the hearts of 
 friends and dear ones, to whom the good God who loves 
 the pure of soul must needs hearken ; and it was sweet 
 to suffer even a little for Ireland, knowing, as the martyr 
 of Brixton has put it, that it is the nation that can endure 
 most that will win in this struggle. So I went forth that 
 harvest day with a strange joy at my heart, and gloried 
 in the bright sunshine and in all the beauty of the life and 
 country around me. I sat by babbling brooks that sang for 
 me again the songs of my childhood ; gathered nuts in shady 
 groves, with all the zest of thirty golden years ago ; lay 
 among the heather and felt my heart swell with pride 
 and love at the sight of the beauteous valley, bedecked 
 in all the golden glory of the ripened corn and gemmed 
 with white- washed homesteads, that spread itself out 
 below ; sat with bright-eyed mountainy men, keen, big- 
 hearted, strong in body and clean in mind, who told me 
 stories of old days on those hills and of other men who, 
 too, had been " on their keeping " on them, and of the 
 adventures of their own simple fives — the great journeys 
 they had taken and the wondrous sights they had seen at 
 sheep fairs " away in Donegal " or in distant Tyrone or 
 in the glens of Antrim — and talked to me, with a strange 
 light in their eyes and sometimes with a husky note in their 
 voices, of Ireland and her long sufferings and of the wicked- 
 
WHEN DAY DREAMS COME TRUE 3 
 
 ness of her oppressors and the undying hope of the Gael. 
 No need for me to conceal the cause of my journey ; for 
 none of these people but would have laid down his life 
 rather than betray me. I was no longer the commonplace 
 attorney, whom they were wont to consult about their 
 quarrels and difficulties, and whose bills of cost made such- 
 distressful reading. The enemy had struck at me and I 
 had become exalted in their eyes in consequence. I had 
 joined — even poor, insignificant, selfish me ! — the long 
 line of those who had worked and suffered for Ireland ; 
 and from the warm handclasp of every rough, tnanty hand, 
 and the fervent " God and His Blessed Mother protect 
 you ! " that the women spoke, I knew that, all unworthy 
 though I was, I was identified in these people's eyes with 
 the men of '98, and '48 and '67 and '16, who had written 
 .their names in letters of gold on the dark pages of Ireland's 
 history. 
 
 Every door was open to me, because for the moment I 
 stood for Ireland and against her oppressors ; and when 
 I had reached the hospitable homestead where I had made 
 up my mind I would be safest from my pursuers I got a 
 welcome that a king might have envied. The best room 
 was made ready for me, and the biggest possible fire piled 
 on the wide hearth, and the good wife spared herself no 
 trouble that her generous heart could suggest to make me 
 comfortable. And what a night of it we had ! The man 
 of the house sang and recited his own songs and poems, 
 for he was a song maker, and a grand string of ballads he 
 had to his credit., rich in the humour of the countryside, 
 and redolent of its beauty, and inspired by its memories 
 and traditions ; and I recited " The Man from God Knows 
 Where," and a neighbour lad sang songs. 
 
 We made merry, as every normal gathering of Irish people 
 always do. We told each other stories of the " characters " 
 
4 " ON MY KEEPING " — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 of the district ; repeated witticisms, and recounted all sorts 
 of funny experiences. The man of the house performed 
 various feats of skill for our edification, and made the tears 
 of happy laughter run down our cheeks with his humour 
 and his comical description of men and things. As the 
 smoky rafters of the old kitchen rang with our merriment 
 I knew that there was none of us — not even the hunted 
 man, though he did not know what fate was in store for 
 him — but was a great deal happier that night than was 
 I/loyd George, the Prime Minister of England. 
 
 Then we all knelt down, and the man of the house gave 
 out the Rosary, and the good woman led with the first 
 decade, and we all took ours in our turn. And we prayed 
 that God and His Blessed Mother might protect us and our 
 homes and families, and for the suffering souls, especially 
 those near and dear to us, and for poor Ireland that God 
 might shorten the arm of the oppressor, and for all who 
 were suffering for her, and for the men on hunger strike, 
 and for all imprisoned Irishmen. Later on, when I awakened 
 in the middle of the night, I thought I heard a step outside. 
 I went to the little window and peeped out into the moon- 
 light, and I saw the figures of three or four young men. 
 Then I knew that the lads, unknown to me, were keeping 
 guard whilst I slept, lest the military should come upon 
 me by surprise. 
 
 It was a symbol. For the moment I represented in a small 
 way in that area the centuries' long struggle against the 
 oppressor ; and so these young men, with the hard day's 
 work of the Irish peasant behind them and as hard a day's 
 work before them, had come unasked to spend that weary 
 vigil on the mountain side to testify their love for their 
 " Dark Rosaleen." That is the spirit found everywhere 
 and in every age and class in the country that makes Ireland 
 unconquerable. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE MOUNTAINY MAN. 
 
 There were rumours that the enemy were upon my track, 
 and so I deemed it wiser to move into another district. 
 A patriotic mountainy man, who had driven and herded 
 sheep all over the surrounding hills and knew every glen 
 and pass and summit that they held, undertook to be my 
 guide, and on a bright September afternoon we set forth. 
 The tear-drops glistened in the eyes of the kindly woman 
 of the house as she bade us good-bye. She sprinkled us 
 with holy water and gave us into the protection of the Mother 
 of God ; and the good man took off his boots and 
 accompanied us for two or three miles across the heath 
 to the summit of the first hill we had to cross. 
 
 It was another glorious day, and again and again we 
 stopped to feast our eyes on the fair plains of Derry that 
 stretched for miles below us, and the lovely valley of the 
 Bann, and " the blue hill of Antrim " that rimmed the 
 horizon. One by one my guide pointed out to me the 
 places I knew so well, but which were obscured for me 
 by the unfamiliar distance from which I viewed them. 
 
 They were all rich in memories and endeared to me by 
 a hundred traditions, stories and associations of my boy- 
 hood. There were distant Slemish on which holy Patrick 
 herded the swine ; and Dunglady Fort round which many 
 a battle had waged in the olden time ; and " bonny, bonny 
 Slieve Galleon's braes" ; and " Knockloughrim Planting" ; 
 and " the three spires of Magherafelt," that to my childish 
 
 5 
 
6 ON MY KEEPING — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 mind used to seem so wondrous and far-away ; and the 
 Poplars of Tobermore ; and the Cross of Ballynascreen. 
 
 There, too, was the fair valley of the Moyola, along whose 
 banks was " Shillgrove " ; and as we lay in the heather 
 and my guide pointed out to me where the thickly wooded 
 demesne was, I saw myself for a fleeting moment a wide- 
 eyed little listener, awed and somewhat frightened at the 
 Paganism of the incident but with a keen sense of the magni- 
 ficence of the drama involved, as my old nurse told me the 
 story of one of the old landlords who had dwelt in the 
 place, and how when the darkness of death began to shade his 
 eyes he had asked to be carried to the window, and then 
 have taken his last, long, lingering look at the lovely lawn, 
 at the bottom of which the river glided through a line of 
 stately trees, he had exclaimed : "Oh Shillgrove, Shill- 
 grove ! How can I leave you ? What are the glories of 
 Heaven to the beauties of Shillgrove I " 
 
 Dearer than all was the village of my childhood. Only 
 its dim outlines showed through the haze ; but every house 
 and stone and step, illumined by the light of love and 
 memory, stood clear before my mind's eye. There were the 
 ruined church where St. Lurach was buried, with all the 
 stories that clung to its ivy-clad walls ; and the tree on which 
 Wattie Graham, the young Presbyterian patriot who had 
 headed the local " United Men " in '98 had been hanged ; 
 and the houses in which had dwelt so many dear friends 
 of the past. Many of the young ones, with whom I bad 
 played and gone to school and gathered blackberries and 
 danced and made merry, were dead or in distant lands ; 
 and most of the older generation, whose wisdom and humour 
 and wealth of story I had delighted to listen to as I walked 
 beside my father on a Sunday morning to " late Mass " 
 out at Glen, had long since been laid to rest in the peaceful 
 graveyard among the ash trees where my own dearest 
 
THE MOUNTAINY MAN 7 
 
 also slept. But all very living and real they seemed to me 
 that September day ; and dead or living I knew that there 
 was none of them who would not be proud to think that 
 I had not proved unfaithful to the unbroken tradition of 
 Irish Nationalism. 
 
 As we walked along, my companion talked with that 
 eloquence and keenness and breadth of interest which are 
 so characteristic of the Irish peasant. He told me stories 
 of the mountains, narrated wanderings and adventures in 
 search of strayed sheep, gave his views on farming and prices 
 and crops, quoted songs and ballads and discussed great 
 events, both in Irish and world history. Needless to say, 
 the present, with all its sufferings and all its proud hopes, 
 was ntver far from our thoughts. 
 
 " I'm saying," my friend remarked as we sat to rest on 
 the side of a green hill that shelved down to a mountain 
 stream that gurgled below, " I was reading that this man, 
 Lloyd George, expects to have this job of conquering 
 Ireland finished in about six weeks time." 
 
 " In less," I responded. " Sir Hamar Greenwood has 
 announced that the Last Conquest of Ireland is to be 
 finally completed by the 19th October."* 
 
 " Well," was the reply, " if Lloyd George finishes the 
 job in that time, I'm afraid he'll have to work overtime — 
 both by night and day." 
 
 " It's a grand thing to feel, anyway," I said, " that with 
 all their power and the hundred thousand troops they have 
 they cannot catch me." 
 
 " Ach ! " he exclaimed, clasping my hand. " I'm proud 
 to be taking a hand at beating them." 
 
 Thus the day passed. I gloried in the beauty of the hills 
 and plains, drank in great draughts of pure air from the 
 
 * It may be remarked that the date of final conquest was afterwards put 
 back to 1st December, then to 1st March, and then to Easter. 
 
8 "ON MY KEEPING " — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 heather, and listened to my companion's ever interesting 
 conversation. 
 
 When the darkening shadows of the evening began to 
 fall, we called in a house that adjoined a mountain road, 
 and I was received as if I were a prince. A week ago no 
 fuss would have been made about me ; but now I was a 
 man hunted for Ireland ! So the girl of the house hastened 
 to make a meal for us, and her brother showered kindnesses 
 on us. It will take a lot of conquering to make a nation, 
 the backbone of which is a peasantry made up of people 
 like these, forget its proud dream of freedom and settle 
 down as slaves. 
 
 We were now near the village in which I carried on my 
 professional work ; and just as it was getting dark we stopped 
 to talk to a very old man at the door of a cottage. He knew 
 my guide but was not aware of my identity. 
 
 " Is there any news in the town ? " my friend asked. 
 
 " Oh aye ! Did you not hear about the attorney ? The 
 sodgers were looking for him the other day and raided his 
 office.' ' 
 
 " And did they get him ? " I asked. 
 
 " No ! " he responded. " But he needn't be hidin' ! 
 For there will be always somebody to tell on him." 
 
 The night came down and the stars shone bright above 
 us and lights began to twinkle along the mountain-side and 
 in the valley. I knew that they, shone from happy, innocent 
 homes where old and young would gather round the fireside 
 before bed-time and tell stories and sing songs of love 
 and Ireland. 
 
 Then the moon rose from behind the mountains 
 of Tyrone, and soon the whole valley of Ballynascreen lay 
 clothed in glorious radiance. It was good to stand for a 
 minute now and then and let the peace and glory and beauty 
 of it all sink into one's soul. 
 
THE MOUNTAINY MAN 9 
 
 At road ends we passed groups of young men that bade 
 us " Good Night " — no doubt wondering who we were. 
 Good, too, to know that the country now contained so 
 many such young men and to realise the proud determina- 
 tion that rilled their souls to see the country freed in this 
 generation. 
 
 " There's a fire kindled in Ireland now," my friend re- 
 marked as we walked along, " that can never be put out." 
 
 Then we reached our destination, and sought shelter 
 under another hospitable roof. I thanked my guide for his 
 long, weary journey and apologised for bringing him so 
 far. 
 
 " I said I would bring you safe to where you asked me," 
 he answered proudly ; " and it would have been the same 
 if it had been to Galway, let alone to here. A small thing 
 that to do for any man that's on his keeping for Ireland ! " 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 CHESTNUT HILL, MASS. 
 
CHAPTER III; 
 
 IN AN ULSTER GLEN. 
 
 Some of the most enjoyable days I spent when I was " on 
 my keeping " was in one of the most beautiful of our Ulster 
 glens. It is situate in the heart of the hills, far away from 
 towns and villages. Stately mountains wall it in and a 
 fair stream, fed by fast-rushing mountain rivulets, winds 
 its serpentine way through it. 
 
 The people who dwell in it are a joy to know. They are 
 industrious and comfortably circumstanced, living simple, 
 duty-filled, innocent lives, with keen minds and clean hearts, 
 and they are full of the spirits of Faith and Patriotism 
 and Fun. 
 
 It is a perfectly peaceful place, even in the present restless 
 state of Ireland, for the simple reason that there is no 
 disturbing element. The Army of Occupation in the persons 
 of the Royal Irish Constabulary, were withdrawn from the 
 Glen a year or two ago ; and, strange though that might 
 appear to an unsophisticated Englishman or Frenchman 
 or American, the withdrawal of the police from any district 
 in Ireland usually means that there is going to be a chance 
 for the " reign of I/aw." Order is now preserved by the 
 Volunteers and disputes settled by the local Arbitration 
 Courts ; and, although the Glen is in the very heart of 
 Carsonite Ulster, it is entirely governed by the authority 
 of the Irish Republic. 
 
 The approaches to the Glen are so difficult and the one 
 road that runs through it so narrow that a military lorry 
 
 10 
 
IN AN ULSTER GLEN II 
 
 dare not venture into the place. So that the people can sleep 
 peaceably and contentedly at night. I had no cause to 
 worry for my safety whilst I was there ; and, accordingly, 
 I roamed about amongst the people as it pleased me, talked 
 Irish with the old and made fun with the young, entered 
 into all the life and gossip and interests and amusements 
 of the parish, climbed the mountains and revelled in the 
 beauty of the hills and valleys that surrounded me. 
 
 The Glen was full of life and character ; and as I sat at 
 night by the kitchen fire of the good priest, whose guest I 
 was, and the neighbour lads gathered in for a night's talk, 
 many a hearty laugh I got at their comical accounts of 
 incidents in the life and history of the happy valley. 
 
 Of course, everybody in the Glen was intensely interested 
 in the great national struggle in which their country was 
 engaged. The newspapers only reached the place on the 
 day subsequent to publication ; but if anyone had happened 
 to have business to what was dignified with the name 
 " the Town " and had seen a paper on the day of issue, 
 he had to be prepared to summarise its contents for the 
 benefit of all he met. I used to admire their skill as sub- 
 editors. 
 
 This is the sort of dialogue you would hear : 
 
 " And were you in the town the day ? " 
 
 " I was." 
 
 "Is there much in the paper ? " 
 
 " The Black and Tans have burned down another town ; 
 and Greenwood says it must have been the Sinn Feiners 
 that wrecked the last one." 
 
 " He wud that. Boys, but isn't he the notorious liar ! " 
 
 " And," the sub-editor would proceed, " Griffith has wired 
 De Valera asking that wan of the x\merican States should 
 each adopt wan of the ruined towns ; and Asquith has a 
 letter in favour of full Colonial Home Rule." 
 
12 ON MY KEEPING — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 Everybody in the Glen was full of interest in all that 
 went on in the great outside world ; and surveyed with 
 keen and critical eye the doings of mankind " from China 
 to Peru." One of those most interested in world movements 
 and politics was a deaf mute who read with great zest 
 every scrap of newspaper that fell into his hands. Some- 
 times he would miss seeing a paper for a day or two and then 
 he would take great trouble to piece together the resulting 
 broken threads. Thus, one day, he saw a reference to the 
 " Red " and " White " armies in Russia ; and, not having 
 heard of these bodies before, he went to the priest who 
 was the most learned man in the place, and, pointing his 
 finger to the two names, intimated that he would like his 
 advice as to which army the public opinion of the Glen 
 should support. 
 
 I was present as a spectator at one of the Courts held 
 in the Glen, and as one who has spent his working life in 
 the practice of English law and attendances at British 
 courts I carried away a very high opinion of the efficiency 
 and common-sense that characterised this Court and its 
 methods. One case was very illuminating, as showing how 
 completely the British legal system had broken down in 
 all parts of Ireland. 
 
 In one of the Unionist counties some men had broken 
 into a Protestant small farmer's house and stolen a sum of 
 money. Though the district in which this had occurred 
 was in the very heart of so-called homogeneous, Carsonite 
 Ulster, the British Authorities were unable to trace the 
 wrong-doers. The Crown Forces in Ireland are too busy 
 at present raiding and burning houses and persecuting 
 people for the crime of wishing to be free to bother about 
 defending even Unionist property. 
 
 Finding that the police had not moved in the matter, 
 the Irish Volunteers stepped in and arrested the evil-doers 
 
IN AN ULSTER GLEN 13 
 
 and brought them before the Court. The judge seemed a 
 young man and was obviously not a professional lawyer, 
 but he comported himself with a dignity and impartiality 
 and, above all, a sturdy common-sense that would have 
 done honour to any tribunal. He showed the accused 
 every consideration, and treated them with the utmost 
 fairness ; but he made short work of the legal quibbles 
 of their advocate, and the decision at which he arrived 
 struck me as an eminently reasonable one. 
 
 For endeavouring to make life and property secure 
 through the agency of these Courts men are now being hunted 
 down all over Ireland by the forces of British tyranny. I 
 met a young man in Derry Jail — Iiam O'Duffy — who was 
 a solid tor's clerk. He was a fine, manly, noble-hearted 
 youth who in any civilised country but Ireland would have 
 been regarded as an ornament to the community in which 
 he lived. He was tried by Court-Martial, and the only 
 evidence tendered against him was that of policemen who 
 swore that they saw him at an Arbitration Court, sitting 
 with a bundle of documents before him. On the strength of 
 this evidence the boy was sentenced to twelve months' 
 imprisonment. 
 
 I had a splendid opportunity of becoming acquainted 
 with the inner life of the people as my host used to bring 
 me with him on his " sick calls." The priest in such a parish 
 has to be a man of many parts. In addition to providing 
 them with spiritual comforts my friend had to make wills 
 for the old, prescribe for the sick, and to advise on all sorts 
 of matters. It was a delight to sit with him in the neat 
 cottage kitchens, to see the joy with which he was welcomed, 
 and to observe the sweet chains of mutual affection that 
 bound him to his spiritual children. Everywhere there 
 was that note of happy cheerfulness that characterises a 
 people who live the lives of simple piety and devotion to 
 
14 ON MY KEEPING — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 duty for which the Irish peasantry are so remarkable. 
 Many a good story I heard in those kitchens, many an 
 original saying, sharp epigram, and brilliant judgment. 
 
 Though their hearts were sore for what their fellow- 
 countrymen were suffering, the Glen folk had a keen eye 
 for the humour that seemed always to lurk amongst the 
 ruins. Thus they quickly seized on the absurdity of an 
 incident that centred round a certain Englishman who had 
 come to take a hand in the " I^ast Conquest of Ireland M 
 (perhaps). The name of the hero was, I believe, Alfred 
 Flint, of some address in London ; but if my memory 
 plays me false I apologise to all the Alfred Flints in the 
 world. The man had been in the " Black and Tans " or 
 " Auxiliaries/' and after he left them he wrote a letter to 
 the Freeman in which he suggested that the Force was not 
 made up of policemen but of bandits and desperadoes. He 
 described the sort of raids in which they were accustomed 
 to take part, and said that he had resigned from them in 
 disgust. The next day or so Dublin Castle issued an official 
 communique commencing somewhat in this fashion : " The 
 attention of His Majesty's Government has been drawn to 
 a letter which has appeared in the Press over the signature 
 of Alfred Flint." Then it expressed its "desire to point 
 out " that Mr. Flint had not resigned, but had been dis- 
 missed for stealing a pair of trousers. Which allegation 
 Mr, Flint solemnly denied in a letter the following day. 
 
 This is the sort of conversation you would hear in the 
 Glen about all this : 
 
 " Is there much news in the paper the day ? " 
 
 "No. Nothing worth talking about." 
 
 " Js there nothing more about Flint's trousers ? Boys- 
 a-boys ! But the oul' Empire must be in a bad way when 
 the Government had to start arguing with a boy like Flint 
 about a pair of oul' trousers." 
 
IN AN ULSTER GLEN 15 
 
 For a hunted man my days were wonderfully peaceful 
 in that happy valley. Only once was I really anxious. I 
 was at breakfast with the priest when the housekeeper 
 rushed in to say that there was a motor load of police 
 coming up the road. I was astonished at my own agility 
 as I dashed, without coat or hat, in the rain, through a hedge 
 at the back of the house and across a field up to the heath. 
 
 I took shelter in a poor woman's house on the hills for 
 an hour or two till the danger had passed. The cabin was 
 a wretched one and the rain was coming in through the 
 thatched roof ; but the welcome she gave me when I told 
 her I was " on my keeping " for Ireland's sake would have 
 brightened any habitation. We talked about the country 
 and the " trouble," the stormy season and the bad crops, 
 and she told me the story of her simple but sorrow-laden 
 life. Her potato crop was almost a complete failure and 
 she had hardly been able to get home any turf against the 
 winter that was then almost upon us. 
 
