“‘Fly, boys!’ says Grogan as soon as they fired out of the house—­’we’ve been sould,’ says he, ’but I’ll die game, any how,’—­and so he did, poor fellow; for although he and the other four war transported, one of them never sould the pass or stagged.  Not but that they might have done it, for all that, only that there was a whisper sent to them, that if they did, a single soul belonging to one of them wouldn’t be left living.  The Grogans were cousins of Denis Kelly’s, that’s now laid out there above.

“From the time this tuck place till after the ’sizes, there wasn’t a stir among them on any side; but when that war over, the boys began to prepare.  Denis, heavens be his bed, was there in his glory.  This was in the spring ’sizes, and the May fair soon followed.  Ah! that was the bloody sight, I’m tould—­for I wasn’t at it—­atween the Orangemen and them.  The Ribbonmen war bate though, but not till after there was a desperate fight on both sides.  I was tould that Denis Kelly that day knocked down five-and-twenty men in about three-quarters of an hour; and only that long John Grimes hot him a polthoge on the sconce with the butt-end of the gun, it was thought the Orangemen would be beat.  That blow broke his skull, and was the manes of his death.  He was carried home senseless.”

“Well, Lachlin,” said my brother, “if you didn’t see it, I did.  I happened to be looking out of John Carson’s upper window—­for it wasn’t altogether safe to contemplate it within reach of the missiles.  It was certainly a dreadful and barbarous sight.  You have often observed the calm, gloomy silence that precedes a thunder-storm; and had you been there that day, you might have witnessed its illustration in a scene much more awful.  The thick living mass of people extended from the corner-house, nearly a quarter of a mile, at this end of the town, up to the parsonage on the other side.  During the early part of the day, every kind of business was carried on in a hurry and an impatience, which denoted the little chance they knew there would be for transacting it in the evening.

“Up to the hour of four o’clock the fair was unusually quiet, and, on the whole, presented nothing in any way remarkable; but after that hour you might observe the busy stir and hum of the mass settling down into a deep, brooding, portentous silence, that was absolutely fearful.  The females, with dismay and terror pictured in their faces, hurried home; and in various instances you might see mothers, and wives, and sisters, clinging about the sons, husbands, and brothers, attempting to drag them by main force from the danger which they knew impended over them.  In this they seldom succeeded:  for the person so urged was usually compelled to tear himself from them by superior strength.

“The pedlars and basket-women, and such as had tables and standings erected in the streets, commenced removing them with all possible haste.  The shopkeepers, and other inhabitants of the town, put up their shutters, in order to secure their windows from being shattered.  Strangers, who were compelled to stop in town that night, took shelter in the inns and other houses of entertainment where they lodged:  so that about five o’clock the street was completely clear, and free for action.