Raparees and Robbers.

Chapter IX.

Raparees and Robbers - Hedge Schools - Hedge Schools - Freney - Northern Robbers - Shawn Crossach - William Crotty - Crotty’s Lament - Felon’s Bodies - Frederick Caulfield.

If the moral conduct of a people is formed by the instruction of their early years, it is not difficult to account for the great laxity observed in the conduct of the lower orders in Ireland 80 or 90 years ago. It is true that good schools, which are now so common, were but few and far between; and, in fact, the only places of general instruction were “Hedge Schools,” that is, benches laid loosely either in a waste cabin, or under a hedge by the wayside, where the only books of instruction were sixpenny volumes, named “Burton Books.” They were small octaves, bound in cheap white basil, and the paper and type of the coarsest kind, and full of typographical errors, illustrated occasionally by plates of the most “uncouth sculpture.” But the rudeness of the book was a trifling defect compared with its contents. The general character of such volumes was loose and immoral. Among them, two were most popular -“Laugh and be fat,” and “The Irish Rogues and Rapparees.” The first was a collection of the most indecent stories, told in the coarsest language; the second celebrated the deeds of highwaymen. By the one, the moral sense of the children of both sexes was corrupted, by teaching them to indulge in what was gross and indelicate; by the other, their integrity and sense of right and wrong was confounded, by proposing the actions of lawless felons as objects of interest and imitation. Among the rapparees was one held in high esteem by the youth of the peasantry, and a representation of his deeds formed a part of their plays and sports. This person was James Freney.

He was born in the house of Mr. Robbins, a respectable gentleman, in the county of Kilkenny, where his father was a servant. He showed an early dislike to everything that was praiseworthy and of “good report,” and no efforts of his kind patron could turn him from low dissipation. He had a precocious and incorrigible fondness for cock-fighting, hurling, and gambling. His friends at length were compelled to abandon him to his own irregular courses, and he became a highwayman. He collected round him all the idle and worthless fellows of the neighbourhood, whom be formed into a gang of robbers, and over whom he exercised absolute control, an object of alarm and terror to Kilkenny and the neighbouring counties. The manner of their proceeding was very summary. When a house was *set *to be robbed, he proceeded to a forge in the vicinity, and ordering one of his gang to open it and take out a sledge, they went at once to the house, dashed in the door or windows, and rifled it of all its valuable property. Such was the terror they excited, and the system of violence they pursued, that they were rarely opposed. During the day they stopped travellers, and robbed on the highway, and even levied black mail on carmen, openly demanding a ransom for the goods they seized. The usual conveyances for shop goods from large to small towns, were common cars; spies were set, and the approach of the cars with goods announced to Freney, who met them at a convenient place, drove them to a thicket, or some near mountain, set a ransom on their value, and then dismissed one of their drivers to report the loss, and bring back the ransom, which was rarely withheld.

On one occasion five cars proceeding from Waterford to Thomastown, loaded with valuable shop goods, wore thus stopped, their ransom set down at £150, and one of the drivers sent to fetch it. While Freney was, as usual, waiting for the return, in confident expectation, one of his scouts ran back with information that a body of the merchants of Waterford, accompanied by a strong force of the militia, were near at hand to take him. He looked out, and saw the road beset on all sides. He ran, and after some pursuit, concealed himself in a cleft of a rock covered by furze and brambles. Here he laid his loaded musket across his body, and a case of cocked pistols at each side of him, and after waiting for some time, expecting his pursuers, he fell fast asleep.

One of the party in search of him heard him snoring, looked in, and having ascertained who it was, immediately ran to announce to the pursuers his discovery. Freney was immediately surrounded by the posse, who began firing into the spot where he lay. The sound awakened him, and he saw the ground about him riddled and torn by the balls, which passed over his body. He lay still until some of the party, supposing he must be dead, were about to pull him out by the legs, when he suddenly started up, and rushed out with his musket cocked. The terror of his name, and the suddenness of his appearance, frightened the party. They all, military and mercantile, ran off in different directions, each man alarmed for his own safety; while Freney, availing himself of the momentary panic, escaped under cover of a neighbouring hedge.

He met a spancelled horse, and, cutting the cords with his knife, mounted on its back, and rode off, under a shower of balls, to the river Nore, not far distant; this he dashed into, swam across, and found himself in safety at the other side, his pursuers stopping on the bank of the river, and firing at him without effect, as he crossed the opposite fields.