 It was a bleak outlook. " Acht " (But), she said, " Ta 
 Dia maith agus ta mathair mhaith Aige ! " (" God's good 
 and He has a good mother ! ") And she turned her eyes 
 with a look of loving confidence to the picture of the Virgin 
 that hung above her bed. 
 
 It was a striking exemplification of the personal love and 
 intimacy that binds the Irish peasant to God and His saints. 
 Justice might demand punishment for wrong-doing, but the 
 human heart of the Son of Man could not resist His Mother's 
 pleas for pity. 
 
 I thought of what the woman had said as I stood at the 
 open window of my bedroom that night. The dark peaks 
 of the mountains looked wonderfully solemn in the moon- 
 light and I could hear the murmur of the river as it glided 
 down the Glen. Lights still shone in the cabins along the 
 hillside and away in the distance a restless dog bayed the 
 
l6 "ON MY KEEPING" — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 moon. I knew that that same moon was shining into a room 
 a long distance away from me, where a woman was kneeling 
 amid a group of little worshippers who were praying that 
 the soldiers might not find " Daddy " and that God might 
 soon send him home. 
 
 What would be the end of it all for them and for me ? 
 
 " Acht ta Dia maith agus ta mathair mhaith Aige," I 
 said to myself. And I knew that all would be well. 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 CHESTNUT HILL, MASS. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DUBLIN DURING THE TERROR. 
 
 When I had spent about a week in the Happy Valley I 
 thought I would try and make my way to Dublin. To get 
 to the most convenient railway station I had to go to a 
 garrison town, and there was a danger that I might be 
 recognised there by some policeman. 
 
 My host motored me to the house of another " rebel " 
 priest who lived about three miles from the railway station. 
 When we got to his house, we found that it had been raided 
 by a party of military on the night or two preceding. The 
 search had been a most exhaustive one and the soldiers 
 had been even ordered by their officers to dig up a grave 
 in the adjoining graveyard. But neither arms nor what 
 is called in Ireland " seditious literature " (i.e., copies of 
 the New Witness, extracts from Mr. Bonar Law's speeches 
 in 1913, or portraits of certain dead Irishmen) had been 
 found on the premises. Thereon hangs a tale in which a 
 brave and nimble-minded girl, who acts as the priest's 
 housekeeper, figures, but it must remain untold " for the 
 duration of the war." 
 
 The news that met us from the garrison town was that 
 there was great police and military activity in the neighbour- 
 hood ; and it was doubtful if I could get through. But I 
 thought it worth risking, and my friends worked out the 
 strategy that I was to adopt. A young lady teacher, who 
 had business in the town, got into the motor with me and 
 agreed to accompany me to the train and see me off as if 
 
 17 
 
18 "ON MY KEEPING" — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 I were a person going away after a visit at his country 
 cousin's. She played her part very well. The policeman 
 on the platform, whose duty it was to keep his eye on 
 strangers, paid no further heed to me when he saw me 
 engage in animated conversation — about the weather — 
 with a British officer who stood beside me in the queue at 
 the ticket office, and the affectionate farewell that I bade 
 my fair " cousin " when the train steamed in was, I fear, 
 an entirely superfluous histrionic effort. 
 
 In Dublin I felt perfectly secure. In the country a 
 stranger cannot escape unwelcome attentions, and there is 
 always a certain amount of tension for a hunted man. But 
 it was different in the Capital, and I was able to enjoy 
 some really restful days. 
 
 I stopped in a quiet part of the city with two ladies ; 
 and as they led a very secluded life, only minding their 
 prayers and their work, there "was hardly any danger of 
 a raid on their house. They spared themselves no trouble 
 to make me comfortable. I was able to write to my wife 
 and my clerk every day and to receive letters under cover. 
 So that I had every reason to be as happy as a hunted 
 man could be. 
 
 I had not been in Dublin for months ; and it was 
 interesting to feel the pulse and mark the heart-beats of 
 the grand old city in the crisis of the supreme struggle 
 upon which Ireland had then entered. 
 
 It was just then that the British Cabinet had made 
 open league with the fiends of Hell and launched their 
 policy of " Black and Tanism " and reprisals : in the foolish 
 hope that thereby they would break for ever the Irish 
 determination to be free. 
 
 The newspapers reeked with horrors every day. We 
 read of towns sacked by savages wearing the King of 
 England's uniform ; of men being taken out of their beds 
 
DUBLIN DURING THE TERROR 19 
 
 and shot in cold blood ; of smoking homesteads, tortured 
 women, and shrieking children. Military motor lorries and 
 armoured cars careered through the streets both by day 
 and night, and every person one met had some fresh tale 
 of horror to relate. 
 
 I wondered what the effect of it would be on the morale 
 of our civilian population ; and Dublin is so representative 
 of all Ireland that it was the most favourable place in 
 which to test the matter. I had always believed that our 
 people would stand the strain. But their amazing courage 
 exceeded all my expectations. So far from there being 
 any sign of weakening, there seemed a hardening of the 
 determination to see the struggle through. Everybody, 
 too, was full of hope, and it was no spirit of mere unreasoning 
 optimism that prompted the feeling. There was no under- 
 rating of the enemy's resources. The cost was counted 
 and the danger duly appreciated. But we were sustained 
 by the knowledge that there was a spirit abroad in Ireland 
 which simply could not be broken. 
 
 The men bit their lips with grim determination, the women 
 prayed, and in every church you entered you saw tense- 
 faced groups who made intercession before the Blessed 
 Sacrament or round a picture of Our Lady of Perpetual 
 Succour for their country and themselves. But there was 
 not even a whisper of surrender, and on every side the proud 
 declaration was re-echoed : " We shall have our own 
 again \" So it has been in every time of intensive coercion 
 and repression in Ireland. After all, it was the suave Mr. 
 Birrell that went nearest to achieving " the Last Conquest 
 of Ireland." 
 
 I had no trouble in getting through the garrison town 
 on my way back to the Happy Valley. I came off the evening 
 mail train from Dublin ; and in the rush and bustle of the 
 platform nobody seemed to pay any attention to me. 
 
20 "ON MY KEEPING " — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 The good priest of the Glen was waiting for me with a motor 
 at the outskirts of the town ; and just as the shades of night 
 fell we set out on our journey over the hills. 
 
 A hold-up that night might have had serious consequences 
 for more than me. For our driver had no " permit," and 
 in addition to such a lump of contraband as I myself con- 
 stituted we had on board a Volunteer who, I was informed, 
 had been wounded in action and whom it was found 
 necessary to remove to a place of safety to escape the danger 
 of a military or police raid on the house in which he had 
 been convalescing. 
 
 We soon got out of what we considered the danger zone, 
 but then a new peril beset us. Our lights went out and 
 we had no means of making them right again. It was a 
 pitch dark night, and we just had to creep up the narrow 
 mountain road and down the other side. The road ran across 
 a bleak, desolate mountain. At parts there were no fences, 
 and only our chauffeur knew every inch of the ground I 
 don't know how we could have avoided disaster. I breathed 
 a pra}'er of fervent thankfulness, indeed, when at last the 
 lights of a little mountain village that nestled between the 
 hills shone through the darkness. 
 
 We had hoped to get proper lights in the village, but after 
 searching over the whole place all we could secure was a 
 small lamp belonging to an ordinary " push " bicycle. 
 With it to guide us, we began the last stage of our journey. 
 It was the most perilous, because we had to make our way 
 through a gap in the hills that divided our glen from the 
 adjoining one, and the road was a great deal worse than 
 the one we had crossed. 
 
 Near the entrance to the gap a friend persuaded us to 
 stop for a few hours at his house till the Moon would rise. 
 He said that we could never get through the gap in the 
 dark. So we accepted his hospitality, and drank tea and 
 
DUBLIN DURING THE TERROR 21 
 
 smoked and chatted by his comfortable fireside till one or 
 two in the morning. 
 
 It was a mistake. For the Moon forgot to rise that night, 
 and it began to rain. So that when we got into the car 
 again it was even darker than when we entered the honse. 
 But we had to risk it. For the good priest feared that there 
 might be a sick call awaiting him, and, at any rate, we had 
 to dispose of the wounded volunteer. 
 
 The experience was anything but a pleasant one. The 
 wretched bicycle lamp hardly afforded us any assistance. 
 The rain poured down on us and blew into our driver's 
 face ; and the wind howled furiously around us. Our first 
 difficulty was to get across a wooden bridge that spanned 
 a mountain torrent. There was a sharp turn at the point ; 
 and if we had deviated even a foot from the narrow path 
 we would probably have been dashed to pieces against the 
 rocks in the bed of the stream below. But our driver kept 
 the path and negotiated the turn with superb skill. 
 
 That was only the beginning of our troubles. The road 
 ran for a considerable distance along the face of a hill 
 which on one side towered above us like some hideous 
 monster, whilst on the other there was a steep decline 
 that in the darkness seemed to lead into a bottomless 
 abyss. There were no fences here at all, and only for the 
 skill and nerve and brawn of our driver we might easily 
 have been smashed into bits. At other parts of the road 
 we had to climb or descend hills that seemed almost as 
 steep as the side walls of a house. The strain on the brakes 
 was terrific, and once we had to stop in the pelting rain 
 till our driver rested his arms and his nerves had recovered 
 their equilibrium. It was bitterly cold, and my heart was 
 sore for the wounded man who I saw was enduring agonies. 
 
 But we had some poor body's prayers, as we say in Ireland, 
 and at last we reached my friend's house about fehree in 
 
22 ON MY KEEPING — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 the morning without accident but wet to the skin and cold 
 and hungry. 
 
 " Well," I said to the priest as I sipped hot milk and 
 tried to dry my clothes at his kitchen fire, " it's funny 
 to find a middle-aged, humdrum solicitor, with a wife and 
 family and a comfortable home, out on an expedition of 
 that sort on such a night as this ! " 
 
 " It's a queer country, Ireland ! " responded my friend 
 sententiously. 
 
 That week I learned the joyful tidings that the warrant 
 for my arrest had been withdrawn ; and on Saturday 
 evening I heard the cry for which my heart had hungered 
 during the preceding weeks, when a band of little toddlers, 
 who had been watching all evening by the window of our 
 home rushed up the street to meet me with a wild shriek 
 of " Daddy ! " As my wife and I knelt down that night 
 to say the Rosary in thanksgiving and I looked at the 
 happy-faced, bright-eyed little worshippers around us, the 
 words of the old woman came back to me : " Ta Dia maith 
 agus ta mathair mhaith Aige ! " (" God's good and He has 
 a good mother ! ") 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 "IN THEIR KEEPING " 
 
 The year 1920 was for me a veritable annus mirabilis. 
 During it I bought a house in The Cross — or, to give it its 
 modern, commonplace, Anglicised name, Draperstown — 
 with a view to moving there from my former home in 
 Ballycastle ; I had a miraculous escape from death at the 
 hands of an Orange mob that had been imported into 
 Ballymoney with the object of preventing me holding an 
 election meeting there ; I had surprised alike my friends 
 and my foes by getting returned to the Antrim County 
 Council at the top of the poll for the Ballymoney Electoral 
 Area ; I had my premises raided two or three times by the 
 British armed forces ; I spent part of the Autumn " on my 
 keeping " ; and I ate my Christmas dinner and closed the 
 year in jail. 
 
 My new house was being made ready for me in December. 
 For the previous eighteen months I had only been able 
 to spend the week-ends with my family, and I was looking 
 eagerly forward to the happiness of having them with me 
 always. I lived in anticipation through all the joys that 
 Christmas brings when one lives in a home full of healthy, 
 happy children ; and we had already invited the few friends 
 who were to share with us our Christmas dinner. 
 
 I was spending the week-end in Maghera, where my 
 family, during the transition period, were quartered in the 
 houses of kind relatives. On Sunday evening, the 12th 
 
 23 
 
24 ON MY KEEPING — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 December, I had walked out to my wife's mother's place 
 at Silver Hill for tea. My wife and some of the little ones 
 were there. A couple of friends dropped in and we had 
 a merry evening. The conversation turned — as it is so 
 liable to do in Ireland these times — on the subject of jails, 
 and we laughed a good deal about prison experiences that 
 we had heard recounted by acquaintances who had been 
 privileged to enjoy his Britannic Majesty's hospitality in 
 some of these institutions. 
 
 On my way back to my sister's house, where I was 
 stopping, I called in Rathlurie, the home of my dear friend 
 and good comrade, Pat Agnew, solicitor. There was a card 
 party in progress there ; but we broke up early as Mr. and 
 Mrs. Agnew had arranged to go to Belfast on the early 
 train on Monday morning. Pat had some business in the 
 city, and if he would have time, he intended to call in to 
 the prison to see our mutual friend, Tom Finnegan, to 
 whom I sent a message of good cheer. 
 
 After we had left, Mr. and Mrs. Agnew lingered for a 
 few minutes by the fireside. They sat on easy chairs, a 
 good fire burned on the hearth, the room was bright and 
 cosy. They had been talking of Finnegan and other " jail- 
 birds " of their acquaintance, and the contrast that the 
 mention of a lonely prison cell suggested made their present 
 surroundings seem all the more delightful. Pat felt that 
 glow of sweet content and satisfaction at his heart that 
 a man is wont to feel when he looks across the fireplace 
 at a pretty wife shining like a dazzling jewel in a well fur- 
 nished room, and following up the train of thought that 
 the mention of poor Finnegan had initiated, he exclaimed, 
 as he lit his last cigarette : " It's a good deal " — or perhaps 
 his exact words were : " It's a damned sight " for he only 
 spoke from memory when he told me the story — " more 
 comfortable here to-night than it would be in jail, darling." 
 
"in their keeping 25 
 
 He did not tell me that lie said " darling," but I know 
 that if he did not say that, he used some equally endearing 
 term. In about an hour's time he was shivering on a motor 
 lorry on his way to jail ! 
 
 I got to my sister's about twelve o'clock, and was preparing 
 to go to bed when I heard what sounded like a military 
 lorry lumbering up the street. I had no expectation of 
 being arrested at the time, but as one never knows what 
 is going to happen in Ireland I listened for a few moments 
 to see if the vehicle would stop at the house. It did not. 
 So commenting to myself : " They must be raiding some- 
 where in this district to-night ! " I lit a candle and went to 
 bed. 
 
 I had a strange feeling that something was going to 
 happen that would profoundly influence my subsequent 
 life. But I said my prayers, and placed myself under the 
 special protection of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, 
 knowing that she would see me safely through every 
 difficulty. 
 
 Next morning before I was up I heard that Mr. Agnew 
 and my brother had been arrested during the night ; and 
 whilst I was dressing, my little niece, Maighread, ran up- 
 stairs to tell me that the local sergeant of police was waiting 
 for me downstairs. 
 
 He told me that the military had, after the arrest of the 
 other two, gone on to the Cross during the night in the 
 hope of catching me there, but finding that I was at Maghera 
 they had telephoned to him to detain me. So for the first 
 time I felt myself in the grip of England's mighty paw, 
 and I proceeded with Sergeant Carter to the police barracks. 
 
 In the evening a military lorry arrived from Magherafelt 
 for me and I was placed on it in the midst of bayonets. A 
 crowd had gathered outside the barracks, and I got the 
 greeting and send-off that the. big hearts of our common 
 
26 "ON MY KEEPING" — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 people love to bestow on everyone who is privileged to 
 suffer for Ireland. The men cheered and the women waved 
 their hands at me, and in a flash were revealed to me the 
 subtle bonds of affection that linked together myself and 
 all " the old neighbours," as we love to call them in Ireland. 
 I knew that women to whom I had never more than nodded 
 all my life would weep for me that night as they would have 
 done for their own sons, that all my shortcomings would 
 be forgotten, and that in every Catholic home in the village 
 I would be remembered when the family knelt for " the 
 joint prayer." 
 
 At the police barracks at Magherafelt, whither I was 
 brought, I found Mr. Agnew and my brother. The former 
 gave me an account of the raid on his premises, and the 
 story throws so much light on British Government methods 
 in this country that it is worth recounting. 
 
 He had not been long in bed when the knock came. He 
 rushed down in his pyjamas and found at the door an 
 officer in charge of a party of soldiers, accompanied by a 
 " Black-and-Tan " policeman. The officer said that he 
 came to arrest Mr. Agnew and to search the house, and 
 bade him dress. They went upstairs together, and the officer 
 stood at the open bedroom door, with a flashlight in his 
 hand, whilst Pat dressed. When he had finished he said 
 to the officer : " You can now proceed with your search 
 here." " Oh," responded the other, " I only want to search 
 two rooms on the ground floor." 
 
 . Downstairs, then, they went ; and when they got there 
 my friend noticed that a soldier and the policeman were 
 still in the hall. The officer walked into a room that opened 
 off it, and almost immediately exclaimed : " Here are five 
 rounds of ammunition ! " 
 
 The house had been searched by another party of military 
 about three weeks before and nothing found. Mrs. Agnew 
 
IN THEIR KEEPING 27 
 
 and the other members of his household, who had constant 
 access to the press in which the ammunition was found, 
 were positive that it could not have been there when they 
 were last in the room. Only a man fit for a lunatic asylum — 
 much less a hard-headed Ulster solicitor — would have left 
 ammunition lying about in that careless way in the then 
 condition of Ireland. Furthermore, the officer refrained 
 from searching any of the other rooms, although one would 
 naturally think that, having found the ammunition, he 
 would be likely to make some effort to discover the weapon 
 for which it was to be used. 
 
 Mr. Agnew at once protested that the ammunition had 
 been " planted," and renewed his protest before his Court- 
 Martial when charged. Yet in face of all this he was found 
 " guilty " by a court of officers and sentenced to six months 
 imprisonment (reduced to three by the Confirming 
 Authority) with hard labour. 
 
 On the day after our arrest the three of us were brought 
 to Derry Jail by a military escort in charge of a sergeant, 
 who told us that he was prepared to fight any people except 
 Englishmen, Scotchmen, Welshmen or Irishmen, and who 
 objected strongly to having to do what he regarded as 
 " dirty police work " in Ireland. There was a good deal 
 of fraternisation on the journey. We stood some of our 
 captors a luncheon at Coleraine, and the sergeant 
 demonstrated by the aid of two lumps of bread how the 
 Irish Question should be settled. " This is our bloody 
 country, and that is yours" was his formula, " and they 
 have both to live beside each other. " One lad — from Berk- 
 shire I think he was — got very friendly with me and told 
 me, in that delightful English intimate way, all about his 
 mother and his sisters and his brothers and his best girl. 
 " This is the best escort ever I was on," he exclaimed 
 enthusiastically during our little feast. " I'm going to write 
 
28 "ON MY KEEPING" — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 home to mother about it ; and any time you're going to 
 be arrested always send for us " 
 
 We sang Irish ballads together and joined in soldier 
 choruses such as one about " We had a sergeant-major that 
 never saw a Hun, but he got the V.C. for drinking the 
 Conchies' rum." 
 
 Or the whole the journey was a very merry one indeed ; 
 but we got to Derry Gaol just as well as if we had been 
 handcuffed all the way and the escort and prisoners had 
 been disciples of Mr. " Pussyfoot " Johnson. That night, 
 at about half-past eight, I was locked in my little cell 
 with a can of cold cocoa and a piece of hard bread, having 
 been first taught by a sympathetic warder what was the 
 most comfortable way of putting down a plank bed. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PRISON LIFE. 
 
 It is strange to find oneself cut off suddenly from all one's 
 work and ordinary interests and to be projected into a new 
 sphere where every standard of value is completely changed. 
 Stranger still, how quickly a normal person accommodates 
 himself to such an altered existence. 
 
 Thus it was with me in Derry Gaol. It was no avail to 
 me there that I could draft a " Conveyance," or that I 
 knew something about " Contingent Remainders " and 
 quite a lot about the " Law of Contracts." But it was of 
 vast importance that I learned the most effective way of 
 heating my milk on the flickering cell gas-jet, and that I 
 was able to make my wooden spoon serve all the purposes 
 of a knife and fork. All my other accomplishments, too, 
 paled into utter insignificance compared with the one 
 great fact that I found that I could write doggerel about 
 the life and humours of the prison, that passed from cell 
 to cell and was laboriously transcribed into tattered copy- 
 books against the day when the General Release would 
 come and the bc3^s go home to tell their friends all about 
 their varied experiences. 
 
 One quickly settles down to the dull routine of prison, 
 and all the interests and causes for excitement in one's 
 outside existence are soon replaced by the incidents that 
 ripple the surface of that monotonous life that makes up 
 the sum of one's days within those dreary walls. What 
 commotion there was if the long hours after the evening 
 " lock-up " were broken, say, by the step of the Governor 
 
 29 
 
30 ON MY KEEPING" — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 along the corridor, and you heard him going into another 
 prisoner's cell 1 What could he be coming about ? Was 
 somebody going to be released ? And the tremendous 
 interest that was excited amongst us by seeing one of our 
 comrades going off to his Court-Martial ! How we clambered 
 round him #n his return and listened to his account of the 
 proceedings and wondered what his sentence would be ! 
 
