I asked if the place made a long defence.  Mr. Tener and the constable both laughed, and the former told me that when the storming party arrived shortly after daybreak, they found the house garrisoned only by some small boys, who had been left there to keep watch.  The men were fast asleep at some other place.  The small boys ran away as fast as possible to give the alarm, but the police went in, and in a jiffey pulled to pieces the elaborate defences prepared to repel them.  Father Coen, the constable said, got to Kenny’s house an hour after it was all over, with a mob of people howling and groaning.  But the work had been done, and other work also at the Castle of Cloondadauv, to which we next drove.

This place takes its truly awe-inspiring name from a ruined Norman tower standing on a picturesque promontory of no great height, which juts out into the lovely lake here made by the Shannon.  At no great expense this tower might be so restored as to make an ideal fishing-box.  It now simply adorns the holding formerly occupied by Mr. John Stanislaus Burke, a former tenant of Lord Clanricarde.  The story of its capture on the 17th of September is worth telling.

Some days before the evictions were to come off, a meeting was held at Woodford or Loughrea, at which one of the speakers, the patriotic Dr. Tully, rather incautiously and exultingly told his hearers that the defence in 1886 of the tenant’s house known as “Fort Saunders” had been a grand and gallant affair indeed, but that next time “the exterminators would have to storm a castle”!

This put Mr. Tener at once on the alert, and as Mr. Burke of Cloondadauv was set down for eviction, it didn’t require much cogitation to fix upon the fortress destined to be “stormed.”  So he set about the campaign.  The County Inspector of the constabulary, who had made a secret reconnaissance, reported that he found the place too strong to be taken if defended, except “by artillery.”  So it was determined to take it by surprise.

When the previous evictions were made, the agent and the public forces had marched from Portumna by the highway to Woodford, so that, of course, their advent was announced by the scouts and sentinels of the League from hill to hill long before they reached the scene of action, and abundant time was given to the agitators for organising a “reception.”  Mr. Tener profited by the experience of his predecessors.  He contrived to get his force of constabulary through the town of Portumna without attracting any popular attention.  And as early rising is not a popular virtue here, he resolved to steal a march on the defenders of Cloondadauv.