By such daring deeds and hair-breadth escapes as these he astonished the country, and kept it in alarm, and, to a certain degree, in subjection for five years. No one thought of resisting him on the highway, or defending a house when attacked, or refusing the ransom for goods when demanded. But at length his gang, one by one, melted away. They turned informers against each other, and were hanged in succession, till but one, named Bulger, remained with him. They were “set” in a cabin, and in making their escape, Bulger was wounded by a ball in the leg, but his companion took him on his back, and they both escaped. Freney now seeing no prospect of safety to himself, determined to purchase it by the sacrifice of his last friend. He had him set, and delivered into the hands of justice, and thus saw the last of his gang convicted and executed. For his treachery on this occasion, his own pardon was secured by the interest of Lord Carrick, and a small situation in the revenue was given to him in the town of New Ross, in which he continued many years. Several gentlemen visited him, to hear him tell his adventures, which he freely communicated.

He ultimately wrote his autobiography, which became one of the most popular school-books in our *system *of education 90 years ago. His adventures were the favourite themes of school-boys, and the representation of his achievements their favourite amusement. His robbery on the highway, his bursting open houses, his exacting ransom were faithfully enacted, particularly the scene of his escape from the Waterford militia, and his carrying off his companion, Bulger, with a wounded leg. In effect, the consequence said to have followed from Schiller’s “Robbers” on the youth of Germany, was realised among the young peasantry of Ireland.

Freney is still well remembered in the south-east of Ireland. On the road between Clonmel and Kilkenny, the scene of many of his robberies, an elm is pointed out to the traveller, which is known as “Freney’s tree.” His character has been much over-rated, as represented by some novel writers. He had nothing of dignified appearance or gentlemanly manners. Those who saw and conversed with him describe him as a mean-looking fellow, pitted with small-pox, and blind of an eye, whence Freney became a sobriquet for all persons who had lost an eye. He was not of a sanguinary disposition, and was susceptible of grateful attachment. His most determined pursuer was a Mr. Robbins, who often nearly captured him; but he never could be prevailed on to take his life, though it was often in his power, because he was one of the family to whose kindness he was early indebted. He had no such feeling, however, for his companion, Bulger, who often saved his life. He betrayed him, like others of his gang, to insure his own pardon. He was a coarse, vulgar, treacherous villain, much of the highwayman, and nothing of the hero.

While Freney gained fame in the south, many of his fraternity, Redmond O’Hanlon and others, are commemorated in the same books as achieving renown in the north. Indeed, the last of the highwaymen was a northern, named Collyer, who infested the roads to Drogheda, even within the last 60 years. One of the northern rapparees is distinguished for a singular trait of character. “Shawn Crossach” was an old freebooter, who infested the counties of Derry and Tyrone. He had two sons, whom he educated from their earliest days in acts of robbery. He placed a pot of stirabout in the centre of his cabin, between two doors, and no boy got his supper who was not able to take it by force or by fraud from his father. [This reminds us of Fagin’s mode of training young pickpockets, as related in Dickens’s “Oliver Twist.”] One of them, “Paurya Fhad,” or “Long Paddy,” was a distinguished proficient in freebooting. Their robbery, from an officer of rank, of a considerable treasure is yet commemorated by the name of the bridge where it was effected, which is called “the General’s Bridge.” For this daring deed on a high functionary, they were all apprehended, tried, and convicted. After sentence was passed, it was represented that two victims would be a sufficient example to satisfy justice, and mercy might be shown the old man. They were all, however, led out to execution; but at the gallows, the father was told that he was pardoned by the mercy of government. He looked no way glad, but the contrary, and at first offered to exchange the pardon with “Paurya Fhad,” his youngest son. When he was informed that this could not be allowed, he said, after a short deliberation, “Well, I’m an old man, anyhow, and can’t live long, and what use will pardon be to me! so, wi’ the blessing o’ God, I’ll shake a foot wi’ the boys.” He persisted in his determination, and would listen to no persuasion against his right to be hanged, and have his sentence executed; so he suffered between his two sons, holding affectionately one of their hands at each side.