 There were sixty or so of us, untried political prisoners, 
 in Derry at the time, representing several counties and 
 many walks in life. We were professional and business men, 
 farmers, artisans and labourers ; but we all stood for the 
 same ideal, and a fine spirit of comradeship linked us all 
 together. We had the usual prison organisation that has 
 proved so effective in many jail fights. For the British 
 Authorities have had to accept the awkward fact that they 
 cannot put more than two Sinn Feiners together without 
 an organisation emerging. Our Commandant was Mick 
 McCartan, a veterinary surgeon, and a very nice, genial 
 fellow, both brainy and tactful. 
 
 The courage and cheerfulness of the political prisoners 
 was amazing. Most of them were lads, full of the exuberance 
 and energy and the restlessness and vitality of youth. 
 What that rigid routine and close confinement meant for 
 them can scarcely be imagined by a person who has never 
 fe':t the peculiar feeling of helpless loneliness that is wont 
 to overcome a prisoner when the warder turns the key 
 in his cell door for the long evening and night " lock up." 
 But they knew that they were serving the " Dark Rosaleen " 
 of their dreams, and their love for her made all things easy. 
 
 The jails of Ireland, England and Scotland are full these 
 times of young men of this type — clean of heart and pure 
 of soul, brave, truthful and high-minded. Two or three 
 years ago I had occasion to visit a peasant home in County 
 Antrim on some legal business. The owner had no children, 
 
PRISON LIFE 31 
 
 but a nephew of his wife was hired with them as a servant 
 and would, no doubt, be adopted by them and inherit the 
 little place. I had walked out, and the lad was sent to 
 drive me home on his master's ear. He was a boy of about 
 seventeen. He was a shy lad and appeared to lead a very 
 lonely life, as the homestead was situate high upon a 
 mountain side. But he had read some Irish history, and 
 he was full of the dream of freeing Ireland. " I would like 
 to get a chance of fighting for Ireland," he told me naively, 
 with a proud look in his eye, and a flush en his frank, boyish 
 cheek. I lent him some books about Ireland and Irish history, 
 and sometimes, full of diffidence, he would slip in to me 
 at night to return a book that he had read and to borrow 
 another. He had to work very hard, but when his aunt 
 and uncle had gone to bed he would sit up by the kitchen 
 fire devouring what I had given him to read and watching 
 the strange visions that shaped themselves for him in the 
 glowing turf embers, Then I left the district, and lost sight 
 of him, but I often wondered how he had developed. 
 
 On the day of the Ulster Elections I was standing at one 
 of the polling booths at Ballycastle when I saw the lad's 
 aunt and her husband coming up to vote. I shook hands 
 with them eagerly, and asked the woman how her nephew 
 was. She evidently thought I had heard, and said : " They 
 sent him to Preston," whilst a big tear-drop glistened in 
 her eye. I understood at once and asked : " How long did 
 he get ? " To which she replied : " Eighteen months." 
 Poor but proud and in a sense — despite the ache that I 
 know is in his heart this Summer's day on which I write 
 for a breeze from the " blue hill of Antrim " and a look 
 at the white foam of the waves that break at the foot of 
 the stately promontory of Benmore — happy, happy boy ! 
 His dream has come true. He has fought and is now suffering 
 for his beloved Ireland I 
 
32 "ON MY KEEPING " — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 Nor was the courage that I saw so manifested in jail 
 merely the product of youthful irresponsibility. For it was 
 shared by prisoners of more mature years. Men like Eamonn 
 McDermott, but recently mirried, who had two busi- 
 ness houses burned down maliciously in Derry City, 
 so far from mumuring only thought of thanking God that 
 they were called upon to sufTei so little, when such supreme 
 sacrifices were demanded from others. Old Peter McCannon 
 of Sligo had his homestead and his cornstacks burned to 
 the ground by the British armed forces. His wife had to 
 seek shelter in a labourer's cottage. Five or six sons were 
 " on the run," and the youngest, Charlie, a boy of less than 
 18, was in jail with him in Derry. Peter himself suffered 
 from epileptic fits, and his health was so bad that the 
 authorities were most anxious to get an excuse to send him 
 home. It was pretty clear that all he required to do to secure 
 his release was to whisper two words, " Not guilty" — thereby 
 recognising the Court. But no power on earth could have 
 made Peter say those two simple words. And when Charlie 
 hurled defiance at the Court-Martial before which the pair 
 were brought for trial, telling them that he waj a soldier 
 of Ireland and would always do what in him lay to destroy 
 alien rule in his country, the old man acclaimed his son's 
 " treason " and bade them do their worst on both of them. 
 
 The Governor and officials in Derry in my time showed 
 us every consideration and treated us as well as the rules 
 would permit. The " Politicals " have broken down the 
 old rigid system in all the Irish prisons, and ameliorated 
 the conditions even for the ordinary convicts. I imagine 
 that even in England, where large numbers of Irish prisoners 
 have been, something similar has occurred — though, of 
 course, to a much lesser degree. No matter what rules Home 
 Secretaries and Chief Secretaries and Prison Boards may 
 make, they have to take into account the human factor 
 
PRISON LIFE 33 
 
 in their application, and the ordinary warder simply could 
 not, even if he were disposed to try, treat the sort of men 
 with which Sinn Fein rills the jails as " criminals." 
 
 During my internment in Ballykinlar Dr. Hayes told me 
 a striking story illustrative of the inroads that the Sinn 
 Feiners were wont to make on prison rules. He was sent 
 to Dartmoor after the " Easter Week " insurrection ; and 
 in the beginning the conditions there were dreadful. The 
 discipline was of the sternest kind. You dare not speak to 
 a comrade, your cell and person were subjected to the most 
 degrading searches at frequent intervals, and everything 
 was done with the regularity of clockwork. After the Irish 
 prisoners had been about five weeks there, they were lined 
 up one morning in the lower corridor, prior to being marched 
 out to the exercise yard. There were fifty or sixty of them 
 all standing in fine, and De Valera was the last man . Warders 
 paced up and down lest some prisoner should dare even 
 to whisper. Suddenly at the gate of the corridor above them 
 they saw Professor Koin MacNeil, in convict garb and with 
 his hair closely cropped. He was in charge of two warders 
 and was about to be brought downstairs to be placed 
 amongst the others. He had evidently reached the prison 
 from Portland or some other gaol on the preceding night. 
 The gate swung open, and the distinguished convict was 
 escorted down the stairs. As his foot touched the floor of 
 the corridor on which his former comrades stood, De Valera 
 jumped out from his place at the rere of the line. He 
 shouted : " Company, 'shun ! " and the whole hue of Irish 
 prisoners at once sprang to " Attention " — MacNeil was 
 still the Commander-in-Chief of the Irish Volunteers, and 
 it was their tribute to him as such. 
 
 Dr. Hayes remarked that, if a German bomb had fallen 
 on Dartmoor Prison that morning, it could hardly have 
 created more consternation than De Valera's audacious 
 
34 ON MY KEEPING — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 act. The warders seemed stunned for a few moments and 
 hardly knew what to do. Was the British Empire rocking 
 at its foundations that anyone should so dare to violate 
 the century old tradition of iron discipline that had tamed 
 and broken so many turbulent spirits ? 
 
 An Irish prison is, of course, very different from a place 
 like Dartmoor. The stern, unbending, cruel official of the 
 old days has been largely superseded by a person, usually 
 very human and genial. And, of course, an untried prisoner 
 such as I was is not subjected to prison regime in the real 
 sense of the word. 
 
 Still gaol is gaol, no matter how easy the conditions are. 
 It dulls your brain, deadens your senses, and humiliates 
 you, whilst the loneliness and helplessness of your position 
 are galling. Though I, as it were, only got a peep at the 
 inside of a prison, still that peep has been sufficient to awake 
 in me what I believe will be an everlasting feeling of active 
 sympathy with all to whom the grating of those keys at 
 the evening " lock-up " brings such desolation of heart 
 and spirit ; and few of my petitions to the good God are 
 more heartfelt than the one that is so apt to rise to my 
 lips, when I He awake at night with the peace and beatitude 
 of my happy home enveloping me as an aura, and I pray 
 Him to comfort all that turn uneasily on their plank beds 
 and count with weary hearts the hours and the days, or 
 the weeks, or months, or years that must elapse before that 
 fair Moon can shine on them as freemen. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CHRISTMAS DAY IN DERRY GAOL. 
 
 When the dreary prison bell woke me on Christmas morning 
 and I realised where I was and the day that had come I 
 confess that I really felt depressed and unhappy. Visions 
 of a wild stampede of little ones in long white nightdresses 
 to find out what Santa Claus had placed in the stockings, 
 of the walk out to first Mass at Glen, bringing back to me 
 memories of how wonderful and romantic it used to seem 
 to me, as a child, to walk to the " chapel " in the dark and 
 see it all lit up with big candles and shining in the distance 
 like a radiant lamp hung between the ash trees, and to see 
 the Fife and Drum Band, with their blazing torches, 
 marching along the road playing " God Save Ireland " 
 and " The Wearing of the Green " and then " Faith of Our 
 Fathers " three times round the chapel before they went 
 in to Mass, of all the kindly faces that would greet me 
 that morning with their " A Merry Christmas to you ! " 
 and of all that Christmas means and brings to us whom the 
 good God has privileged to live in holy Ireland, crowded 
 before my mind's eye. Though I thought that the fountain 
 of tears had long since dried up within me, I found that 
 a few stray drops had risen to my eyelids, when big, genial 
 Warder Byrne unlocked my cell and with a hearty " A 
 Happy Christmas and many of them, but not here ! " 
 turned on my gas so that I might have light to dress for 
 Mass. 
 
 I expect we all felt much alike that morning, but we kept 
 
 35 
 
36 "on my keeping**' — AND in theirs 
 
 our feelings to ourselves ; and it was all fun and merriment 
 and jokes with us when Commandant MacCartain called 
 us to - Attention " in the corridor and gave us the " Left 
 turn " through the iron gate, and down to the little prison 
 church for Mass. 
 
 Though everything else was so different for us from what 
 and ordinary Christmas would be, in the church, at any rate, 
 we were at home — just as we would have been had we heard 
 our Christmas Mass amid the pomp and grandeur of St. 
 Peter's, at Rome, or in the candle-light of one of our own 
 little country chapels ; and as line after line of us — the 
 Governor, officials, political prisoners, convicts in their 
 prison garb — knelt together at the altar- rails to receive 
 the Bread of Life, one realised the full meaning of the 
 catholicity of the Catholic Church, and how she is the 
 same mother to the prince and the peasant, the Pontiff 
 and the child, the governor and the governed, the jailer 
 and the jailed. There were no tears once we knelt before 
 that prison altar. It was all joy and thankfulness for us 
 then. For of one supreme possession the tyrant could not 
 deprive us ; and we knew that the prayers that would go 
 up before the great White Throne from our little company 
 that morning would be more potent, after all, than all the 
 power and resources of the British Empire. 
 
 At the afternoon exercise that day we all gathered in a 
 corner of the yard and had a concert ; and it was strange 
 to hear those grim prison walls re-echo the rebel songs 
 we sang and the fiery, patriotic poetry that we declaimed. 
 
 In the evening our Commandant got from the Governoi 
 an extension of " Lock-up " time to half -past seven ; and 
 we had a concert in the " Condemned Cell," which is three 
 times as big as an ordinary cell. The last man who had been 
 hanged out of it was John Berryman from near my home 
 and I made my companions laugh by a story that my friend 
 
CHRISTMAS DAY IN DBRRY GAOL 37 
 
 Willie O'Kane, the solicitor who defended him, had told 
 me about his last interview with the unfortunate man. 
 
 John had lived on a little farm in County Derry with his 
 brother and his brother's wife. He thought he was not being 
 treated well by the others, and one day he murdered both 
 the brother and the wife. He was found guilty by a jury 
 at Derry Assizes and sentenced to be hanged, but a petition 
 was sent up to the Viceroy asking for a reprieve. When the 
 news came to hand that " the law must take its course," 
 Mr. O'Kane went up to Derry to convey the evil tidings 
 to his client, and was relieved to find that the latter took 
 it all calmly enough, and appeared to be prepared to accept 
 the inevitable in a proper spirit. 
 
 " This is the last time I'll see you, John," said the 
 solicitor, " and I suppose I had better explain to you what 
 I did with the money you gave me." 
 
 An ordinary person would think that if he was going to 
 be hanged next week it would not be of much interest to 
 him to know what it had cost to defend him. But John 
 Berryman was what is sometimes called " an Ulster Scot," 
 and we are always being told how practical these canny, 
 hard-headed men of the North are. So my friend Willie, 
 knowing the type well, thought it prudent to explain every 
 item carefully. 
 
 " We had to pay a special fee of forty guineas to Denis 
 Henry, K.C.," he went on, " on account of coming down 
 to see the place, and the same to Patchell, K.C." 
 
 John made no comment, and Willie proceeded : "Besides 
 we had to have a map made to explain the position of the 
 house and the laneway for the jury, and that cost ten guineas, 
 including the surveyor's expenses to Derry." 
 
 Then the explosion came. John who had received calmly 
 the news that the petition for reprieve had failed and that 
 he was going to be hanged the following week, at once 
 
38 "on my keeping u — AND in theirs 
 
 became wildly excited and indignant. " Surely to Good- 
 ness," he exclaimed in real distress, " Johnnie Campbell, 
 my neighbour, wudn't charge me ten guineas for drawing 
 out an oul' map ! " 
 
 Well, if John's last hours in that cell were disturbed by 
 the thought of having to pay Johnnie Campbell ten guineas 
 " for drawing out an oul' map," we made up for them by 
 our merriment on Christmas night. Before the week had 
 closed Pat Brehney of the kindly heart and the winning 
 smile, all brightness and fun and good nature, was to 
 receive his savage sentence of seven years penal servitude 
 for having been found in possession of ammunition, and 
 most of the others who crowded the cell have since been 
 sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. But no Christmas 
 party could have been merrier than ours was that night. 
 We sang of love and Ireland, joined in gay choruses, told 
 stories and made jokes, and listened to soul-stirring 
 recitations. 
 
 Nobody entered more fully into it than my friend Smyth. 
 He was a poor Orangeman who had drilled with the Ulster 
 Volunteers, but he had been found trying to sell a revolver, 
 and so was arrested by the military and put in amongst us. 
 He was a soft, innocent, good-natured soul, with the usual 
 " Orange " prejudices, and for a day or two he was very 
 doubtful about his company. Then I took him in hands, 
 supplied him with cigarettes and share of my parcels, and 
 saw that he was made as much at home as possible. In a 
 very short time he was all-in-all with us and used to march 
 round the yard, leading the long line of prisoners that stepped 
 to our Commandant's orders. " Mind ye," he said to me 
 one evening proudly as we stood at the door of his cell 
 awaiting the supper " Fatigue," " I'm not afeerd to walk wi' 
 the Sinn Feiners." 
 
 " The Sinn Feiners are not as bad as you used to hear 
 
CHRISTMAS DAY IN DERBY GAOL 39 
 
 them represented to be in Portadown, Smyth," somebody 
 said. Whereupon Smyth exclaimed with great earnestness : 
 " If anybody ivir says a word against the Sinn Feiners, or 
 
 runs them down in my presence, by my sowl I'll — I'll " 
 
 he did not know what was bad enough to say in protest 
 against such conduct — " I'll have him arrested." The 
 threat was not a very appropriate one, but we knew what 
 the poor fellow meant. 
 
 At our concert on Christmas night I recited some doggerel 
 that I had written about the prison, and when we were 
 going back to our cells Smyth made me promise that I 
 would give him a copy of it. " Because," he explained, 
 " they think in our place that there's nobody but corner- 
 boys in gaol ; but I want to let them see there's lamed 
 men here." 
 
 Yet the hoary fiction is trctted out that there are two 
 nations in Ireland, as if any other country could produce 
 a type like Smyth ! 
 
 We wound up our concert with " The Soldiers' Song " 
 and we sang it as lustity as many a time we were wont to 
 do at big Sinn Fein musters in hall or on hillside. Then 
 we filed off to our cells and the warder came down the line 
 and locked us up with a kindly " Good-night ! " In a few 
 minutes the " Rosary" was re-echoing along the corridor — 
 we used to say it in groups of five or six adjoining cells. 
 Then the lights went out, and with a prayer on our lips 
 that that was the last Christmas that any one would have 
 to spend in gaol for loving Ireland, we tried to sleep and 
 forget. 
 
 We had another extension on New Year's night and 
 another concert, but it was not as merry as the first one. 
 For we missed some of " the old familiar faces." Poor 
 Pat Brehney had got his sentence in the meantime, and 
 my friend. Pat Agnew, had also gone upstairs to the " Hard 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE I4WUR7 
 CHESTNUT HILL, MASS. 
 
46 " ON MY KEEPING — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 labour " section of the prison, so that we missed his delight- 
 fully humorous rendering of the ballad, " Master McGrath." 
 But we had a good deal of fun, too, and we laughed as gaily 
 as ever. Four days later a number of us — MacDermott, 
 Larkin, MacCartan, Bonner, the two Gallaghers, Haughey, 
 Doris, Scott, my brother and myself — were suddenly 
 called out of the exercise yard and told to be ready in the 
 morning to travel to Ballykinlar Internment Camp. I 
 realised that it was a heavy blow to me, as no doubt it 
 was to all the others, for a long internment would probably 
 ruin my business, and my financial position allowed no 
 margin for such risks. But so many people had been praying 
 for me that I knew that everything must be for the best. 
 So I wrote to my wife, bidding her to fear not, and placing 
 my family and home and business and fortunes in the keeping 
 of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, I packed my bag and 
 got ready to go forth. I knew that Our Lady would carry 
 out the trust that I had imposed on her, and She did ! 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 BALLYKINLAR. 
 
 We left Derry Gaol in the dark of a cold Winter's morning 
 and were taken by train to Belfast, and then across the 
 city in a lorry to the County Down Railway Station, 
 where we were entrained for Tullmurry Station, which is 
 about four miles from Ballykinlar Camp. Our escort 
 belonged to the Rifle Brigade, and they treated us very 
 well. We were not handcuffed during any portion of the 
 journey, we were allowed to visit the Refreshment Room 
 at the CD. Station, and when the Belfast mob sought to 
 make a display of that fine sense of chivalry of theirs 
 that in the cases of later batches of prisoners resulted in 
 " heroic " attacks being made with showers of bolts and 
 stones on defenceless, handcuffed men, the officer promptly 
 turned his bayonets on the crowd. Whereupon they 
 dispersed. 
 
 Our experiences were, therefore, a great deal pleasanter 
 than those of most of the other prisoners whom we were 
 afterwards to get to know in the Camp. Many a story I 
 heard of what they had to endure, and I am almost as 
 familiar with the voyage of the Heather from Cork as if 
 I had travelled on her. For most of my fcllow-hutsmen 
 had been brought up from Kilworth Camp, penned like 
 sheep in the " hold " of that vessel. They were two days 
 on the journey, during which time they got nothing to 
 eat except a few " dog " biscuits. When they arrived at 
 the Belfast Docks, the}' were treated to a display of choice 
 conduct and still choicer language from the Queen's Island 
 
 4i 
 
42 ON MY KEEPING — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 rivetters, and from what Tom Finnegan calls '"the Cumann 
 na mBhan ' attached to Harland and Wolfe's " that 
 shocked these unsophisticated Southerners very much, 
 although Ulstermen like myself would have taken it as a 
 matter of course. They were brought by train to Bally- 
 kinlar Halt, and marched handcuffed and carrying their 
 baggage overthe two orthree miles that separated the station 
 from the Camp. Then, after a long wait and many 
 formalities, they were sent into bare huts on a bleak 
 December day and given for their bedding straw so damp 
 that for several nights they had to sleep in portion of their 
 day clothes. How some of the more elderly men survived 
 all they came through seemed nothing short of a miracle. 
 That fine old Irishman, Dan Fraher, of Dungarvan, who was 
 almost seventy years of age, got weak on the march, but 
 was forced on by a cad of a junior officer with some stupid, 
 brutal jibe like that "if he were behind a ditch he would 
 be active enough," and other frail men were treated quite 
 as badly. 
 
 My friend Hasset, Surveyor to the Waterford County 
 Council, told me how wretched his party felt, as cold and 
 tired and hungry they neared the end of their two days' 
 journey. At Belfast they had heard nothing but screams 
 of hatred and curses, and the faces that scowled on them 
 from the little stations on the CD. Railway were as black 
 as night. Then, as they stopped at one station before 
 they reached the Halt, a priest got out from another 
 carriage, and as he passed the prisoners' compartments 
 he turned to them and said : " Dia 's Muire dhibh ! " It 
 was only a word, and he passed on ; but, as my friend 
 remarked to me, that quiet greeting and the smile of affec- 
 tionate sjmipathy that accompanied it were as balm to a 
 wounded man or a draught of clear, cold water to the 
 parched lips of the traveller in the desert. 
 
BALLYKINLAR 43 
 
 Our experiences were, of course, only fun compared with 
 what these prisoners from the South had to go through ; 
 and they had already put up a fight for proper camp 
 conditions. So that when we arrived things were going 
 pretty smoothly, and conditions were tolerable. 
 
 One thing amused me very much on our arrival at the 
 Camp. We were handed over by our escort to a camp officer 
 in what looked like some sort of an old stable outside the 
 wires. We had been driven to the station at Derry, had 
 travelled in the train from Derry to Belfast, and then 
 had made the journey to the Camp, all without handcuffs. 
 But now, though we had only to be brought across a road 
 to get us into what was called the " Cage " — that is the 
 barbed wire enclosure in which the prisoners were kept — 
 the officer spent, I suppose, half-an-hour putting handcuffs 
 on us before taking us across. I feel grateful to that officer, 
 because had it not been for him the Irish war might have 
 ended without my feeling what handcuffs were like. A 
 quiet, respectable solicitor like myself will probably never 
 get the chance again ; and I want to be able to thrill my 
 grandchildren, when they come, with the story of my 
 manacles. 
 
