CHAPTER XI.

MEETING AT

MULLAGHMAST. -RATHMORE. KILCULLEN.- REPEAL

SPEECHES. THE BANQUET.-GOVERNMENT PROCLAMATION.-MEETING AT CLONTARF FORBIDDEN.-CONCLUSION.

IT was late in the autumn of this year, (1843,) that the great meeting was held at Mullaghmast, in the County of Kildare, which formed a very prominent topic with our prosecutors at the subsequent State Trials.

The locality of this meeting was famous, or rather infamous, from the circumstance mentioned in the following extract from writers on Irish history:

"After the 19th year of Queen Elizabeth, a horrible massacre was committed by the English at the Rathmore of Mulloghmaston, on some hundreds of the most peaceable of the Irish gentry, invited thither on the public faith and under the protection of Government."

The "Rathmore" mentioned in the foregoing, is one of those singular constructions common in Ireland, generally designated by the people, "Danish forts." They are too well-known to the general reader from the many interesting works upon the antiquities of these islands, to need any detailed description here. The Rath at Mullaghmast is, like nearly all the others, a circular enclosure on the top of an eminence, with a descent from all sides of it close to the fort itself. The walls are artificial mounds, rising to about twice the height of a man, and clothed centuries ago with the ordinary vegetation and verdure that soon covers and almost obliterates the traces of man, where he has ceased to dwell or to make resort.

The space enclosed is of the largest, and quite competent to have accommodated the multitude of victims who are recorded to have been upon it. Certainly, no place could be better fitted for a trap for the unwary, the mound being so high all around it, with the exception of one or two narrow openings, which were well guarded, doubtless; while on the top of the mounds, the

slaughterers may be supposed to have taken their stations, at least during the first of the assault. The doomed Janissaries at Constantinople, or the Mamelukes in Alexandria, were scarcely more securely trapped for wholesale slaughter and utter destruction, than the crowds of the ancient nobility and gentry of Ireland within this fatal enclosure, into which they were led and betrayed by their disastrous reliance upon English honour.

We left Dublin on a Saturday afternoon, with the intention of sleeping at Kilcullen, a large village town in Kildare. We were as merry a coachfull of Agitators, packed both inside and out, upon and in a large mail hired for the purpose, as ever yet started on an expedition; and my father, as usual, the liveliest and the merriest of the party. He

"With many a merry tale, and many a song,

Cheer'd the rough road, and made us wish it long !”

There is a sort of poetic licence in the last quotation. He was guiltless of having, at any period of his life, ever sung a song; but was fond of reciting the most touching and patriotic of the

sweet and stirring lays of Tommy Moore; as well as many of the older songs and ballads, having reference to the melancholy history of Ireland. His recitals were beautiful; completely entrancing and carrying away his auditory. I have witnessed even phlegmatic Saxon blood aroused by them, and warmed up to expressions of sympathy with the fall of Ireland's fortunes, and horror at the means of English conquest.

We were received at Kilcullen by the good and amiable parish priest, the Rev. Dr. Murtagh; who most hospitably insisted on our taking possession of his domicile in every way. A merry dinner followed, and then to bed early, to be ready for the good work of the morrow. After mass had been heard by the Catholics of the party, and our Protestant colleagues had had the opportunity of attending their own service, we set out for Mullaghmast, attended and preceded by carriages with deputations from the various municipal bodies of Leinster, all in their robes, bands of music of various Temperance Societies, dressed out in their uniforms, unknown at the Horse Guards, gentry and others from Dublin and other

towns, &c. &c. As usual, there was a guerilla cavalry of stout, comfortable well-to-do farmers and yeomen, on their own farm-horses; many of them, too, with their comely wives, snugly seated en croupe, and the younger men each with a wand and ribbons of sky-blue and white, or green, to mark their office as organizers and peace-keepers ; while others bore the same insignia on foot, to show they were also ready to act as a voluntary police, and prevent the slightest infraction of the law.

My father, of course, spoke from the centre platform; and, as a matter of course, the horrible incident that has given a melancholy celebrity in Ireland to the great "Rath" of Mullaghmast, was referred to and dilated upon by him. The subsequent speakers made it the chief theme and burden of their orations; some with considerable effect and impression, and others with effect, too, but not of a very flattering nature.

I was particularly struck with the speech of one individual. He had arrived in the course of

his most fluent harangue at that period of the tale, (already ten times told,) where the Irish