But more eminent than any of these we have mentioned, though prior in time, was a rapparee, named William Crotty. The habits and usages which English writers of the 16th century imputed to the “wild Irish” were not wholly extinct a century ago. Men from the woods and mountains infested the neighbourhood of populous towns, having holes and dens from which they issued to commit their depredations, and to which they retired, like wild beasts to their lair; when pursued, they thus suddenly sunk into the earth and disappeared, and were passed by their pursuers. They lived like the subjects of the Irish chieftain, who pronounced a malediction on any of his tribe that would dwell in a house built with hands. The den of the modern rapparee was usually in a situation commanding a view of the road, from which he could pounce, like a vulture on his quarry, on the passengers, and return with his prey to his rock. Such was the mode of life of Crotty. His den, still known as “Crotty’s Hole,” is on the south-eastern point of the Comeragh mountains, in the west of the county of Waterford. It is on an eminence commanding a view of the subjacent country, east and west, almost from Dungarvan to Carrick, and south, to Tramore. There is scarcely a place in Ireland commanding a more extensive view of high roads. The eminence is accessible from below with some difficulty, and the descent into “the hole” is very steep and precipitous.

The interior of this cave consists of one large chamber, from which branch off some smaller recesses. These were occupied by Crotty for sleeping and other domestic purposes; but tradition assigns to them a more horrible use. Crotty was reputed to be a cannibal, and he was believed to fill these recesses with stores of* *human flesh, on which he fed. Hence he was called the “Irish Sawny Bean,” after the Highland robber of that name, who is said to have had a taste for the same diet.

Crotty was a man of desperate courage and unequalled personal agility; often baffling pursuers even when mounted on fleet horses. His accomplice was a man named David Norris, who was superior to Crotty in ability and the cunning of his craft, though his inferior in strength and activity. Their depredations were usually designed by Norris, and entrusted to Crotty for execution; and Norris often stimulated Crotty to acts of violence and wanton cruelty, to which he would have been otherwise indisposed. Among other instances of their barbarity recorded by tradition is the following:- Passing one night by a cabin on the roadside, they saw a light in the window; on looking in, they perceived a man and his wife at their supper; the former of whom having peeled a potato, was raising it to his mouth. “Now, for any bet,” said Crotty, “the ball in my pistol shall pass his lips before the potato.” He fired, and the poor man fell dead, the ball having pierced his mouth while yet the potato was at his lips. Crotty was afterwards taken, having been disabled by a shot in the mouth, and the peasantry, to this day, affirm it was the judgment of heaven inflicted on him for this act of cruelty. Though well known personally to all the county, Crotty never hesitated to appear at fairs and markets, where he was generally well received. Like many other highwaymen, he was in the habit of sharing with the poor what he plundered from the rich; and thus acquired popularity sufficient to procure him immediate warning of any danger which might threaten him. He frequented the fair green of Kilmacthomas, and openly joined with the young men in hurling and foot-ball on Sunday evenings, danced with the girls at wakes and patterns, and familiarly entered respectable houses.

He once visited a widow lady, named Rogers, near Tramore, while she was entertaining a large company at dinner. The guests were terror-stricken when he stalked into the room and displayed his arms; but he calmly desired the servant to give him the plate on the side-board, and his directions being instantly complied with, he walked out without committing any further depredation. The servant was immediately charged with being his accomplice, and threatened with prosecution; whereupon he ran after Crotty, and implored him to restore the plate. Crotty complied, turned to the house, and handed back the property to Mrs. Rogers.

She was profuse in her thanks, but he desired her to observe he was only lending the plate to her, and peremptorily demanded it back. She again surrendered it, and he said: “Now, madam, remember it was you, and not your servant, who gave this to me, and do not charge him with the loss.” Such was the terror of his name that no attempt was made to pursue him.

Crotty’s depredations becoming intolerable, and his retreat known, a gentleman, named Hearn, who lived within three miles of it, at length determined to capture him. Hearn was a man of uncommon strength and indomitable resolution. He bribed Norris’s wife to give him notice when Crotty would be found “at home.” She met Mr. Hearn one day on the road, and as she passed, said, slily, and without looking at him, “the bird’s in the nest.” He was unaccompanied, but, being well armed, he acted on the hint, and went directly to “the hole.” He called Crotty by his Christian name, “William,” and the robber, without suspicion, came up. The moment his head appeared, Mr. ‘ream, knowing he must be well armed and his desperate character, fired at him, and wounded him severely in the mouth. He succeeded, however, in effecting his escape. Mr. Hearn determined still to watch him; and in a short time afterwards, received secret information from ‘Norris’s wife that Crotty was in Norris’s house. He proceeded thither directly, well armed, and took Crotty by surprise, who was wholly unprepared, and imagined himself secure. The latter submitted to be arrested, without further resistance, saying, he long knew Mr. Hearn was the man who would take him.