 Having been duly handcuffed, we were marched into the 
 " Cage," where the handcuffs were at once removed. We 
 were brought into an office where the colours of our eyes 
 and the cuts of our noses were solemnly recorded and 
 questions put to us as to whether we were married or 
 single, and if married whether our respective wives lived 
 with us when we were not in gaol, and so forth. Then, 
 having been searched and deprived of such dangerous 
 weapons as British currency and pocket scissors, we were 
 allotted to the various huts to which we were to go, and were 
 at length free to enter on the ordinary life of the Camp. 
 
 Our Camp consisted of four lines of huts with chapel, 
 
44 ON MY KEEPING — AND IN THEIKS 
 
 cook-house and dining-halls, hospital, etc., in the centre. 
 Pat MacCartan, Tom Larkin, John Bonner, Owen Gallagher 
 and myself were sent to Hut 19 C line. There were twenty- 
 other men in the hut already from Cork, Tipperary and 
 Kilkenny, and our five made the full complement of twenty- 
 five. The huts were zinc buildings ; our beds were composed 
 of two wooden trestles about eight inches high with three 
 boards laid on top, on which we placed our bedding, consist- 
 ing of a mattress and bolster packed with coarse straw and 
 four army blankets ; and the other furniture comprised a 
 long table, three or four forms, some shelving, a few buckets, 
 etc., and a stove. 
 
 I was very luck}' in my hut, as my fellow-hutsmen were 
 men with whom it was a pleasure to live. Some of them — 
 such as Paddy Sullivan, the " hut leader," Jim Lalor, 
 Tom Tracey, Tom Nolan and Jack Fitzgerald — had had 
 a fairly extensive acquaintance with British prisons and 
 had been through " hunger strikes " and such episodes, 
 and most of the others had been very active figures in the 
 national movement in one way or another. One of the 
 most striking figures in the hut was Pat Rohan, County 
 Councillor of Ballina (Tipperary), a man of very great 
 ability and high ideals, whose constructive mind would be 
 a most valuable asset in any normally governed country, 
 I shall always be inclined to forgive Sir Hamar Green- 
 wood portion of the score I have against him, inasmuch as, 
 when it was deemed necessary in the interests of law and 
 order in Ireland to lock me inside a barbed wire cage, he 
 had me housed with men of such high character and kindli- 
 ness as my friends, William Geary, John Creed, Mick 
 Dowling, Bill Condon, Jer. Mulvey, Paddy Guerin and Bill 
 Sheehy, not to speak of my own Ulster comrades and the 
 " Young Guard," consisting of Paddy Holmes, J. Keating, 
 J. Egan, Jim Sharman, Andy Callaghan, Mick and Nick 
 
BALLYKINLAR 45 
 
 Murphy. It is a trial to anyone, especially to a person who 
 can so order his life that he can obtain at least the seclusion 
 of a quiet room when he wants to work, or think, or read, 
 or rest, to be forced to live in close intimacy with a large 
 number of other people under conditions that never admit 
 of a minute's privacy. The time you want to write or read 
 will, perhaps, be chosen by some of your youthful companions 
 for a game of " leap frog " or a wrestling bout in the hut, 
 and fate may decide that when you seek to assuage the 
 pain cf an aching tooth by throwing yourself on your 
 straw mattress somebody near you will feel the occasion 
 opportune to learn the scale on the riddle. 
 
 But though this sort of thing is a necessary concomitant 
 of communal hut life and, though, no doubt the nerves 
 of all of us were frayed by the irksomeness and uncertainty 
 and monotony of our long internment, it was wonderful 
 how well we all got on together in Hut 19. There were a 
 spirit of give-and-take, a kindliness and generosity and 
 unselfishness that made everything as easy as possible 
 for us. 
 
 One impression was deeply marked on my mind by my 
 experiences in Hut 19 and in the Camp, and that was the 
 high standard of civilisation and idealism and spirituality 
 of our people. The whole internment system is thoroughly 
 demoralising. To take a thousand men from every walk 
 of life and to lock them together in a cage, where they cannot 
 pursue their ordinary work and duties, where everything is 
 regulated for them like clockwork, and all the necessaries 
 of life provided without anxiety on their part, would ruin 
 most people, mentally, physically, and probably morally. 
 But our Irish prisoners emerge from such ordeals unscathed. 
 
 The saving of them is, of course, first their religion, and 
 then their sense of patriotism. The mass of the prisoners 
 led lives of great piety in Ballykinlar ; The prisoners' 
 
4 6 
 
 chaplain, Father Mclister, was most attentive to our 
 spiritual needs, and was much beloved by everybody. We 
 had Mass every morning and the Blessed Sacrament always 
 in the Camp. The Rosary was said in the huts every night, 
 and many of the huts — perhaps all of them — were in time 
 formally consecrated to the Sacred Heart. The contrast 
 between two civilisations could not be more strikingly 
 illustrated than by a comparison of the writings on the walls, 
 left by the soldiers of the British Army who had formerly 
 occupied the Camp, with the knowledge that one might 
 spend a twelve-month amongst the prisoners without ever 
 hearing an unseemly word. 
 
 Then there was a general feeling that these months of 
 internment and the enforced leisure they entailed were to 
 be held in trust for the nation, and to be used as a preparation 
 for the constructive work that we felt would be before us 
 in a free Ireland. So that instead of allowing their brains 
 and hands to decay from disuse, most of the prisoners 
 sought to make themselves more efficient in some way. 
 And the work thereby entailed was the saving of them. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CAMP CONDITIONS. 
 
 When we reached Bally kinlar on the 5th of January 
 conditions were, as I have said, tolerable ; but the other 
 prisoners told us that during the first two or three weeks 
 of the Camp the treatment they had received was very- 
 bad. The food was utterly inadequate. There was no 
 canteen and the prisoners were not allowed to receive 
 parcels. One man described to me his feelings when he 
 first entered the " cage." He had come up on The Heather 
 from Cork, and arrived at the Camp famishing with hunger 
 and shivering with cold. They were kept for a very long 
 time standing in the " stable " outside the wires, during 
 which time a soldier who took pity on their wretched 
 plight was forbidden by a mean little creature in the uniform 
 of an officer to give them a drink of water. Then they were 
 marched into the " cage " ; and when my friend looked 
 round and saw bayonets" and barbed wire on every side 
 and a crowd of starved-looking men, with incipient beards 
 on their faces and mufflers round their necks, clambering 
 round them to know if they had any cigarettes — or " e'er 
 a butt," as the query was put by a chorus of Dublin accents 
 — he turned to the man, to whom he had been handcuffed, 
 and whispered : " Lloyd George is going to win this time ! " 
 Well, Lloyd George did not win ; and even inside the 
 barbed wire cage that they had built his minions had to 
 mend their manners. The prisoners soon set up their 
 organisation, and under the spirited leadership of their 
 Commandant, Patrick Colgan, ably assisted by Vice- 
 
 47 
 
48 * ON MY KEEPING " — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 Commandant Dominick MacKay, of Clonmel, and the other 
 members of the Council, they forced the military authorities 
 to make concessions in the way of food and general condi- 
 tions that enabled us to get through our period of detention 
 fairly comfortably. Of course, there were complaints all 
 the time about rations, and if we had not been able to 
 supplement them by parcels from our friends and purchases 
 at the canteen we might have been hungry enough at times. 
 Personally I am convinced that I would have gone to pieces 
 on the Camp ration ; but on the other hand, as a matter 
 of strict fairness, I wish to record the fact that the most 
 energetic, hard-working and one of the most useful men 
 in the Camp — my friend, Henry Dixon, of Dublin — never 
 took anything except the allowance provided by the military 
 authorities, and was still thriving when I left in May. I 
 should say, too, that the British Commandant, Colonel 
 Little, seemed really anxious to do the best he could for 
 us and exerted himself, I am convinced, to secure for us 
 every right to which as prisoners of war we were entitled 
 by international usage. But he was hampered all the time 
 by orders and limitations of his authority from the military 
 G.H.Q. and Dublin Castle. 
 
 The same was true of Colonel Hely-Hutchinson, usually 
 designated by the prisoners " Play the Game," who used 
 to be in command of the area, and of Colonel Ennis, rather 
 a fine old type of soldier, with a face for all the world like 
 a statue of Julius Caesar, who after some months was put 
 in general charge of all the internment camps. 
 
 " Play the Game " got his name from what seemed to 
 be his favourite phrase. When a new batch of prisoners 
 arrived at the Camp, they were brought up before him 
 and addressed somewhat thuswise : " Now, men, I under- 
 stand that you are soldiers, and I intend to deal with you 
 as such and to treat you as prisoners of war. It is my 
 
CAMP CONDITIONS 49 
 
 wish that your time here should be pleasant as possible 
 in the circumstances ; and if you play the game with me 
 111 play the game with you. If you observe certain rules 
 and regulations in regard to the Camp and carry out certain 
 duties, which are necessary for your own health and well- 
 being, you will have no trouble from us." And so forth I 
 
 In one batch of prisoners that was treated to this address, 
 there was an unfortunate member of the Plymouth Brethren 
 or some such evangelistic organisation. He had, no doubt, 
 been arrested by mistake owing to the faulty secret service, 
 work on which the military have had to rely since the 
 old R.I.C. were put out of action. 
 
 On the day that he was to receive his lecture, the Colonel, 
 after he had delivered the " Play the Game " portion of 
 his speech, went on to say : " Of course, there may be 
 individual cases of hardship amongst you. Perhaps some 
 men are here who should not be here. But, if on the one 
 hand 3^ou are soldiers of the Irish Republic you will be 
 prepared to suffer for the cause to which you have devoted 
 yourselves ; whilst, on the other hand, if you are loyal 
 subject? of the British Empire you will also be willing to 
 put up with the inconvenience of being here, knowing that 
 this round-up has been deemed necessary by those respon- 
 sible for the safety of the Empire." 
 
 Hereupon the distressed evangelic spoke out in solemn 
 tones and said : " I am neither a soldier of the Irish Republic 
 nor do I bear allegiance to earthly empires or monarchs. 
 I only serve one Master and the only army to which I 
 belong is the Army of God ! " 
 
 Upon which somebody else interjected : " Well, you're a 
 devilish long way from your barracks here ! " — which 
 observation so affected the risibility of the Colonel that he 
 was unable to continue his speech and walked away in 
 hearty laughter. 
 
50 "ON MY KEEPING" — AND IN THEIBS 
 
 Colonel Bnnis seemed to have a healthy contempt for 
 that type of puppy that one so often meets with in the garb 
 of a junior British officer ; and it used to afford us a grim 
 satisfaction to see some of the petty little bullies, that 
 loved to parade their power before us, trotting after him 
 on inspection as meek as lap-dogs. One day there was a 
 fire in No. 2 Camp and a fire squad turned out in charge 
 of a prisoner named Maclnernay. Whilst he was standing 
 by, directing operations, a junior officer came along with 
 an escort and told him to take his hands out of his pockets 
 and fall in with a bucket, like the rest of his men. 
 Maclnernay promptly told him to go to the devil ; and 
 was at once arrested and brought out before Colonel Ennis. 
 
 The officer made his charge, and the Colonel asked the 
 prisoner what he had to say for himself. " Oh," rejoined 
 Maclnernay, " I have nothing to say for myself ; but I 
 want to put in a word for this young man " — pointing to 
 the astonished officer — " He's young, Colonel, and he may 
 have never seen a fire before, and so lost his head. But 
 he'll come all right, Colonel, he'll come all right. Don't 
 punish him." 
 
 The Colonel looked at his subaltern, and with a very 
 amused twinkle in his eye said : " Take this man back to 
 the cage ! " 
 
 On the whole the senior officers with whom we came in 
 contact were all right and comported themselves as soldiers 
 and gentlemen, but some of the juniors were awful bounders 
 and thorough cads. One officer, whom we used to designate 
 " Judas " because it sounded like his real name, particularly 
 distinguished himself in this respect. But even men of this 
 type were soon put in their place, and in the end we had 
 very little trouble with them. The prisoners made it clear 
 that they were going to take no bullying from them ; and 
 both Colonel little and Colonel Ennis showed themselves 
 
CAMP CONDITIONS 51 
 
 leally disposed to deal sternly with them, if they exceeded 
 the bounds of duty and decorum. So that, on the whole, 
 our relations with the enemy officers were fairly good. 
 
 After the Camp opened, there was some trouble over 
 a demand on the part of the British officers to be addressed 
 as " Sir " at Roll Call. Their contention was that they were 
 treating us as prisoners of war and so were entitled to the 
 courtesies usually extended to enemy officers in such 
 circumstances. But the mass of the prisoners resented 
 having to call people of the type of our friend " Judas " 
 " sir." Eventually we got round the difficulty by answering 
 the roll in Irish, " Annso." Whether it was that this was 
 mistaken for " In, sir," or that they did not wish to press 
 a fight on the subject, this was accepted and it was thus we 
 used to answer during my stay in the Camp. Whilst the 
 " sir " question was still a bone of contention, the roll 
 was being called one morning in the hut in which dwelt 
 my friend Hubert Wilson, of Longford. 
 
 " Wilson Hubert," the officer read out, and the answer 
 was a plain " Here." 
 
 " Here — what ? " drawled the Lieutenant. 
 
 " Hear, hear ! " said Hubert solemnly. At which, to the 
 credit of his sense of humour be it said, the officer laughed 
 and passed on. 
 
 The way in which our men stood up to these subalterns 
 pleased the poor " Tommies " immensely. 
 
 " These officers have the wind up," said a little Cockney 
 soldier one day to a prisoner. " If we ask them for anything 
 we get seven days in the clink for cheek, but you people 
 can get anything you want. My shirt's in tatters, and I 
 bet you, yours is not." 
 
 " Oh, no," admitted the prisoner, " I got two good shirts 
 off them." 
 
 " Yes," continued the soldier, " and look at the good 
 
52 "on my keeping "-—and in theirs 
 
 boots you're wearing ! All these hills are filled with Sinn 
 Feiners according to the officers, and they're going to sweep 
 down some night and clear the Camp. They're afraid to 
 refuse you fellows anything ; and we only get what you 
 won't take. You are the prisoners. We're only the Tommies. 
 The wind's up with the blighters, and be sure and keep it 
 up." 
 
 It must have been rather an eye-opener to the " Tommies " 
 to see defenceless men in a barbed wire cage, surrounded 
 with guns and bayonets, able to keep in their own place 
 the little bullies of officers of whom the soldiers were so 
 much afraid. It should have had a stiffening effect on their 
 morale ; but I expect that the British army is very largely 
 made up of types like that terrible fellow, the English 
 workingman, who is always talking about the awful things 
 he is going to do, but which he never does. I have been 
 hearing all my life about the coming revolution in England, 
 but I don't expect to live to see it. When the British Empire 
 does break up, the blow will come from some place outside 
 England. 
 
CHAPTER X, 
 
 SOME CAMP NOTABLES. 
 
 InsidK the barbed wire the running of the Camp was very 
 largely in our own hands. We had our own government, 
 our own military and police forces, our own courts, our 
 own post office, and our own currency. In fact we had, 
 as somebody put it, " Home Rule within the Empire." 
 In addition to the Commandant and Vice-Commandant, 
 other prominent Camp officials were the Quartermaster 
 (Tom Meldon), the Adjutant (Seumas Ward), the Provost- 
 Marshal (Hassett, afterwards Hickey), the Postmaster 
 (Crowley), and the Court-Martial Brehons (Messrs. O'D&a 
 and Nicholls). Other prominent figures in the Camp govern- 
 ment were Dr. Higgins, of Maryborough ; P. Hogan, of 
 Ijoughrea, solicitor, who is now one of the T.D.'s for Galway ; 
 Tom Tracey, of Kilkenny ; and the one and only Barney 
 O'Driscoll, of Skibbereen. 
 
 The mention of Barney's name evokes so many memories 
 that I cannot proceed with these discursive memoirs without 
 devoting a paragraph to himself. One of the. most firmly 
 held of the convictions that I carried away from Ballykinlar 
 was that, despite the popular fallacy to the contrary, there 
 is far less humour south of the Boyne than there is in the 
 North of Ireland. It used to amuse me to hear my dear 
 friend, Henry Dixon, affirm in all seriousness that 
 Ulster people had no sense of humour, whereas there 
 was more fun in the wee finger of our fellow-prisoner, 
 Daney McDevitt, of the Falls Road, Belfast, than in four- 
 
 53 
 
54 "on my keeping" — AND in theirs 
 
 score of Munster men. But Barney O'Driscoll might have 
 been born in " the Six Counties/' he had such an eye for 
 the ridiculous. In fact, his sense of fun was liable to run 
 away with him ; and he introduced such hilarity into the 
 proceedings of a Public Boards' Association, that had its 
 origin in the praiseworthy desire of Henry Dixon and 
 O'Grady, from Clare, to have the imprisoned members of 
 public boards do some constructive thinking during their 
 incarceration, that it came to an untimely end. He was 
 a most ingenious debater, and was sure to liven up any 
 discussion. Thus, one evening, that we were discussing a 
 paper on Onion Growing that had been read at a meeting 
 of the Camp Farmers' Union by a Mr. Hogan, Barney 
 commented on the assertion of the lecturer that the skin 
 of a vegetable is practically waterproof, in this fashion : 
 " If, as Mr. Hogan says, the skin of a vegetable is water- 
 proof, how the devil did all the water get into the potatoes 
 that are served out to us in this Camp ? " 
 
 In addition to being a humorist, however, Barney had a 
 very short temper, and an awful command of explosive 
 language. He used to be in charge of the distribution of 
 parcels along with Messrs. Holt, Mooney, Bartley and Sinnott; 
 and whilst the crowd of eager prisoners pushed and jostled 
 each other in the distributing room and clambered round 
 the sorters, Barney's language was what Bret Harte would 
 describe as " frequent and painful and free." I never had 
 the pleasure of meeting Barney outside the wires, and I 
 don't know if he wears a beard in ordinary life, but he had 
 one in Bahykinlar that suggested a certain Biblical character 
 to a lad in my hut. My friend, Paddy Holmes, had evidently 
 been the victim of Barney's wrath at a parcel distribution, 
 for one night he remarked as we sat round our stove : 
 " Wouldn't that Barney O'Driscoll mind you of Judas, 
 although I never saw the man ? " 
 
SOME CAMP NOTABLES 55 
 
 The conversation took another turn, and about half-an- 
 hour later we were discussing cinema pictures. Suddenly- 
 Paddy broke in on the discourse with the exclamation : 
 " I knowed I saw him somewhere ! " 
 
 " Saw who ? " we inquired, in amazement at Paddy's 
 sudden outburst. 
 
 " Saw Judas Iscariot," he responded. " I saw him in 
 the pictures of the Passion Play at Mallow." 
 
 Another notable figure in the life of the Camp was Dick 
 Davis, who was in charge both of the church and the bath- 
 house. Dick was a most loveable character, very zealous 
 and earnest, who had behind him a splendid record of 
 service for Ireland. He was sentenced to death after " Easter 
 Week " and endured the horrors of penal servitude for a 
 time. 
 
 Like all men of intense sincerity he was liable to get very 
 hot in argument, and the Camp idlers, of whom I was one 
 of the many, used to enjoy hearing him engage in controversy 
 with one of his protagonists. He had tremendous faith in 
 the virtues of cold baths, Co-operation, and I think it was 
 the South Dublin Union, of which he was a member ; and 
 all these objects of his love furnished fruitful themes for 
 discussion. 
 
 We were supposed to get hot baths, but Dick was such 
 a believer in cold ones that he was blamed for keeping the 
 temperature of the hot ones he supplied as near to zero 
 as possible. The satiric artists in our little community made 
 great capital out of this fact, and all over the Camp you 
 would see drawings of bathers with hatchets trying to 
 break the ice on what was described by the artists as 
 " Dick Davis's hot baths." 
 
 He was at his best as an advocate for Co- Operation 
 and was always ready to break a sword in defence of that 
 system. One of the pictures that I have stored away in that 
 
56 "on my keeping" — AND in theirs 
 
 portion of my brain in which I keep my mental images 
 is that of Dick, with the chapel bell in his hand which he 
 had taken out to ring for Benediction, engaged in animated 
 discussion with little Daney McDevitt, the able and aggres- 
 sive Belfast socialist — both talking at the rate of a hundred 
 words a minute and each very excited — whilst the rest of 
 us stood around and cheered impartially at every good 
 shot that was landed from either side. 
 
 As for the South Dublin Union, its merits were so often 
 recited for us at our Public Boards' Association meetings 
 that, with that wicked human tendency to jealousy- of 
 superior virtue that is in us all, we used to rejoice secretly 
 at the irreverent manner in which Barney O'Driscoll was 
 wont to talk of the august body when he rose to controvert 
 one of Dick's arguments. 
 