As in many of his countrymen, the extremes of ferocity and kindly feeling were combined in Crotty. When Mr. Hearn was leading him away, he asked him why, as he lived so near, and had so frequent opportunities of taking his life, he had not done so. “I often intended it,” said the malefactor; “and last Christmas I went to shoot you; but I saw through the parlour window you and your wife and children sitting so happily round the fire, that, though I had the pistol cocked and you covered, my heart failed me, and I could not draw the trigger. I often followed you, too, when you were fishing in the Clodagh; but your son was with you, and I felt sure if I killed *you, *he would shoot me, and I could not bring myself to take both your lives.”

The gun with which Crotty was shot was preserved, and shown as a curiosity at Shanakill House, which was the residence of Mr. Hearn. It was labelled “Crotty’s gun,” and the interest attached to it proves how the service must have been estimated, in those days of imperfect police, of ridding the country of such a dreaded desperado.

At Crotty’s trial, a woman, who lived with him as his wife, appeared in court, in a state of pregnancy usually exhibited by felons’ female companions on such occasions; and when the jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the judge was beginuing to pass sentence, the criminal cried out, “A long day, my lord, a long day.” “I see no reason for granting it,” said the judge. “Oh, my lord,” said the woman, “there is great reason, if it was only to let him see the face of his child;” and she stood up and exhibited her condition to the court.

The request was denied to the cruel felon, and he was executed next day. His wife appeared at his wake, and her lament is recorded in a popular dirge, which was often sung at wakes in the county of Tipperary. Subjoined will be found the score of this plaintive Irish melody, taken by a lady who often heard it sung by the peasantry. The two first verses of the song commonly appropriated to it are as follows:

“William Crotty I have often tould you,

That David Norris would come round to you. *

In Your bed, when you lay sleeping,

An leave me here in sorrow weeping,

Och-hone, oh!

“Oh, the judge but he was cruel,

Refused a long day to my jewel;

Sure I thought that you would, maybe,

See the face of your poo baby,

Och-hone, oh!”

• Var. lect - “Have sould you.” But the reading in the text is correct for the Irish peasantry never regarding the consonants in their rhymes.

Crotty was decapitated, according to his sentence, and his head was placed on a spike over the gate of the county gaol, which was at a great thoroughfare, and often a resting-place for those who brought milk to the markets. In a few days the head became in a state of putrid solution, and began to distil drops of gore into the milk-cans, for some time before it was discovered, to the inexpressible disgust and horror of all who had been drinking the milk. The hair did not decay with the flesh - it grew on the bony cranium; and there for a long time the ghastly skull of this miscreant excited as much horror after his death as his cruel actions had during his life.

When a criminal was executed for an offence for which his body was not liable to be given to the surgeons for dissection, his friends were allowed to take it. It was washed, and then laid on a truss of straw in a public street, with or without a head, and a plate was laid on the breast, with a halfpenny on it, as an invitation to passengers to contribute to the funeral. It formed sometimes a solemn spectacle, with the felon’s widow at the head, wailing with dishevelled hair, and singing, in a low, dismal chant, her lament, her children ranged at the foot. But the utter indecency with which executions were then accompanied sometimes occasioned the most revolting and horrible scenes.

About the same time at which the abominable occurrence just mentioned of Crotty’s head took place, three highwaymen, Stackpole, Cashman, and Hierly, were hanged in Waterford. Their bodies were given to their friends, and were brought to the fish-house to be washed. While in the act of being washed, the bell rung to intimate a fresh arrival of fish; the bodies were hastily removed from the boards which they occupied, and the fish were thrown down in their place, swimming in the loathsome washings and blood of the corpses. The latter were then exposed on straw in the street, and an elderly gentleman, who communicated the circumstance, was brought by his nurse to see them, as a sight worthy of contemplation. The belief was, that if the beholder did not touch the body he saw, the ghost of it would haunt him; so he was led up by his nurse for the purpose, and laid his ‘lands on them one after the other. The cold, clammy feel and the ghastly spectacle never left his memory, but haunted him ever after.

To turn from such horrors, we will mention one more anecdote connected with the robberies of this period, which is perhaps the most singular in the annals of the detection of crime. At the close of the American war, Frederick Caulfield was on his way from England, when he met in the ship a young man named Hickey, and formed an acquaintance with him. They arrived in Waterford, and Hickey informed his companion that his friends lived in the county of Cork, and that he was going to see them, after a long absence in Newfoundland, where he had made some money, by the fishery, which he was carrying home; he invited Caulfield to accompany him, and they proceeded on their journey together.