 The internal government of the Camp was entirely a 
 military one. It had all the merits and some of the faults 
 of military governments everywhere, but it did its work 
 very well on the whole and enforced a discipline which, 
 if stern, was really necessary for the well-being of the 
 Camp and the advancement of the cause for which we 
 all suffered. like all governments, of course, it had its 
 critics ; and the civilian internees at times were inclined 
 to chafe at the rigid discipline to which they were subjected. 
 
 " When a letter is stopped on you in this Camp," said a 
 prisoner to me very indignantly on one occasion, " you 
 don't know whether it was done on you by the English 
 or by the Prussians." Thenceforth I used to distinguish 
 between the enemy Commandant, and our own thus : 
 One was the English Commandant and the other was the 
 " Prussian." 
 
 In some respects our government showed itself lacking 
 in vision, especially in the matter of propaganda, which 
 was almost wholly neglected, its whole idea in that regard 
 
SOME CAMP NOTABLES 57 
 
 seeming to be to prevent it being stated by any prisoner 
 that conditions were even tolerable. As if the fact of three 
 thousand men, untried and even uncharged, being taken 
 away from their homes and avocations and kept in a barbed 
 wire cage for months was not the real grievance, and as 
 if our case was in any way weakened because we were not 
 starved to death as well ! 
 
 We were very lucky in our Commandants. Patrick Colgan 
 held the office until the time of the Strike, about which I 
 shall have something to say hereafter, and when he left 
 the Camp Joe McGrath, T.D., assumed the office. Colgan 
 was a very fine fellow, indeed — straightforward, brave, 
 courteous and brainy. McGrath was not any abler, but 
 he was a man of wider experience and riper judgment, 
 and proved himself a great administrator in very difficult 
 circumstances. What I liked especially about Joe McGrath 
 was his moral courage. Once he made up his mind as to 
 the propriety of any course of action he pursued it un- 
 flinchingly, whether it was popular or the reverse. He was 
 never out for the applause of the crowd. In an Irish intern- 
 ment camp one might be tempted to indulge in cheap heroics 
 in order to win the cheers of his fellow-prisoners, but McGrath 
 never undertook a fight unless a principle was involved 
 and unless he was satisfied that it was in the best interests 
 of the men and the country. When firmness was really 
 required nobody could be firmer ; but if diplomacy appeared 
 to him to be the most effective weapon in the particular 
 circumstances he was always ready to use it. In short, he 
 was a strong man in the real sense of the word, not the 
 sham sort of strong man — and there are many such in Ireland 
 — that acquires the reputation by reason simply of big talk 
 and bad manners. " Civility costs you nothing/' as the 
 sergeant-major in the Cork Dentention Barracks used to 
 say with truth. A man can be quite courteous without being 
 
58 "on my keeping" — AND in theirs 
 
 any less firm and determined : and even when you are dealing 
 with an open and avowed enemy you are in much stronger 
 position if you adopt towards him a dignified attitude. 
 
 I shall always have great confidence in the sound sense 
 of any Irish government of which Joe McGrath is a member. 
 
 I cannot close this account of prominent Camp Officials 
 without paying tribute to Dr. Hayes, T.D., who was in 
 charge of the hospital for us during the greater part of my 
 internment. Hayes is a man of beautiful character — as 
 kind as a mother, as simple as a child, and as humble as 
 a saint. There is no need to refer to his courage and his 
 ardent patriotism, for his " Easter Week " record speaks 
 for itself. But the man is so unassuming, that one might 
 spend his life with him without discovering, except by 
 accident, that he had ever done or risked anything out of 
 the common. It meant a great deal for the health and happi- 
 ness of the Camp to have a man of his type in the hospital ; 
 and whatever other grievances we may have against our 
 old friend, Sir Hamar Greenwood, we must, at least, be 
 thankful to him for that, when he rounded the rest of us up, 
 he took care to arrest Dr. Hayes and lock him in along with 
 us. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 OUR LINE CAPTAINS. 
 
 The) most important executive officers of our government 
 were the Line Captains. Bach line constituted a Company 
 and had a captain in charge of it. I belonged to Line or 
 Company " C," which comprised ten huts in each of which 
 there were supposed to be twenty-five men. Thus, our 
 Company included about two hundred and fifty prisoners. 
 
 The Line Captain was responsible for the discipline of his 
 line, and had to see that the huts were kept clean and that 
 the hut leaders carried out the duties imposed on them 
 and their hutsmen both by our own Commandant and by 
 the military. The line letters went through the Line Captain 
 to and from the Postmaster who received or handed them, 
 as the case might be, to the proper military official. All 
 complaints and applications also went through the Line 
 Captain to the military officer in charge of the Line. Each 
 day we were inspected by the British Line officer, and our 
 Line Captain accompanied him on his round. He also 
 accompanied both the British and our own Commandants 
 when they made their periodic inspections. 
 
 We were not allowed British money in the Camp — for 
 fear, I suppose, that we might get too friendly with 
 " Tominie." Instead we were given " chits " for the cash 
 that was taken from us — that is, printed slips with the 
 values of various coins marked on them. These were 
 negotiable in the Canteen and passed current inside the 
 " cage " ; and on release they were exchangeable for money 
 
 50 
 
60 "ON MY KEEPING — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 of an equal face value. If cheques or postal orders were 
 sent into the Camp, the military had them cashed, and 
 " chits " to the amount were given to the prisoners entitled. 
 These distributions of money took place at regular intervals 
 at the Line Captain's hut ; and he and the " khaki " Line 
 Officer checked the figures together on these occasions. In 
 the beginning a penny for each book of " chits " (worth 5s.) 
 was deducted from our moneys to pay for the printing of 
 the books ; but after a long controversy between the English 
 and what my comrade, John Bonner, called the " Prussian " 
 Commandants this practice was abandoned, and we were 
 paid in full. 
 
 The four Line Captains were Messrs. Nolan, Fitzgerald, 
 O'Mahony and John Cooney. They all did their work very 
 well ; but I liked our own officer best. P. C. O'Mahony is 
 a man of culture, with a wide knowledge of the world, and 
 a great deal of natural ability. He is a fine Irish speaker and 
 is widely read in both languages. He has a constructive 
 mind ; and having a keen realisation of the real and difficult 
 work that lies before us in Ireland when we do achieve our 
 freedom, he exerted himself in the Camp to secure that 
 our enforced leisure should be availed of to make us more 
 efficient both as soldiers and citizens. He combines very 
 largely the qualities both of a good fighting man and a 
 good negotiator, and it was, perhaps, due to his tact and 
 diplomacy that no serious trouble of any kind ever 
 developed in our Company. We lost him after a time, as 
 he insisted on following his own hut down to No. 2 Camp, 
 when it was removed thither ; but he was replaced by a 
 man no less popular than himself— namely, Joe Murtagh, 
 from Dublin, a fine chess player and in every way a charming 
 fellow with a good sense of humour. 
 
 I have only one grievance against Captain Murtagh, and 
 that is this. In the early days of the Camp we were only 
 
OUR LINE CAPTAINS 6l 
 
 getting a limited number of newspapers, and it would some- 
 times be a whole day before you could get a peep at the 
 Freeman or Independent. Owing to my grave and revered 
 character and widening girth and advancing years, I had 
 been getting off with all " fatigues " in my hut. One day 
 Murtagh came along and said : "I want two men to 
 volunteer for paper fatigue." 
 
 The name sounded attractive and I offered my services 
 at once. " This will give me a fine chance of showing the 
 lads that I am ready to do my bit as well as anybody else," 
 I said to myself, " and this is the very job for me!" I 
 thought the duty would be to get the newspapers, when 
 they came in, and then distribute them round the huts. 
 Tell it not in Geth, publish it not in the streets of Ascalon ; 
 but what was at the back of my head was the idea that I 
 would get first read of the Independent ! 
 
 When I reported at the place assigned, I found that 
 " paper fatigue " consisted in going over the whole Camp 
 to pick up pieces of paper, butts of cigarettes, and old 
 match-boxes, etc. Jim I^alor had volunteered along with 
 me for the duty, and we confessed to each other in our 
 tribulation that we had been both under the same impression 
 as to the nature of the duty expected from us. To complete 
 our discomfiture, we were received with roars of laughter 
 when, as sore from stooping as if we had been pulling flax, 
 we returned to our hut ; and Jerry Mulvey finished us of! 
 by the exultant exclamation : " It was great to see the 
 two cutest men in the hut done ! " 
 
 I determined never to volunteer for any other " fatigues " 
 until I had learned the real character of the work. 
 
 Captain O'Mahony dwelt in Hut n, which we used to call 
 in our line " the Headquarters." A lot of other very 
 important functionaries were housed there, too — Hassett, 
 the Chief of Staff ; Seumas Ward, the Adjutant ; 
 
62 "ON MY KEEPING " — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 Maclyoughlin also of the Commandant's Staff, and various 
 police and other officers. Lukeman, of the Kilkenny Gas 
 Works, a great talker, was the " Hut leader." 
 
 Human nature is very much alike, both inside and outside 
 barbed wire cages, and, as might have been expected, 
 humble denizens like myself of other huts envied the 
 exalted position of Hut n and its inhabitants. We made 
 all sorts of unjust accusations. We said that they never 
 passed on the newspapers until every man in their own hut 
 had read them ; and that in the distribution of the clothes, 
 etc., that Were handed out by the military, the Staff always 
 looked after itself first. A lot of the Hut n men were from 
 Dungarvan, where the Cumann na mBan girls must be 
 great cooks and cake-makers ; and it used to make our 
 mouths water, as the saying is, to hear the tales that 
 circulated along the line about the sumptuous feasts that 
 were wont to take place at the " Headquarters." To play 
 up to the jealousy of the underdogs I wrote the following 
 doggerel, which was sung in fine style to the air of "Cockles 
 and Mussels" by my fellow-hutsman, John Creed, and 
 became very popular in our Company : — 
 
 In sweet Ballykinlar, 
 
 If you are a " Shinner," 
 And the Fates they ^are kindly — or even so, so, 
 
 In famed Hut Eleven, 
 
 You're almost in Heaven 
 With the Senior Iyine Captain, alive, alive, oh ! 
 
 Chorus : 
 With the Senior Iyine Captain, alive, alive, oh ! 
 
OUR LINE CAPTAINS 63 
 
 II. 
 
 It's " P.C." we greet him, 
 
 That shows that we treat him 
 With kindly affection, I'd have you to know. 
 
 He's martial and zealous, 
 
 And makes " Kiltie " jealous, 
 When he comes on inspection, alive, alive, oh ! 
 
 in. 
 
 In huts more plebeian, 
 
 Perhaps you'd be seein' 
 Things done in a manner unseemly and low 
 
 But at " the Headquarters," 
 
 Where dwell " C.'s " true martyrs, 
 It's all styte and finish — alive, alive, oh ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 You don't go to the rooms 
 
 Where the commonplace coons 
 Get dinners of beans interspersed with pig's toe ; 
 
 But you dine a la carte 
 
 In a style that's quite smart, 
 Whilst you toast the bold Captain— alive, alive, oh ! 
 
 v. 
 
 It's in that famous hut 
 
 That your money you get, 
 And the rate of exchange is exceedingly low. 
 
 And when the Staff's dressed 
 
 In pants of the best 
 A few pass to others — alive, alive, oh ! 
 
64 "on my keeping " — AND in theirs 
 
 VI. 
 
 For the papers each day 
 
 You have nothing to pay ; 
 For all the Line journals are there in a row. 
 
 And not till you're done, 
 
 Are they ever passed on, 
 To the other poor devils — alive, alive, oh 1 
 
 VII. 
 
 In that hut there's a Yankee 
 
 And teachers quite swanky, 
 A town clerk and draper and hard-working Crowe. 
 
 There's a Staff Chief and Ad. 
 
 And sergeants — a squad — 
 Are there, thick as midges — alive, alive, oh ! 
 
 VIII. 
 
 And Iyukeman, that lights 
 
 The Cats' Town at nights— 
 It's he, the Hut Leader, which gives it a glow, 
 
 For though closed in — alas ! 
 
 He's still full of gas, 
 And he gives it out freely— alive, alive, oh ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 Then here's to Eleven, 
 
 That wee bit of Heaven, . 
 That lightens the gloom of this " compound " of woe ; 
 
 And when under arrest, 
 
 You should all do your best, 
 To live with Line Captains — alive, alive, oh ! 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A TRAINING CAMP. 
 
 The nature of the " round up " that filled Ballykinlar was 
 such as to demonstrate in a very striking manner the 
 stupidity of the British military authorities in Ireland and 
 the utter helplessness of their Intelligence Department. It 
 would be idle to deny that they got a number of very good 
 men in the course of their arrests ; but if their sole objective 
 was, as they said, to break up the I.R.A., they had a lot of 
 us in custody that were not worth the expense involved in 
 our capture and maintenance and guarding. 
 
 A large number of the prisoners were unfit for military 
 service ot any sort owing to age and infirmity ; and quite a 
 number of those interned had never been anything but 
 politicians. 
 
 Some of the mistakes that had been made during the 
 " round up " were ludicrous. Thus, take the case c£ the 
 Belfast man, whom I shall call " John Graham " to conceal 
 his identity. The military had been looking for " James 
 Graham," who was an active Volunteer ; and one night a 
 lorry stopped at the house of the good, loyal citizen, " John 
 Graham," who has a job in the Belfast Tramway Service. 
 
 " There's the military ; " said his wife, " and I had better 
 go down and open the door. For they won't shoot a woman." 
 
 " Shoot me ! " exclaimed her husband. " Shoot me, that 
 fought for them all through the war ! I'll show them my 
 Mons ribbon and my discharges, and that will settle them. 
 They'll know I'm no ' Sbinner.' " 
 
 65 
 
66 "on my keeping " — AND in theirs 
 
 Whereupon he attired himself in his tramway uniform 
 and went down and opened the door. An officer and a 
 number of soldiers rushed in and held him up. 
 
 " You're James Graham," said the officer. 
 
 " No, I'm not," was the answer. " I'm John Graham." 
 
 " Hello," cried the officer, turning his flashlight on the 
 tramway buttons, " why, here you have the I.R.A. uniform 
 actually on you ! " 
 
 The officer had evidently dined that evening — not wisely 
 but too well — and he lurched up against a barometer in the 
 hall. He pulled himself together, and with the instinct of 
 a man in such a condition to try and appear natural, he 
 drawled : " That's a useful thing." 
 
 " Yes," replied Graham, " it tells the truth. It says 
 ' Change/ and there's a change here to-night." 
 
 " None of your dry, Irish wit, Paddy," was the unsym- 
 pathetic response. " Get into the lorry ! " 
 
 So the Mons hero was forthwith lifted into the waiting 
 motor, and bundled off unceremoniously to Holywood 
 Barracks. 
 
 When, some weeks later, he was handed his Internment 
 Order in Ballykinlar, it was made out in the name of 
 " James Graham," showing that it was clearly the wrong 
 man they had. 
 
 " That's not for me at all," he said to the Iyine Officer. 
 " My name is not James Graham." 
 
 " And what is your name ? " demanded the other. 
 
 " John Graham." 
 
 " All right." 
 
 Upon which the officer took the Order, scored out 
 " James " and wrote " John " above it, although it was 
 supposed to be a copy of an original document signed by 
 Ivord French. 
 
 Then he handed it back to the prisoner. 
 
A TRAINING CAMP 67 
 
 How the unfortunate Belfast man used to con that 
 document ! He would put down his bed in the middle of 
 the day, and, throwing himself on it in tribulation of soul, 
 he would read again and again the stern rebuke addressed 
 to him by the gallant old gentleman whom he had once 
 followed with such alacrity on the memorable retreat from 
 Mons : — 
 
 " Whereas you are suspected of acting, having acted, 
 or being about to act in a manner prejudicial to the 
 restoration and maintenance of order in Ireland ! " 
 
 " Speak not of grief till thou hast seen the tears of warlike 
 men," says the poet ; and hard, indeed, would be the heart 
 that would not be riven with sympathy at poor Graham's 
 wail of desolation : — 
 
 " Think of me lying here, and the other b ruff an 
 
 drinking pints outside ! " 
 
 Afterwards he was brought out before the Advisory 
 Committee. 
 
 " We observe, Mr. Graham/' said Judge Ross across the 
 table, fumbling amongst a bundle of police reports that 
 evidently related to the elusive James, " that you are a 
 member of the Patrick Pearse Club and are a Captain." 
 
 " Sowl," was the rejoinder, " that's quick promotion ! " 
 
 In addition to utterly grotesque cases of this sort, the 
 military sent to Ballykinlar quite a number of men who 
 could hardly have been described as Sinn Peine rs at all 
 There they were brought inco contact with men of the most 
 advanced national views, subjected to the influence of Sinn 
 Fein propaganda in its most enticing form, plunged into a 
 Sinn Fein atmosphere, disciplined, educated, drilled by 
 Irish Republican Army officers, and generally made good 
 Irishmen of by their internment. 
 
 The grand thing about all this was that it was done at 
 the expense of the British Treasury ; and the wasteful way 
 
68 " ON MY KEEPING M — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 in which the Camp was run — though the wastefulness did 
 not result in any direct benefit to us — was a great consolation 
 to me during the period of my incarceration. 
 
 In short, the British taxpayer provided the I.R.A. with 
 a training camp and fed and clothed our soldiers during 
 their stay in it. 
 
 For five months we drilled and went through evolutions 
 for which we would have got two years' imprisonment out- 
 side the wires. Then the military G.H.Q. wakened up and 
 forbade company drill ; but they could not prevent our 
 officers' special classes nor the teaching of the various 
 technical subjects that helped to make our men more 
 efficient soldiers. The very discipline to which the military 
 themselves subjected us was a valuable training in itself ; 
 and some of the stupid junior " khaki " officers, who were 
 most rigid in having the Camp regulations complied with 
 to the letter, would have been surpri, ed, and probably 
 disgusted, had they learned that they were doing the very 
 thing that the prisoners' leaders were most anxious should 
 be done. 
 
 The stories of high emprise and daring deeds and splendid 
 courage that circulated round the hut stoves at night, 
 between " I^ock-up " and " Lights-out," were in themselves 
 calculated to make soldiers of the young men who came 
 from districts where as yet there had been no active fighting. 
 
 We heard most amazing narratives from the men from 
 Cork and Tipperary and Clare ; and amid the seriousness 
 and grimness of it all you always found the touch of comedy. 
 Thus the story of the police barracks captured by the ass ; 
 for the truth of which Mr. O' Grady ot the Clare County 
 Council vouched to me. 
 
 It was a wayside barracks and the donkey had been 
 meandering along the road at night. Probably feeling itchy, 
 as even donkeys sometimes do — although they are never 
 
A TRAINING CAMP 69 
 
 sent to jails or internment camps — the poor brute got up 
 against the barracks door and began to rub himself. 
 
 We all know the conditions of nerves in which the bulk 
 of the Irish police lived after the attacks on the country- 
 barracks began ; and in this case the guard, possibly 
 awakened from a sleep, assumed that the noise at the door 
 meant an assault. He, therefore, aroused his comrades, and 
 they, seizing their rifles, began to fire wildly out of the 
 windows, and sent up signal lights to summon aid. The 
 military rushed out on a lorry from the neighbouring town, 
 and, when they got insight of the barracks, the police were 
 still firing from it. The relieving party thereupon assumed 
 that the barracks had been captured, and that it was the 
 Volunteers who were firing from it. They, therefore, opened 
 fire on the building themselves ; and between them and the 
 police they demolished it. 
 
 Whatever men were, therefore, when they went into 
 Ballykinlar Internment Camp, very few of them, I think, 
 but have been transformed into Sinn Feiners by their stay 
 there. And the grand thing about it was, I have said, that 
 the British Treasury paid for it all. Those who control the 
 old Empire's policy do such stupid things that one can only 
 marvel at how they muddle through in spite of everything. 
 And yet they do — only they are not going to do it in Ireland 
 this time. They have never been up against a proposition 
 like Sinn Fein. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 EDUCATIONAL WORK IN THE CAMP. 
 
 No doubt part of the object of the British Government in 
 locking us in a cage was to demoralise us ; and the intern- 
 ment system is well designed for that purpose. It is 
 admirably calculated to turn useful, energetic citizens into 
 lazy, spiritless, good-for-nothing creatures, without initiative 
 or sense of responsibility, and utterly selfish. 
 
 From this fate our men were saved, first through the 
 divine influence of our religion, and secondly by the human 
 agency of the educational and other useful work that was 
 carried on in the Camp. 
 
 I have already spoken of our chaplain, Father' Mclyister, 
 and how he worked and spent himself, day in, day out, to 
 provide us with facilities for advancing in the spiritual 
 life. We shall not readily forget his thoughtfulness and 
 kindness and abiding interest in us ; and when we come to 
 the Great Accounting it may be well that, for the most of 
 us, the period in our lives for which we have most to show 
 and least to answer will be the months we spent under his 
 pastorate. 
 
 The splendid educational work that was carried on in the 
 Camp was due largely to the zeal and energy of Henry 
 Dixon, of Dublin, backed wholeheartedly, as he was in his 
 schemes, by the Commandant, Joe McGrath. Mr. Dixon 
 saw very clearly the necessity of countering the enemy's 
 design in our regard by using the period of leisure, which 
 was given us for our demoralisation, as an opportunity for 
 
 70 
 
EDUCATIONAL WORK IN THE CAMP 71 
 
 our mental and physical improvement. These jottings are 
 nothing if not candid ; and so I have no hesitation in saying 
 that, had it not been for Mr. Dixon's zeal and persistency 
 and vision, the time of a lot of men in Ballykinlar would have 
 been for all practical purposes wasted: For the Camp 
 Council showed no capacity to understand the value of 
 educational work for the prisoners, and made no effort 
 to provide facilities for their mental improvement. Thus, 
 we had no reading room ; and it was utterly impossible to 
 work properly in huts which were each used for all purposes 
 by twenty-five men. I am convinced that, had sufficient 
 pressure been brought to bear on the military, a room for 
 reading and study would have been provided. I understand 
 that there was one in No. 2 Camp. But though some of us 
 brought the matter before members of the Council more 
 than once they never seemed to advert to the importance 
 of it. 
 
 Mr. Dixon's boundless energy, however, more than made 
 up for the Council's lethargy, and, as I have said, the 
 Prisoners' Commandant gave him every assistance in his 
 power. The result was that in a short time we had Irish 
 Classes for men of every province and every stage of know- 
 ledge, Shorthand and Book-keeping Classes, conducted by 
 Professor Tracey, of Sligo ; Singing, Fiddle, and Piano 
 Classes, and little circles for the study of French and Classics. 
 
 As regards the Irish Classes, it must be confessed that, 
 though nothing could surpass the zeal of that splendid Gael, 
 Sean O'Hea, and of Messrs. Dolan, Bannon and the other 
 teachers, the classes were not as well or as regularly attended 
 as one would have desired. It is an indisputable fact that 
 there are plenty of good Irish Republicans who have not yet 
 grasped the full scope and significance of Irish Nationalism. 
 When we have secured our political freedom, the real work 
 of freeing Ireland will only have begun. For we shall then 
 
7 2 ■ ON MY KEEPING " — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 have 1g set ourselves to the task of freeing oui hearts and 
 souls and minds from alien influences. I met many young 
 men in Ballykinlar who, undoubtedly, would have died foi 
 Ireland without a moment's hesitation, and yet who could 
 not be induced to give a few hours every week to the study 
 of their country's language and literature. I always felt 
 that there was too much force in the 'clever taunt of my 
 Unionist friend, H. W. I^ech, solicitor, of Coleraine, who 
 once said to me : "I would soon settle the Irish Question, 
 if I were in power. I would give you your Republic on condi- 
 tion that everybody in Ireland would have to learn Irish 
 within two years. You would find what a slump there would 
 be in your Republican stock then." 
 
 I do not wish to convey the impression, of course, that 
 this slackness in regard to Irish was universal amongst us. 
 On the contrary, there were a very large number of very 
 earnest and very self-sacrificing students. Nobody could 
 have worked harder to acquire a knowledge of the national 
 language than my fellow-hutsmen, Mick Dowling and Tom 
 Nolan ; and even men of more mature years, like Mr. Brett, 
 of the Westmeath County Council, displayed an earnestness 
 and an enthusiasm in the matter that must have been an 
 inspiration to many of the young. But when all was said 
 and done, there might have been more of that sort. 
 
 Mr. Dixon's zeal did not stop merely at providing classes 
 for the study of special subjects. Indeed, his energy was 
 rather terrifying to lazy people like myself, because you 
 never knew into what fresh ameliorative field of effort he 
 was going to land you. He was constantly appearing on 
 the horizon, pencil and note-book in hand, and ready to 
 take names for some new class. At one time so many fresh 
 educational schemes were being launched that the wicked 
 brains of Jerry Mulvey and myself conceived the idea of 
 getting a fist of names for a class for " Pelmanism." We 
 
EDUCATIONAL WORK IN THE CAMP 73 
 
 had a great little lecture prepared for the huts, in the course 
 of which we were going to point out that all the successful 
 men and women of the age, from Mary Pickford and Lloyd 
 George to our distinguished fellow- prisoner, Paddy McCrann, 
 of Lanesboro', owed their success in life to their study of 
 " Pelmanism." But the " stunt " fell through because we 
 could get nobody to father it. Jerry and I had such a bad 
 reputation in the Camp that our appearance in connection 
 with it would have damned it right off ; and though we 
 tried to get Seaghan McGrath of London, when he arrived 
 amongst us, to carry through the idea, he did not rise to 
 the occasion. 
 
 I have already said that the foundation of our Public 
 Boards' Association was due to the suggestion of Mr. Dixon 
 and Mr. O' Grady. It did not last as long as was hoped ; 
 but during its existence we had a fine paper on the duties 
 of a Chairman from one of the brainiest men in the Camp, 
 my witty and interesting companion of many walks inside 
 those wires, where he and O'Dwyer of Omeath and Tipperary 
 and myself traversed so many weary leagues together — 
 Mr. Joe McKinley, of Dundalk. This provoked a long and 
 lively discussion ; and then we had another very useful 
 and informative paper on the Amalgamation of Unions and 
 the general reform of the whole Irish Poor Law System 
 from Mr. Bartley, Clerk of the Oldcastle Union. 
 
 Another of Mr. Dixon's ideas, the formation of a Camp 
 Farmers' Union, worked out better still. Mr. P. J. Hogan, 
 solicitor, delivered a very instructive lecture at one of its 
 meetings on the dead meat trade in its relations to Ireland. 
 At another meeting my brother, John, read a paper on 
 Co-operation in Farming ; and Mr. Hogan, from Dublin, 
 delivered a very instructive address on Horticulture. 
 
 These lectures were followed by interesting and some- 
 times veiy lively discussions. Eamonn Cooney, of Belfast, a 
 
74 ON MY KEEPING — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 disciple of Daney McDevitt's, sought to use the occasion 
 of these debates as an opportunity to preach Socialism ; 
 and those ill-informed outsiders in England and elsewhere, 
 who regard Sinn Fein as another name for Bolshevism, 
 would have their eyes opened had they been there to see 
 how unpopular friend Cooney's doctrines were inside that 
 cage. Of course there is no place in the world where 
 Socialism would be likely to make such little headway as 
 in agricultural Catholic Ireland, out of which the bulk of 
 our prisoneis came. 
 
 In dealing with Mr. Dixon's work for the well-being of 
 the Camp it should also be stated that, beside providing 
 educational facilities for the prisoners, he was very good 
 in seeking to secure for us means of amusement. He procured 
 medals for football competitions, got in sets of chessmen, 
 and arranged chess and draught competitions that enabled 
 us to pass with interest what would otherwise have been 
 many a weary hour. In addition, he arranged for a Camp 
 Library, which he managed with the assistance of Mr. 
 Dillon, of Hut 18. 
 
 Thus did the " Murder Gang," as Sir Hamar Greenwood 
 loved to call us, pass their leisure hours within the cage 
 where he had locked us for our country's good. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE SHOOTINGS. 
 
 WE were amongst the last batch of prisoners to arrive at 
 No. I. Camp ; and a few days after our coming No. 2 Camp 
 was opened and began to fill up rapidly. Portion of this 
 camp adjoined ours and was only separated from us by 
 a barbed wire fence. Along this fence on our side was a 
 macadamised road, which we used as a promenade. As 
 was naturally to be expected, we were in the habit of talking 
 through the fence to our acquaintances on the other side, 
 and at first no objection was made to this practice. Some- 
 times, however, groups would gather on each side, and in 
 their eagerness to get talking with each other prisoners 
 would occasionally get very close to the wires. We were 
 forbidden to approach within arm's reach of the fence ; 
 and when they considered that we were too near, the sentries 
 would order us back. 
 
 In the beginning the thing was done in a good-natured 
 sort of way ; but then we noticed that the sentries were 
 getting rather aggressive. We believed that they were 
 acting under the inspiration of some of their junior officers^ 
 as somebody overheard one of these say to a sentry, who 
 complained to him that the prisoners were coming too 
 close : " You have your rifle and you know what it is for ! " 
 
 Finally, two or three shots were fired by sentries on differ- 
 ent occasions ; and one of these, at least, was fired at a time 
 when there was nobody nearer the wires than the middle 
 of the road. Our Commandant, Patrick Colgan, complained 
 
 75 
 
7^ " ON MY KEEPING" — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 to the British Commandant of the action of the sentiies ; 
 but the latter pooh-poohed the idea that the shots were 
 fired to hit. Mr. Colgan said that, if it was not permitted to 
 the prisoners to speak into the other camp, or even to use 
 the road, Colonel Iyittle had only to say so, and an order 
 would forthwith be issued by the prisoners' Commandant 
 to that effect. But the Colonel said that he did not wish 
 any such thing, that he did not expect impossibilities, and 
 that the prisoners were quite at liberty to use the road for 
 any purpose so long as they did not approach any nearer 
 than within three feet of the wires. 
 
 On Sunday evening, the 16th January, we learned that 
 a prisoner was going to be executed in Cork Gaol the following 
 morning. We had a special Rosary for him that evening 
 in the Church and special prayers for him at Mass the 
 following morning. Amongst those who offered up their 
 prayers for him on that morning were Patrick Sloan and 
 Joseph Tormey ; but, all unknown to themselves, it was at 
 their own Requiem they were assisting. For the prisoner 
 in Cork was reprieved, and before the sun had set they 
 themselves bad fallen to a British bullet. 
 
 Just about mid-day on that day (Monday) I was in my 
 hut when I heard a shot ring out. I paid no attention to 
 it at first, for shots from sentries were beginning to get 
 common, as I have explained. Then, I saw somebody 
 running, and the news came along the line that two men 
 were killed. When I got up beside Hut n I found that 
 practically the whole camp had gathered and that the men 
 were on their knees saying the Rosary. It was a moment 
 of terrible excitement and deep emotion ; and the sight of 
 our two comrades lying in their blood was something 
 calculated to sweep off their feet the calmest of men. I 
 never heard that during the great European war was the 
 allegation made in respect of Germans, Turks, Bulgars, 
 
THE SHOOTINGS 77 
 
 Frenchmen, Englishmen, or anybody else that they had shot, 
 out of hand, unarmed and defenceless prisoners behind 
 barbed wire ; and everybody was so stirred by the brutality 
 of the affair that anything might have happened that day. 
 
 The situation was saved by the careful handling of 
 Commandant Colgan, and possibly a greater tragedy averted. 
 With a fine instinct for leadership which he showed, he 
 brought us through the first critical minutes, that succeeded 
 the tragedy, with dignity and calmness. Father Mclyister, 
 who was fortunately at hand when the shot was fired and 
 who had rushed immediately to the assistance of the dying 
 men, gave out the Rosary when the last of them had expired, 
 and then the two corpses were carried on a stretcher to the 
 temporary camp morgue. It was a sad sight to see those who 
 a few minutes before had been so full of life, with all the 
 bloom and glory of their radiant youth shining from them, 
 now lying stiff and stark ; and our hearts were sore for their 
 relatives, knowing what anguish would be theirs when the 
 news would reach them. Especially did we feel sorry for 
 Patrick Sloan's young bride, for he had only been married 
 a week before his arrest. 
 
 But tragedies of the sort were then the commonplaces 
 of Irish life. Our Commandant and Council promptly 
 took the steps that the occasion required. They demanded 
 an inquest and prepared telegrams for despatch to the 
 relatives of the deceased, to one or two people in Dublin, 
 and to Mr. T. M. Healy, whom it was intended to retain 
 to represent the next-of-kin at the inquest. Our fellow- 
 prisoner, Mr. P. J. Hogan, was nominated solicitor to act 
 for the next-of-kin and the prisoners. 
 
 It was clear, however, that the military were going to 
 make a most determined effort to hush up the whole awful 
 business. A report, obviously inspired, appeared in the 
 Belfast Telegraph to the effect that the men had been shot 
 
yS ,: 0N MY KEEPING " — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 because they had got too near the wires — the inference 
 being that they had been trying to escape. This went the 
 round of the other papers and created an entirely false 
 impression outside. 
 
 Furthermore, our demand for an inquest was refused 
 although the district was not a " Martial I^aw area " and 
 the holding of inquests had not yet so far as I was aware 
 been prohibited anywhere within the Six North-Eastern 
 Counties. Practically all the telegrams that we tried to 
 despatch were held up, although the British Commandant 
 had promised that they would be sent, and Mr. Hogan was 
 refused permission to communicate with Mr. Tim Healy or 
 any other Counsel. There we were, then, held in the grip of 
 a rigid censorship; and it was absolutely impossible for us to 
 make clear to the public what had really happened. 
 
 All that the Camp authorities proposed to do was to hold 
 a military inquiry. But as this was not open to the Press, 
 and as Mr. Hogan's application to communicate with and 
 instruct Counsel in the matter was not acceded to, he very 
 properly refused to have anything to do with such a farcical 
 proceeding. 
 
 Of course the shooting could not be justified in any 
 way ; and the military knew that. I did not see the men 
 actually fall ; but I saw the pools of blood where they had 
 been lying, and it was clear from the rjosition of these and 
 from the statements of other prisoners that they had not 
 been near the wires when they were shot. One of them 
 was standing at the back of Hut n well over on the 
 grass on the camp side of the road. The other was either 
 on the grass or at the edge of it ; and the breadth of a fairly 
 wide road separated him from the fence. Dr. Higgins told 
 me that when the shot rang out he and Major Kyle, of the 
 R.A.M.C, were in the Hospital. On hearing the report 
 the Major looked out of the window at which they were 
 
THE SHOOTINGS 79 
 
 standing and which commanded a view of the road and 
 remarked : " Well, there's nobody on the road, at any rate." 
 
 Even had the two deceased men been at the wires there 
 would have been no justification for shooting them. For 
 obviously the only cause that might justify the shooting of 
 an unarmed prisoner would be an attempt to escape ; and 
 this element could in no circumstances enter into this 
 case. For even by crossing the wires at the place in question 
 the prisoners would in no way be facilitating their escape, 
 as they would only be getting into another " cage " equally 
 strongly guarded as the one they had left. 
 
 As a matter of fact the plea of being too near the wires 
 was abandoned once it had served the purpose of creating 
 a false impression in the beginning ; and in the official report 
 issued by Dublin Castle and published in the Irish daily 
 papers of the 9th February, 192 1, there is not a hint of 
 it. This official report shows so clearly the unjustifiable 
 nature of the shooting, and is so illuminative of the mentality 
 of the British militarists and of their methods in Ireland 
 that I quote it in full, so that they may be condemned out 
 of their own mouths. It is as follows : — 
 
 " A court of inquiry, in lieu of an inquest prohibited 
 by Regulation 81, D.O.R.R., assembled at Ballykinlar 
 Camp on the bodies of Patrick Sloan and Joe Tormey, 
 who were killed on January 17th, 1921. 
 
 " Several military witnesses deposed to the fact that 
 a number of men in two adjoining cages persisted in 
 communicating with each other, despite the repeated 
 warnings of a sentry. 
 
 "They eventually dispersed, only to collect after 
 short intervals and to continue to disobey the orders 
 given by the sentry, who considered himself forced to 
 
80 "ON MY KEEPING ' ' — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 fire one round in the execution of his duty in order to 
 ensure their dispersal. 
 
 " Medical evidence showed that the bullet hit Tormey 
 on the right side of the head, and passing through hit 
 Sloan in the neck. 
 
 " The Court found Joe Tormey and Patrick Sloan 
 died from shock and hemorrhage caused by gunshot 
 wounds inflicted by a sentry in the execution of his 
 duty, and was a case of justifiable homicide. 
 
 " Every facility was extended to any of the internees 
 who desired to give evidence before the Court, but none 
 availed themselves of the opportunity." 
 
 From this it appears that the military case was that 
 the men were shot — not for attempting to escape or for 
 even approaching the wires, for these pleas could not be 
 sustained — but for talking with comrades in the other camp. 
 Now, if there was a technical camp rule against this, it had 
 fallen into disuse, and there was the express statement of 
 the British Commandant to ours that he did not object 
 to conversation between the camps, so long as the prisoners 
 did not get too close to the wires. But even assuming the 
 full force of the rule, the violation of it would only be the 
 breach of a camp regulation, and the maximum penalty 
 for this according to these same regulations was fourteen 
 days in the cells. Shooting an unarmed prisoner out of hand 
 for the breach of a rule for which a man could only be 
 awarded fourteen days' imprisonment — and this after a 
 fair trial — was, therefore, in the view of a court of British 
 officers a case of " justifiable homicide." Nay, this was 
 also the view of the British Government, for the Freeman 
 of February 17th, 1921, contained the following instructive 
 item : — 
 
THE SHOOTINGS 8l 
 
 " In the House of Commons last evening Mr. McVeagh 
 asked whether any action had been taken in the case 
 of the soldier who shot two interned prisoners at Bally- 
 kinlar Camp. 
 
 "Sir H. Greenwood : A Military Court of Inquiry, 
 held in lieu of an inquest, found that no blame attached to 
 the soldier who fired in the execution of his duty. No 
 action of a disciplinary character is, therefore, called for, 
 and none has been taken." 
 
 All of which lends force to Tolstoy's dictum, that the 
 English are the most barbarous of all peoples calling them- 
 selves civilised ! 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE STRIKE. 
 
 After the shootings and the controversy about the inquest, 
 relations became very strained between our Staff and the 
 military. Colgan and Hogan held on to the British Com- 
 mandant like leeches with their claim for a full and public 
 investigation of the circumstances under which our two 
 comrades were done to death ; and their demand was pressed 
 with such skill and pertinacity that the Camp authorities 
 were obviously becoming worried as to how they were 
 going to resist it. 
 
 Eventually, they seem to have decided on a counter- 
 attack. Hogan was arrested one day on the charge of 
 having British currency in his pocket ; and though he was 
 only detained a few hours in the cells, and his arrest may 
 not have been made as part of a deliberate policy, still it 
 proved to be an indication of what was to follow. 
 
 Shortly after the opening of the Camp Dr. Higgins had, 
 as the result of an arrangement between the prisoners' officers 
 and the military, taken charge of the Hospital for us. Some 
 differences had arisen between him and the R.A.M.C. 
 staff ; and on the very morning after the shooting he was 
 directed by the British Commandant to leave the Hospital. 
 Apart from the merits of the dispute between Higgins and 
 the R.A.M.C, about which I know nothing, it seemed a 
 natural thing for the military to try and get him out of the 
 Hospital, if their policy of hushing up the shooting was 
 going to be completely successful. He had rushed to the 
 
 82 
 
THE STRIKE 83 
 
 assistance of the men when they were shot, and had taken 
 part in the post-mortem examination of their remains. 
 Therefore, he was the most essential witness that could 
 be called in regard to the tragedy ; and if he remained on 
 as the Doctor in charge of the Hospital the Camp authorities 
 could not very well get over, at least, bringing him before 
 the Military Court of Inquiry, if it was not going to be an 
 utterly farcical investigation. Of course, I am not saying 
 that Dr. Higgins would have given evidence before a court 
 of inquiry so constituted and conducted. But it was the 
 duty of the Camp authorities to bring him before it, at 
 least, if it was going to be taken seriously by anybody. 
 
 About eight or ten days after Dr. Higgins's leaving the 
 Hospital, a prisoner from No. 2 Camp, Dr. Leonard, was 
 brought over and ordered by Colonel Little to take charge 
 cf the Hospital. He obeyed the order ; and on the morning 
 after his arrival his presence in the Hospital was reported 
 by some of the prisoners to our Council. This was an issue 
 on which a fight would clearly have to be put up as, of 
 course, the military had no more right to order an untried 
 prisoner to do medical work than they would have had 
 to take me out and ask me to prepare, free of charge, a 
 conveyance of a piece of property they had bought. Com- 
 mandant Colgan, therefore, ordered Dr. Leonard to cease 
 work, and he wrote a letter to Colonel Little in which he 
 said that as Dr. Leonard had not been appointed by the 
 prisoners' Commandant he could not be permitted to remain 
 in charge of the Hospital. That letter went out on a Monday 
 Evening. , 
 
 On the same evening Hut 12 had been ordered to 
 pack up and be ready to move on the following morning. 
 Thereon hangs another tale. Some weeks before this the 
 military had intended to take out of this hut a prisoner 
 who was wanted. I think, in connection with a capital 
 
84 "on my keeping " — AND in theirs 
 
 charge. It may seem incredible to anyone who has had 
 no experience of army stupidity that it should be possible 
 to lock inside a barbed wire cage a prisoner, and then lose 
 him there. But that is exactly what happened in this case. 
 In some mysterious way the " wanted " man disappeared 
 inside the Camp, although the total number of prisoners 
 remained the same ; and the military took out for trial a 
 different man against whom they could make no charge ox 
 any kind. 
 
 When it was announced that Hut 12 was under marching 
 orders, it was assumed that all the men in it were going to 
 be brought up to Dublin for identification, in the hope of 
 finding amongst them the lost man, although he was not 
 in the hut at this time at all. This assumption proved to 
 be incorrect, because it was some weeks later before they 
 really discovered in Mount joy that the prisoner who had 
 been brought up from Ballykinlar — an exceedingly plucky 
 lad named Slowey, who might easily have been hanged by 
 mistake — was not the man intended ; and, as a matter of 
 fact, as it afterwards transpired, it was only proposed to 
 remove the occupants of Hut 12 down to No. 2 Camp, as 
 the hut was going to be used as a dispensary. 
 
 However, we all thought that Hut 12 was in for a bad 
 time, and at Mass that morning we offered up a special 
 joint prayer for a u safe journey for Hut 12." 
 
 When we came out of the church the sensational news 
 passed round amongst us that our Commandant had been 
 arrested during the night. The counter-attack had opened. 
 