After a short time, Caulfield came back to Waterford. He was a grave man, of decent appearance and serious, religious manners, and no observation was made on his returning alone. A trifling incident, however, drew attention to him. He wanted a dozen shirts made in a hurry, and to expedite them he gave them to 12 different sempstresses [Sic. KF.]to work.

Soon afterwards a rumour was heard of a young man who was expected home by his friends in Cork from Newfoundland, but had not appeared. On the circulation of this report, an innkeeper at Portlaw, named Rogers, came forward, and stated that Caulfield had come to his house in company with Hickey, and left it along with him. On being asked if his house was not an inn much frequented, and, if so, how he could swear to the identity of a casual passenger, whom he had never seen before, he hesitated, and said it was caused by a circumstance so extraordinary that he was unwilling to mention it. On being pressed, he declared that on the morning of that day, his wife, on awaking, had told him a dream which had made a strong impression on her mind. Two men, she said, had entered the house together, dressed like sailors, a tall man and a short man; they had some refreshment, and soon after they left it. The spirit of her dream followed them, and she saw one of them strike the other as he descended a gap, murder him on the ground, rifle him, and bury him beside a hedge. The locality was distinctly painted to her vision, and she described the spot.

As soon as Caulfield and Hickey entered the house she ran to her husband and said they were the men she had seen in her dream. They remained for some time taking refreshment, ate and drank together in great apparent friendship, and, having obtained some directions as to their intended line of journey, they were about to depart, when Rogers, feeling some strong misgiving in his mind, from the impression his wife’s dream bad made upon him, entreated them to remain where they were till the morning. This they refused to do, and proceeded on their journey.

The locality described by Rogers as the scene of the murder in his wife’s dream was searched. It was on the road between Portlaw and Carrick-on-Suir; and the body of Hickey was found there, in the identical situation indicated by the dream. Caulfield was arrested, tried at the ensuing assizes, and convicted. The circumstance of the dream being mentioned at the trial, the witnesses were cross-examined about it, with a view to throw ridicule on their testimony; but the manner in which it had transpired before the finding of the body made a deep impression on the jury. The judge, whose name, by a curious coincidence, was also Caulfield, in passing sentence, strongly adverted to it as an instance of the interference of Providence for the detection of murder.

Caulfield, after conviction, acknowledged his guilt. He said that the steady gaze of the innkeeper’s wife, as he entered the inn at rordaw, so appalled him, that he had given up the design of murdering his companion, till he himself afforded him an opportunity. He had a stick which hurt his hand, and Hickey offered him his knife to pare it. He was in the act of doing so, and Hiekey was descending a gap in the hedge, when “the devil,” said Caulfield, “appeared to me, and whispered in my ear, ‘now strike.’” He did so, then cut Hickey’s throat with his own knife while he lay on the ground, robbed him, and tried to bury him in the spot where he was found.

Another remarkable circumstance connected with the dream was the mode of its interpretation. The dream represented the lesser of the two men murdering the larger; this was contrary to the fact; but that was:

“Confirmation strong as proof of holy writ”

to demonstrate the truth of the vision to those who believed in dreams then in Ireland

• the established faith being that dreams always go by contraries. [A curious illustration of this - in Ireland almost universal - superstition occurred in the reign of Elizabeth. The Earl of Leicester and Earl of Ormond were deadly enemies, and the latter denounced the former as a villain and a coward. This coming to Leicester’s ears, he met Ormond in the ante-chamber at court, and after saluting him with apparent courtesy, said: “I was dreaming of you last night.” Ormond asked what was the dream. “I dreamed,” said the earl, “that I* *gave you a box on the ear.” “Very good,” replied the Duke of Ormond; “and as dreams always go by contraries, that portends that I must box you,” and struck him a blow in the face. For this offence Ormond was imprisoned, but insisted he was only accomplishing Leicester’s dream. He was soon afterwards liberated.]

Caulfield’s confession and appearance of sincere penitence, coupled with the mysterious discovery of his guilt, interested many of the religious in Waterford in his favour. Several persons of great respectability and high connections visited him daily in prison, for devotional purposes. He was a handsome man, and particularly attentive to his dress. The ladies, therefore, purchased different articles, which they sent, for him to choose the most becoming to die in; and when the hour for the last awful scene approached, a large company, particularly ladies, were admitted to the gaol, and formed a long procession.

The place of execution was then about a mile out of the town, and they walked with the murderer to the foot of the gallows, chanting the 51st Psalm, in which he appeared to join with fervent piety. Such an extraordinary spectacle at a public execution is hardly less striking than - though so strong a contrast to - the horrible levities that often followed such scenes 90 years ago.

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