 The Council met hurriedly after breakfast. It was learned 
 that Colgan had been arrested on account of his action 
 in ordering Dr. Leouard to cease work and by reason of 
 what the enemy regarded as his " impertinent " letter to 
 the British O.C. The Council very properly decided that 
 the occasion was one for an effective protest, and it agreed 
 that a fi>ht should be pftit ttr>. 
 
THE STRIKE 85 
 
 The intention of the military to remove Hut 12 seemed 
 to offer a favourable point on which to open the struggle. 
 
 " They have arrested our Commandant," said the leader 
 of the War Party on the Council, " and we are all agreed 
 that a protest should be made. Here's an opportunity to 
 hand. Let us prevent them removing Hut 12." 
 
 His idea was adopted, and an order was issued that Hut 
 12 should go " on the run." 
 
 Then we witnessed an amusing sight. You would see a 
 fellow peeping out of the door of Hut 12 to see if any 
 sentries were watching ; and if there were none he would 
 dash out of the hut with his bag in his hand and race across 
 the " compound " to another hut. A few minutes later 
 you would see his bed-boards and blankets being taken out 
 of one of the windows at the side of the hut and hurriedly 
 removed out of sight. It seemed the very acme of comedy 
 to see twenty-five men go "on the run " inside about ten 
 acres of a " cage." But before the week had closed there 
 was even more ridiculous developments. 
 
 At 11 o'clock each day we had " Inspection." On these 
 occasions the British Line Officer used to be accompanied 
 by a sergeant and escort of two men. As they came to the 
 door of each hut the sergeant would shout in strident 
 tones, " Stand to your cots." And we stood beside our 
 beds whilst we were being inspected. 
 
 On this memorable morning the Line Officer and his 
 escort of bayonets came to the door of Hut 12. 
 
 " Stand to your cots ! " shouted the sergeant. 
 
 " But," as he told the tale afterwards in a Cockney 
 accent, adorned with soldier expletives and adjectives that 
 my chaste page will not receive, " when I looked round the 
 blooming show, there was neither cots nor men. The 
 blighters had disappeared." 
 
 It was great fun to watch the amazed crestfallen face of 
 
86 "on my keeping " — AND in theirs 
 
 the Officer as he came out of the hut. Where, oh where, 
 had Hut 12 gone ? 
 
 In order to cover the tracks of the twenty- five men " on 
 the run " our Council had to take another step that was 
 a corollary to the first one. 
 
 They issued an order that all prisoners were to refuse 
 to answer their names either at roll call or otherwise. The 
 military had only got to know a few of the more prominent 
 figures in the Camp by sight, and if there was a general 
 refusal to answer names it would be impossible for them to 
 discover the whereabouts of the missing men. They might 
 find twenty-six men in a particular hut, but if everybody 
 refused to give his own name or that of anyone else it would 
 be impossible for the British Officer to say which man did 
 not really belong to the hut. 
 
 At the same time all our Executive Officers — Line 
 Captains and the rest — resigned their positions so far as 
 their relations with the military and their co-operation 
 with them in the running of the- Camp was concerned. 
 
 So the issue was fairly knit. We said : " Until our Com- 
 mandant is restored to us, we refuse to allow you to remove 
 Hut 12, and our officers will not co-operate with you in 
 running the Camp. Furthermore, no prisoner will answer 
 his name for any purpose." 
 
 It was a daring attitude to take up, considering that there 
 we were, unarmed and utterly defenceless, inside a cage 
 surrounded with bayonets and machine guns, and at a time, 
 too, when it had been clearly demonstrated by the burning 
 of Cork and the numerous murders by the armed forces of 
 the King of England all over Ireland that the British Govern- 
 ment might commit in Ireland any villainy it pleased 
 without being hampered by any really effective protest from 
 world opinion. But our leaders had led us into a fight, and 
 we made up our minds to stand by them, come what may. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE FIGHT AND THE PEACE. 
 
 It was clear from the start of our struggle that the military 
 were not very keen on a fight. They must have known 
 that they were fighting on an issue that put them in the 
 wrong, as they could not claim to conscript the services 
 of a professional man. Furthermore, they were in this 
 difficulty. Any sort of trouble in the Camp would inevitably 
 attract outside attention to it and be connected in the public 
 mind with the recent shootings, the memory of which the 
 Camp authorities were so anxious to efface. All day on 
 Tuesday, therefore, all sorts of unofficial feelers and 
 negotiations went on ; and Captain Newton, the Chief 
 Censor, who was an exceedingly able man and a very 
 skilful diplomatist, was active in trying to effect a settle- 
 ment. But our officials stood firm. We must get back our 
 Commandant, or the fight would go on. 
 
 Evening came, and found us still at war. The militajy 
 did not know how far we were going to go, and when the 
 time for " I^ock-up " arrived they made the most elaborate 
 preparations to deal with what they termed " the Mutiny." 
 Of course, our officers were too good soldiers to allow us, 
 unarmed and defenceless men, to do anything that would 
 give the enemy an excuse for shooting us. We were to go 
 to our huts at the proper time, and to obey every order 
 except the one to answer our names. But the British 
 Commandant and his Staff did not know to what length 
 our resistance was likely to proceed ; and we were greatly 
 
 87 
 
88 "on my keeping '* — AND in theirs 
 
 amused to see tbe careful military arrangements that 
 were made to round us up and get us into our huts when 
 the time for retirement came. It was a fine piece of comedy 
 to see the soldiers in "extended order" coming down along our 
 line of huts and watching to see where our attack would come 
 from. All the weapons that we had were our knives and 
 forks ; and we were not such simpletons as to try their 
 effectiveness against rifles and bayonets and machine guns. 
 
 When the task of locking us up securely had been 
 completed, the Line Officers, heavily escorted, made their 
 rounds of the huts. They were evidently instructed not 
 to force the fight. For in most of the huts they did not 
 call the roll at all. They simply counted the men to see 
 that they had the full number ; and then they read us a 
 proclamation addressed to us by the Military O.C. 
 
 It was a weak document, couched in the style of the famous 
 " Oh, People of Bagdad " proclamation of the Great War. 
 The writer wished us to understand that he had only been 
 thinking and planning for our comfort. Finding that the 
 mass of us were disposed to be well conducted he had secured 
 for us many privileges — the right to receive unlimited letters 
 and parcels, extension of the " Lock-up " time, a canteen, 
 etc. In pursuance of his desire for our welfare he had brought 
 over a doctor of our own from the other camp to look after 
 our health. But this doctor, though quite willing to work 
 for us, had been prevented from doing so by one Patrick 
 Colgan. " The said Patrick Colgan" had "on different other 
 occasions " obstructed the military in their management 
 of the Camp, and the O.C. had been reluctantly compelled 
 to place him under arrest. Some evil disposed persons 
 had taken advantage of the occasion to foment a mutiny 
 and in consequence, though he regretted having to punish 
 the innocent with the guilty, the O.C. had to withdraw all 
 the prisoners' privileges. The Canteen had, therefore, been 
 
THE FIGHT AND THE PEACE 89 
 
 closed, and letters and parcels would be cut off. Further- 
 more, the offices of Commandant and Vice- Commandant 
 were abolished for all time. But, of course, once we returned 
 to a better frame of mind and threw over " the said Patrick 
 Colgan " and the other evil disposed persons, who had 
 constituted themselves our leaders, all our other privileges 
 would be restored to us. 
 
 The only effect the proclamation had on us was to give 
 us a good laugh when the officer had retired and locked us 
 in. It was about as silly an attempt to influence public 
 opinion as the messages they used to drop from aeroplanes, 
 with a view to inducing the rank and file of the I.R.A. to 
 turn on their leaders. When will English statesmen and 
 publicists learn that the yearning for nationhood is an 
 instinct in the Irish heart that neither argument nor 
 propaganda can eradicate ? 
 
 If we had men " on the run " in the Camp during the 
 day, we had further replica of outside conditions during 
 the night. For there were a whole series of " raids." Several 
 huts were entered during the night by armed soldfers, and 
 men who were supposed to be leaders of the " mutiny " 
 were arrested and taken out to the cells. Some of the officers 
 conducted themselves very badly during these raids. They 
 were not sure of the men whom they were arresting, and the 
 refusal of everybody to answer questions exasperated them 
 very much. In some cases they arrested the wrong men, 
 and generally made a mess of things. 
 
 The following morning very elaborate searches were 
 made in a number of the huts, and we were kept in till long 
 after the usual time. 
 
 When our Line Officer got our length he was accompanied 
 by the lieutenant whom I have already referred to by his 
 camp name of " Judas." The latter had evidently been 
 raiding during the night, and from want of sleep and 
 
90 "ON MY KEEPING — AND IN THEIKS 
 
 indignation at the calm way in which the prisoners were 
 refusing to answer names in spite of threats and assaults, 
 he was in a vile temper. He pulled down a few books from 
 our shelves and threw them on the floor. Then he made 
 a drive for John Creed's bag, opened it and scattered its 
 contents on the floor, for all the world like the way my 
 eighteen months' old baby was wont to throw her doll 
 from her if you sought to divert her attention by it when 
 she was crying for something she could not get. Later on 
 in the morning I saw the shocking condition in which 
 Hut 2 had been left by " Judas " and his friends. It was 
 a great object-lesson to me of the present condition of the 
 British Army when it has to depend on officers of that type. 
 
 Through Wednesday and Thursday the struggle went on. 
 Each night there would be some further arrests designed, 
 no doubt, with a view to getting the leaders and breaking 
 the morale of the men. On the whole, however, the military 
 were not forcing the fight very much, and instead of calling 
 the roll, they contented themselves with counting us at 
 night and in the morning. 
 
 All the time peace feelers were being tried. The Line 
 Captains were brought out on several occasions for 
 consultation, and terms of settlement were offered and 
 discussed. Inside the wires opinion was divided on the 
 question of an arrangement. Soon the whole Camp had 
 divided itself into two parties ; and we abused each other 
 with all that easy facility that comes so naturally to Irish 
 parties always. One body dubbed its opponents the 
 " Suicide Party," whilst the latter retorted by calling the 
 others, " The Peace-at-any-Price Men." In spite of differ- 
 ences of opinion, however, we were all determined to carry 
 out the orders of our Council, no matter how we regarded 
 them. But, of course, each party tried to influence the 
 Council as much as possible, and " lobbying " went on as 
 
THE FIGHT AND THE PEACE 91 
 
 vigorously as at Westminster or Washington or at the 
 Clogheen Board of Guardians where my good friend, Tom 
 Gorman, sits. 
 
 On Friday the Council determined to force the fight. 
 So an order was issued that the locks were to be taken ofi 
 the doors quietly that day. 
 
 When the officers came to lock us up in the evening 
 they found they could not do so ; and they were obviously 
 astounded at this development. Hastily they consulted 
 together, and then they retired outside the wires to report. 
 
 For an hour or so we waited in our huts for developments. 
 Then we saw a large force of soldiers, fully armed and 
 accoutred, marching towards the entrance to the cage. 
 It was pay night with them and many of them were under 
 the influence of drink. They sang and shouted in a threaten- 
 ing manner as they came along, and it looked as if we 
 were in for trouble. 
 
 We heard afterwards that the plan was to drive us at 
 the point of the bayonet into the dining halls and to keep 
 us there for the night. But, of course, we did not know 
 what they were up to, and I confess that I felt far from 
 comfortable at the thought of having these armed men, 
 under the influence of drink, turned loose amongst a camp 
 full of defenceless prisoners towards whom they had been 
 taught to cherish the most bitter feelings of animosity and 
 ill-will. 
 
 I am still convinced that we were in grave peril and that 
 anything might have happened had either the soldiers or 
 even some of the prisoners got out of hand. But the Sacred 
 Heart and the Mother of God and, on the human side, the 
 good sense of Joe McGrath, saved us that night.* 
 
 Joe was a prisoner in the cells and saw the preparations 
 of the soldiers, and realised how easily a tragedy might 
 result. Accordingly he got in touch with Colonel Little 
 
92 ON MY KEEPING — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 or Captain Newton and fixed up the basis for a Conference 
 on the following day. The soldiers weie, therefore, turned 
 back at the gate of the " cage " ; and Colonel Little himself 
 went round every hut in the compound to warn us that 
 we were in danger of being shot if any of us took advantage 
 of the unlocked doors to come out during the night. He 
 made a very good impression by the way he did this, and 
 helped the creation of a " peace atmosphere." On the 
 following day we had a further instalment of comedy. 
 For Joe McGrath and the other prisoners were " released " 
 out of the cells and sent in to the " cage " "on parole " to 
 return to the gate at five in the evening. 
 
 We had thus during the week men " on the run," " raids," 
 and releases " on parole " — all inside an enclosure of about 
 ten acres ! 
 
 Before the " parole " had expired peace terms had been 
 definitely arranged. Colgan was to go to the other camp 
 on the expiration of his sentence ; but the offices of 
 Commandant and Vice- Commandant, which had been 
 abolished with such a flourish, were restored, and we got back 
 our privileges with a promise that some of them would be 
 extended. We also secured other concessions and generally 
 strengthened our position. Joe McGrath was elected our 
 new Commandant and T. F. Fitzpatrick the Vice. 
 
 One joke of the strike deserves commemoration. A 
 prisoner got ill on one of those days, and presented himself 
 at hospital. According to the usual routine the R.A.M.C. 
 Captain asked him his name, his number, his hut, and com- 
 pany, but faithful to the Council's orders he refused to 
 answer any of these questions. The Captain, however, 
 saw that the man was very ill, so he said to the orderly : 
 " Take this man into the ward and enter him up in the 
 book as an Unknown Warrior ! " 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 GETTING IN OUR TIME. 
 
 After the Strike there were no great causes for excitement 
 in the Camp, and day followed day and week followed 
 week with painful monotony. I played chess, and tramped 
 my weary rounds of the "compound," and tried to see all 
 the fun that was going, and circulated all the sensational 
 stories I could pick up, including all the "wonderful" wireless 
 messages my imaginative friend Pat Dempsey use to receive, 
 and scrubbed my clothes when washing day, with all its 
 horrors, arrived, and read, and talked, and idled. But it 
 was all a dreary business, and it was hard to keep oneself 
 from depression at times. 
 
 For the mere physical discomforts of camp life I cared 
 nothing, and I had no sympathy with those who were 
 constantly complaining about the food and the bed-boards 
 and such things. Personally I left the place greatly improved 
 in health. The official ration was not, in my opinion, sufficient 
 in itself to keep a man quite fit ; but the general conditions 
 in our camp were such that soldiers, at least, could not 
 complain of them very much, though they were unduly 
 hard for the elderly men and for some of the civilian 
 internees, many of whom were in delicate health. 
 
 But apart from physical discomfort internment involved 
 terrible mental suffering for a lot of the prisoners. Most 
 of us had dependants, and the uncertainty as to the duration 
 of our detention and anxiety about the fate of our families, 
 if our resources should become exhausted, must have kept 
 
 93 
 
94 "on my keeping " — AND in theirs 
 
 many a man awake at night as he lay on his hard bed 
 and listened to the sentries outside the wires shouting from one 
 to another in wearisome monotone their cry of "All's well." 
 
 Then there were the loneliness and the heart-hunger and 
 the yearning for one's home and for the grasp of friendly 
 hand and the sound of a loved one's voice. I recall how 
 easily one was affected by some simple reference ro home 
 and dear ones. One of my sisters wrote me once and told 
 me how my little boy had awakened from his sleep wildly 
 excited one morning with the cry : " Oh, auntie, I dreamt 
 my father was home ! " And I shed tears over that letter, 
 because it revealed to me so vividly the aching loneliness 
 of those to whom my presence was necessary to make that 
 sacred thing called " Home." I was suffering very little 
 compared with some men in the Camp ; and our sufferings, 
 on the whole, were nothing compared with those of the 
 men and women who were enduring the horrors of penal 
 servitude and long terms of imprisonment ; whilst even 
 they were getting off more easily than many who were being 
 tortured outside, and who saw their houses burned to the 
 ground and their sons shot like dogs almost before their 
 eyes. What an arithmetician he would be who could tot 
 up the sum of all the sufferings that the people of Ireland 
 have had to endure at the hands of the British Government 
 even in the short term since Sir Hamar Greenwood assumed 
 office. But it is recorded somewhere, and atonement must 
 always be made for sin ! 
 
 We did our best to vary the monotony of Camp life with 
 games and concerts and every other form of recreation 
 that was open to us. We had a very fine concert for the 
 Emmet Anniversary. There were one or two very good 
 musicians amongst the prisoners and some fine voices ; 
 and these raised both this concert and the one we had on 
 St. Patrick's Night to a very high rank, indeed. 
 
GETTING IN OUR TIME 95 
 
 St. Patrick's Day was celebrated with all proper solemnity. 
 In the morning we had a great parade. We were formed 
 up in companies and reviewed by our Commandant. Then 
 we marched round the Camp in columns of four. It was 
 fine to hear the tramp of our eight hundred men as we 
 swept along. For me it was at once exhilarant and sad. 
 Exhilarant, because it was good to feel myself still young 
 enough to march with firm step and head erect ; sad because 
 I felt, with strange poignancy, that my youth would be 
 " dismissed " with myself when we had got back to the 
 parade ground and saluted the flag. For I believed that I 
 would soon be returning to a peaceful Ireland in which, 
 as a hum-drum country attorney, I would draft my convey- 
 ances and draw my bills of costs and slip quietly down the 
 years into the shadows. 
 
 That would be the last time I would step to time as, 
 with soldier mien and proud bearing, we " moved to the 
 right in columns of four." 
 
 One has to have reached forty, as I have now done, to 
 appreciate what a glorious privilege is Youth. 
 
 I may remark that one of the minor joys of our St. 
 Patrick's Day Parade was the reflection that Ballykinlar 
 was about the only place in Ireland, at that time of intensive 
 coercion, where such a display could have taken place in 
 peace. We might each have got two years' imprisonment 
 outside the wires for what we did that day with impunity 
 inside them. 
 
 On Easter Sunday we produced two plays — a touching 
 little curtain-raiser entitled " The Four Provinces," which 
 was played with superb skill by George Nesbitt and Tom 
 Meldon and the rest of their little company, and my own 
 comedy, " The Pope in Killybuck." It is an interesting 
 illustration of the amount of humour and humanity that 
 lurks beneath even the bitterest of our controversies in the 
 
0,6 "()N MY KIWI'INd " AND IN THEIBfl 
 
 North Kasi Corner, that " Killybuck " hai been played 
 iwi« e in BeJlykiiilni Camp once «lnrinj» the war lm Canon'l 
 Ulstei Division, and then lm the Irish Republican Prisoners 
 <mi lli.it Kastci night ; and oneach nceasioii il. wascnthusiasti 
 cally received. The insight into ill ■ i. i life that it reveals 
 Keemed ol ;',ie;il interesl to oil i lellow prisoners from the 
 South, ;iiid some <>l the comments wen- amusing to m< 
 ihOWing how little llie real Ulstei is known on the othet 
 Hide ol the Boyne. Thus, one IVIunstei 111:111, in discussing 
 the final hai parlour scene, could not believe that in real 
 life Orangemen ,iikI Nationalists would drink and make 
 merry togethci undei any circumstances. Whereas, ol com 
 in null Ulstei the best and kindliest neighbours oik- often 
 has att the people ol the opposing party. When I was In 
 Ballyldnlai none ol my clients showed nunc consideration 
 loi me 01 exhibited more patience nboul their bu&lnesi 
 
 : 1 1 1 . 1 1 1 : . in iiiv oiliee Hi. in 111 v Protestant Unionist ones, and 
 some <»l the most touching evidences ol good will I received 
 were from Orangemen. During my intcrnmenl I think 
 only one Important client took his papers otit oi my office, 
 and he was ;» man who in 0111 student days togethci was 
 quitf .1 " hre-eatei " and, in fact, was, I believe, the man 
 who made me a regular render of Arthur Ciillith's paper ' 
 II Belfast, wilh its wicked Press and its hate -breathing 
 pulpits and its pagan philosophy, could be lifted some 
 
 nij'ht i>v the iaxae witch, thai took iii<- tele oi Man out oi 
 
 I./Oiigh Ncagh, and dropped by her al the mouth ol the Clyde, 
 there would he soon nothing but peace and good-will and 
 hue fellowship all over rural I lister. 
 
 The caste for " Killybuck " was Idled from my Ulstei 
 friends, Prank Don:;, P. MaeC.artnn, Tom l,aikiu, John 
 Bonner, lv. Cooney, I Iiij-li Bradley, (icorgic Goodman and 
 P. Kearney, with Jim l,alor, from Kdlaiin,, .r. I he 
 auctioneer. They all played fheii parts very skillully. 
 
QBTTINa in OUB TIME 9J 
 
 Henry Dixon acted aa itage manage] and threw himieU 
 
 LntO 1li<' work with In. ir.n.il /.<;il mid 1 1n >i< hij'Iiik :,-. 
 
 Thus we tried to yv\ iii our time .1, best we could ; but. 
 thotigh there were very lew complaints, everybody I'll 
 
 the Irlaomeness and monotony <>i it all very much, and 
 every whispei Lha1 mighl BUggen an early releaN wu 
 repeat d and exaggerate d till it lost .ill i<- ■.. mblam . i<> its 
 original self. But there was ao thought of aurrendei amongst 
 the prisoners. The mass of them refused lo pun base then 
 freedom by th<- smallesl act thai tuighi b<- interpreted by 
 
 anybody as a giving :iway ol :i pi m< 'iple. They knew thai 
 the lioiioni oi the nation was in the keeping ol even the 
 humble -.i prisonei in the camp; and they alio fell [njtint 
 
 lively that victory was at hand. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 STRATEGY. 
 
 Sometimes the monotony of Camp life was broken by some 
 — usually stupid — performance on the part of the military. 
 
 Thus, one night we had read for us a special routine 
 order directing us to betake ourselves to our huts when we 
 heard the big horn in one of the sentry boxes blown. This 
 happened the following day ; and we all made for our 
 respective huts, wondering what was afoot. 
 
 We assumed that there was going to be an elaborate 
 search for documents or such contraband as money, pen- 
 knives or scissors, and we made our preparations accordingly. 
 I took the trouble of wrapping in brown paper a pound note, 
 which I had, in order that I might bury it in a heap of sand. 
 
 But I might not have bothered myself, for no search 
 was intended. Instead of that we were taken out, hut after 
 hut, and escorted by strange paths to the football field. 
 When it oame to the turn of our hut, we were marched in 
 single file through a long line of soldiers to the Quarter- 
 master's stores. Here we were halted, in succession in batches 
 of eight, opposite one of the windows of the stores. All 
 sorts of officers, some of them with red tabs on their head 
 gear or uniform, were buzzing about, and Cclonel Hely- 
 Hutchinson himself was standing facing us where we had 
 been halted. There, too, I think, was an old friend, the 
 Adjutant, whom we used to nickname " Got me ? " as that 
 was a favourite phrase of his to make an impressive ending 
 to any admonition that he found necessary to address to us. 
 
 I was the first man of our batch of eight, and as we faced 
 
 98 
 
STRATEGY 99 
 
 him, the Colonel asked me: " Have you got your Intern- 
 ment Order ? " I said I had. 
 
 A similar question was put to each of the others, and in 
 the case of those who replied in the negative, their names 
 were taken down in a note-book. Then we were told to move 
 on " at the double " ; and we trotted in single file through 
 lines of soldiers that stretched into the football field. Here 
 we were all herded together in a corner of the field for about 
 two hours until the whole Camp had been subjected to the 
 same process which we had gone through. 
 
 Whilst we waited in the field we made all sorts of conjec- 
 tures as to what could be the meaning of the manoeuvre. 
 It seemed absurd that they should adopt this elaborate 
 procedure in order to find out the number of men who had 
 been served with Internment Ordeis. Surely, they must 
 have some records in their books to show who had been 
 interned and who not, we said ; and at any rate would it 
 not be much simpler to instruct the Iyine Officers to find 
 out the required information by inquiry in the huts at Roll 
 Call or Inspection. Clearly, there was something else behind 
 the business ; although Henry Dixon argued that the military 
 did such queerly stupid things that it was quite possible 
 that the performance had really for its object what purported 
 to be it. 
 
 When we were released out of the field, however, we saw 
 at once what they had been doing, for two spy holes had 
 been bored in the whitened window, opposite which we 
 had been halted in small parties ; and clearly the reason for 
 our being kept standing facing it for a few minutes was 
 to enable some person or persons inside to inspect each 
 prisoner carefully without the danger of themselves being 
 seen. 
 
 Then we knew that they were after the lost man of whom 
 I have spoken in the chapter dealing with the origin of the 
 
100 " ON MY KEEPING " — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 strike ; and we discovered before the evening was over 
 that the " spotters " had been two women who had been 
 brought into and out of the Camp in a covered Red Cross 
 lorry. Evidently the whole military staff had cogitated 
 long and deeply as to how they were going to have us 
 inspected for identification purposes without our suspecting 
 what was being done ; and the elaborate performance 
 through which we had been put was intended to put us 
 off the scent. Poor innocent creatures that we were, we would 
 think that we had onfy been brought out in this way in order 
 that the officers might learn how many men had still to get 
 their Internment Orders ! 
 
 The missing man was not found, and to show the military 
 what a complete failure had been their plan to keep us from 
 guessing what they wanted, some wag that evening chalked 
 in big letters on the window beside the peep-holes : " If 
 you play the game with me, I'll play the game with you. 
 Got me ? " 
 
 A short time after this incident I was much grieved at 
 the sudden breaking-up of Hut n. It was required for an 
 isolation hut ; and one evening, just before " Lock-up " 
 the Scotch Line Officer, whom we used to call " Kiltie," 
 ordered all the occupants to pack up and remove to the other 
 camp, except the Line Captain, P. C. O'Mahony, and another 
 prisoner named Crowe, who were to be quartered in one of 
 the other huts on the Line, out of which there had been 
 releases. I wrote another doggerel as a lament for the 
 occasion to the air of " Slievenamon," and the following 
 are some of the verses :— 
 
 i. 
 
 Alone, all alone, by the barbed wire fence, 
 And alone on the football ground : 
 
 The talk may be fine and the playing superb, 
 But my heart's in the other " compound." 
 
STBATEGY 101 
 
 Through the barbed wire it burst on that black night 
 accurs'd 
 
 When " Kiltie " his shrill whistle blew, 
 And the Headquarters Staff to the East Compound passed 
 
 Without time e'en to bid us adieu. 
 
 n. 
 No more — ah, no more !— where the " C " huts stand 
 
 Shall bold Hassett his views propound. 
 No longer amused by his yarns and his views 
 
 Shall I wander the Camp around. 
 Full many a trick the same Hassett did play, 
 
 And his satire was caustic and keen. 
 Whoe'er felt the dart that his tongue could impart 
 
 Won't be sorry his heels to have seen. 
 
 ni. 
 
 No more Brunnock's form shall this compound adorn 
 
 And Dan Fraher no more we'll see, 
 While Mulcahy's smile will no longer beguile 
 
 The heart of each sad internee. 
 For our " polis " so fine we will sigh and repine, 
 
 For the sergeants have gone with the Chief. 
 If a bowl disappears or a slander one hears, 
 
 Where — ah, where !— shall we turn for relief ? 
 
 Alone, all alone, by the barbed wire fence, 
 
 And alone by the dry canteen, 
 I walked in my grief and I sighed for relief, 
 
 As I thought of the days that had been. 
 But comfort I found when the news passed around, 
 
 And at length it was wafted to me : 
 Though the others had fled as released or like dead 
 
 That, at least, they had left us P.C. 
 
102 *' ON MY KEEPING — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 Alas ! My comfort was short-lived. For P.C. pined away 
 for the companionship of his friends, and he yearned for 
 the luscious cakes that had been wont to come from the 
 girls of the Dungarvan Cumann na mBhan. We besought 
 him to make his home with us and to remain still at the 
 head of the Line that he had governed and led so skilfully 
 and well. But he could not be induced to stay. So he made 
 a special application to be allowed to follow his comrades 
 to the other Camp ; and thus he passed out of our lives, 
 and his name and fame became but a memory in the com- 
 pound in which he had once been such a notable figure. 
 Sic transit gloria mundi ! Thenceforth Captain Murtagh was 
 our chief. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 HOME. 
 
 I had been ordered by our Commandant to hold a 
 Commission of Inquiry into allegations of ill-treatment 
 received by prisoners in the Camp between the times of their 
 arrests and their arrivals at Ballykinlar. In pursuance of 
 this order I had taken a large number of depositions from 
 men from all parts of Ireland ; and I was busily engaged 
 in arranging these documents so as to hand them, with 
 my report, to Joe McGrath on the morning of Monday, 
 the 9th May, when a sergeant came into my hut. 
 
 " Pack up, Walsh," he said, " and be at the entrance 
 gate in ten minutes." 
 
 Hurriedly and joyfully I got my few belongings together, 
 shook hands with my fellow-hutsmen and as many of my 
 friends as had gathered to see me off, and presented myself 
 at the gate. 
 
 All of us who were candidates at the elections, that were 
 then approaching, had made formal applications for 
 " parole " in order to be in a position to conduct our cam- 
 paigns ; and I was not sure whether my release was going 
 to be on " parole " or for good. My mind was, however, 
 soon set at ease on that point. For I was at once brought 
 before Colonel Bnnis and informed that my release was 
 unconditional. 
 
 Then I was escorted along the outside of the barbed wire 
 to the Censor's office for my railway voucher. The news of 
 my release had by this time spread through the " cage," 
 
 103 
 
104 "ON MY KEEPING " — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 and my late comrades were crowding along the inside of 
 the fence to give me a parting cheer, and to wish me good- 
 luck. It was strange to feel myself once more a free man. 
 But my joy was tempered by sympathy for my brother 
 and the other prisoners who were still in that hated " cage." 
 
 Then I got my voucher, sent a wire home from the Camp 
 Post Office, and was finally brought outside the Camp with 
 two other prisoners. For a few minutes we could hardly 
 realise our position. It was wonderfully thrilling to walk 
 between green hedgerows ; and my heart seemed to re-echo 
 the joyous notes of the clear-throated bird on the tree above 
 us, that appeared to be welcoming us back to life and 
 liberty. 
 
 Was it but a dream, or did I really see no barbed wire 
 around me, and were there no bayonets to drive me before 
 them ? Our road led to the top of a hill ; and from the summit 
 of it I could see the Camp, with its defences and patrols 
 and sentries, and there came to me an acute comprehension 
 of all the pent-up misery that it held. I turned away, and 
 allowed my eyes to feast themselves on stately Slieve 
 Donard and the fair Mountains of Mourne and the wavelets 
 breaking on the shores of Dundrum Bay ; and from my 
 full heart came the joyous cry : 
 
 " Lord, it is good to be here ! " 
 
 My wife hurried, in response to my wire, to meet me at 
 Belfast ; and, as we planned and talked about our new life 
 in our re-united home, I saw ourselves as boy and girl again 
 dreaming those glad day-dreams of our radiant morning. 
 
 Next evening I was home and surrounded by the dearest 
 friends, and welcomed by all the kindly neighbours, and 
 overwhelmed with caresses from little ones that clambered 
 round my knees, with eyes shining like bright stars in their 
 joy, and demanded to bear all about jail and about the 
 " loldiers " and " the bad peece men " that had taken me 
 
HOME 105 
 
 away and " the B'ack and Tans." " I told God about them," 
 Eilis said gravely. It was good to live through moments 
 of such exquisite happiness. 
 
 I found it sweet, too, to get back to my office and to be 
 welcomed home by my faithful clients, especially those 
 who had learned to look to me for help and guidance in all 
 their business affairs, and to whom I had really been of 
 service. The heartfelt sympathy of my Unionist clients 
 touched me especially. For they could not understand how 
 much sweetness and consolation are mixed with any suffering 
 for Ireland that a believer in her right to freedom may be 
 called upon to endure. 
 
 " You don't know how vexed I was, Mr. Walsh," said 
 a Protestant and Unionist woman whose family and self 
 I had helped through a difficulty, " and there was more 
 than me vexed. For you have no enemies among our 
 neighbours, although you may think you have." 
 
 Another woman of the same creed and politics gave me 
 as a token of esteem and sympathy a gold half-sovereign 
 out of her dead son's " wee purse " which she was keeping 
 with its contents as a precious memento for her lonely 
 mother heart to cherish. 
 
 And the exuberant joy that was mine when I would climb 
 one of our Derry hills and gaze with rapture on all the 
 fair stretch of tillage and meadow and woodland, watered 
 by winding streams and adorned with comfortable homes, 
 that lay beneath, and drink in great draughts of the fresh, 
 pure air that came to me from the cloud-topped mountain 
 peaks. One has to be deprived of these things before one 
 can appreciate the bounty of God in giving them to us. 
 
 When I left Derry Gaol I had placed myself and my family 
 and business in the keeping of Our Lady of Perpetual 
 Succour, and I knew that she would fulfil her trust. She 
 had brought me through all the troubles up to then with 
 
106 " ON MY KEEPING " — AND IN THEIBS 
 
 the minimum of suffering and loss, because I trusted in 
 her ; and I had always the firm conviction that I would 
 escape arrest until the struggle would be almost over. 
 Therefore, when I found myself in Ballykinlar I believed 
 that the end was nigh, and when I left it I felt confident 
 that I would never have to endure imprisonment again. 
 As I write we have only got the Truce ; but nothing will 
 convince me that the Peace is not in sight — although 
 some further national suffering may still be demanded of us. 
 
 Now, humanly considered, I should have been ruined by 
 my five months' imprisonment. My business was a personal 
 one, dependant on my own exertions and conducted in all 
 essentials by myself. I had no financial margin or resources 
 to cover such risks as I was called upon to face. But so 
 generously had my Patroness discharged her trust that 
 I came back to find my home and business intact and my 
 prospects, if anything, improved. My clerk, Frank Stronge 
 — a brave, good young Irishman, and one of the best and 
 most faithful of friends— had managed my business wonder- 
 fully well in my absence and shown a resourcefulness and 
 capacity that were surprising. Of course I lost heavily, 
 and my bank account went further to the wrong side. 
 But, with God's help, I shall get over that. My clients were 
 nearly all retained and new ones acquired ; and though I 
 felt my memory slightly impaired for a time and my brain 
 sluggish, I left the Camp improved in health. Wherefore 
 do I feel bound to offer this public expression of gratitude 
 to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour for the way in which she 
 protected me. 
 
 Except for the immediate financial loss, my imprisonment 
 has been a great gain to me. For one thing, it gave me time 
 to pray and lay up treasure against the time of need. It 
 has also taught me a great deal — amongst which is the 
 realisation of what a priceless possession is a quiet, simple 
 
HOME 107 
 
 home. I had, whilst in Ballykinlar, been nominated as 
 a candidate for County Antrim at the election for the new 
 Dail. Though I felt disappointed on account of the cause 
 that the seat was lost, still it was a source of certain personal 
 satisfaction to me that I had not been selected for a 
 constituency that was going to be won. I have had my 
 ambitions and my bright-tinted dreams, and, of course, in 
 one way I would have liked to be a member of the body 
 that will set Ireland on ber new path of peace and freedom, 
 and to have taken a hand in the work of reconstruction 
 and national up-building that requires to be done after the 
 long centuries of war. But the lonely hours in my little 
 cell in Derry Gaol and the heart-hunger of those weary 
 months in Ballykinlar have made clear to me that the good 
 God is giving me much greater happiness than could ever 
 be mine in public life. 
 
 I have learned, too, the joy of simple tasks. Sometimes 
 I used to weary of the monotony of attorneydom and the 
 daily drudgery of my office. Now when I think of how my 
 ringers itched for the touch of my old typewriter and my 
 soul sighed for all the laugh and banter of a country auction, 
 I know that, all unknown to myself, my work has come to 
 mean a great deal to me, and that there is a supreme joy 
 in feeling that one is helpful to somebody. It is good to 
 feel that you are trusted, and that there are some who 
 will turn to you with confidence in every difficulty that 
 confronts them on life's highway. And, then, the humour 
 that one encounters, and the glimpses that you get into 
 people's inner lives, and all the goodness and unselfishness 
 and courage and nobility and faith of our peerless peasantry 
 that are so manifest to anyone who is privileged to hearken 
 to their intimate stories of joy and sorrow and to plan 
 with them for their betterment and to help them through 
 difficulties and to sit by their deathbeds. Truly a country 
 
t08 " ON MY KEEPING " — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 attorney's life would be a delightful one if those hated things 
 " Costs" could be abolished, and one was not under the 
 hideous necessity of taking money for one's sympathy and 
 good turns. 
 
 Thus, then, do I visualise the future. I see the fight 
 won — or almost won — so that politics are no longer a duty 
 for such as only wished to see their country free. So I step 
 back out of the limelight and the turmoil and retire to my 
 little " dug-out " amid those hills of Derry that I love so 
 well ; and in a home full of love and laughter, 
 I glide down the years with a keen eye for all the 
 beauty and goodness and fun and joy and sorrow 
 in the life around me, doing my best for those who entrust 
 their affairs to my keeping and winning the rich guerdon 
 of their confidence and gratitude ; watching my little ones 
 grow and develop, sharing their interests and superintending 
 their education ; reading the books I love and writing an 
 odd one myself in the few hours of leisure that I can snatch 
 wherein I can give scope to my fancy and my dreams ; 
 seeing, perhaps, one of my boys fulfil in a free Ireland some 
 of those boyish ambitions that now, at forty, I have to 
 put from me for ever ; telling the children of a newer 
 generation, when they come, thrilling stories of the great 
 fight for Freedom and, with the pardonable vanity of an 
 old man, exaggerating my own little part in the struggle 
 and pretending that I really achieved and suffered some- 
 thing ; saying my prayers and trying to make some prepara- 
 tion for the great Accounting. 
 
 So, if I live long enough, I may in time win for 
 myself that description that an Ulster village only 
 bestows on one who has secured for himself a very 
 special place in its affections and esteem ; and as 
 the neighbours walk behind the hearse that bears me to 
 the graveyard among the ash trees where so many of my 
 
HOME IO9 
 
 dear ones already sleep they may refer to me as " wan of 
 the good, oul' residenters " ; and somebody with a longer 
 memory than the rest may even recall that in the day of 
 trial I was singled out for persecution ; that if I did not 
 do very much that, at least, I never lowered the flag ; and 
 pointing to the mountains of my childish dreams and heart's 
 desire he may tell the eager listeners, who shall have only 
 read of these turbulent times in which we live, how once I 
 walked them as a hunted man " On my Keeping." 
 
 LOUIS J WAI.SH. 
 
 Feast of the Assumption, 
 August i$th, 1921. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 As Pat Agnew and myself are the only two members ol 
 that highly respectable body of men, the South Derry 
 solicitors, that ever were or are ever likely to be in gaol, 
 I think it well to link our colleagues' name with this book 
 which records some of our experiences. I, therefore append 
 an Ode which I addressed to them from my little cell in Derry 
 Gaol. For the benefit of readers in Terra Del Fuego and 
 other more remote parts of the world who may never have 
 heard of the name and fame of James Brown, one of the 
 ablest registration experts and electioneers in Ireland, I 
 had better explain that James is the leading Orange solicitor 
 in the county and the Unionist organiser of victory in South 
 Derry. I may also add for the enlightenment of those out- 
 siders who do not realise how much fraternisation goes on 
 between the trenches in North-Bast Ulster that when my 
 business was struck at by the British Government, one of 
 the first men to offer my clerk his help in keeping it going 
 was this same violent political "enemy," the, kindly and 
 genial James Brown. The ode was, of course, written at 
 the time when the newspapers were full of hints of the 
 V Archbishop Clune negotiations." 
 
APPENDIX III 
 
 An Ode to the Attorneys of South Derry. 
 
 To our learned attorney colleagues of Coleraine and 
 
 Magherafelt : 
 To big Bob and Jamie Brown and witty Sam, 
 To honest John and Harry, long Iyiddle and the Moones, 
 The MacLoughlins, dear old Iyeech and Cunningham, 
 To the Andersons and Hunter, Martin, I^arry, Hughes, 
 
 O'Kane, 
 Willie Smyth, and Warrior Gault, and friend James J. : 
 From behind those walL so splendid, where my " run " 
 
 at last has ended 
 Pat Agnew and I send forth this simple lay. 
 
 ii. 
 'Twas the Dorset boys that got us, and no grudge we bear 
 the same, 
 For they did the job with all due courtesie. 
 They told us that poor " Tommy " has no stomach for 
 such work, 
 And 'twere better left to stolid R.I.C. 
 And when we got to Derry our escort was quite merry, 
 
 But sorrowfully the sergeant bade adieu, 
 And be said, " Your princely ration of rum at Coleraine 
 station 
 Makes me sorry you're in gaol, my boul' Agnew." 
 
 in. 
 Agnew's in the Condemned Cell, beside the gallows tree, 
 
 Where he hunger-strikes on three full meals a day, 
 And I'm in Number Fifteen, a little down the line, 
 
 But near enough to hear the fine display 
 
112 " ON MY KEEPING ' — AND IN THEIRS 
 
 Of his vocal powers he gives us each night when lights 
 go out, 
 
 And he sings about the dog from Lurgan Town, 
 That from the English champions did carry off the Cup, 
 
 And brought to poor old Ireland such renown. 
 
 IV. 
 
 They say that Lloyd George wants us to negotiate the 
 Peace, 
 
 And that is why he kindly brought us here. 
 " For Pat Agnew and Walsh can surely bring the Goods," 
 
 He says : and so he likes to have us near. 
 But I think he is mistaken in the notion he has taken, 
 
 And his judgment in the matter is not soun' — 
 If he wants things settled right and the contract watertight 
 
 He will also have to send for Jamie Brown. 
 
 Now gaol's not half a bad place, and none of you need fear 
 
 If the whirligig of Fate should bring you in. 
 For it's pleasant to be free from the importunitie 
 
 Of many a greedy client wanting tin. 
 Well supplied with Keating's Powder, to keep off the 
 " black and tans,"* 
 
 You can sleep at night as quiet as a snail ; 
 And the noise of motor lorry, your slumber need not worry ; 
 
 For, at least, they can't arrest you while in gaol ! 
 
 LOUIS J. WALSH. 
 Derry Gaoi,, 
 
 December igth, 1920. 
 
 *A polite gaol phrase, to describe certain insects the existence of 
 which good society is supposed to ignore. 
 
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