Hi, it is the boy from Barrystown, charming and charismatic, the most remarkable man of this era, an intelligence greater that that of Einstein, erudite, scholarly, historian supreme, a right boyo, super florist and especially expert at cultivating sunflowers, marathon runner, moves and talks with panache, blessed among the women and, above all else, the most devious and wily of them all—that wily boy from beside the mine pits.

Contrary to Tom Boyse’s pessimistic expectations, a statue of Tom Moore, the poet, was erected in Dublin in 1857.

From The Free Press the 5th of January 1924:–

“Deaths

Cleary—On December 29th 1923, at her residence, Maxboley, Ballymitty, Mrs Ellen Cleary, in 83rd year of her life. Interred in Kilcaven Cemetery. R. I. P.”

From The People the 4th of January 1913:–

“Sodality of The Sacred Heart

The usual monthly meeting of the Sodality of the Sacred Heart was held in Carrig-on-Bannow Chapel on Sunday, immediately after Mass. There was a very large attendance and before the devotions commenced Father Murphy M.SS., preached an eloquent sermon on the devotion to the Sacred Heart. He said it was most gratifying to see the devotion to the Sacred Heart carried on so extensively in the parish and he thanked them for attending in such large numbers. Although he was a stranger and not personally acquainted with the parish, yet he had from time to time heard of them with regard to their devotion to the Sacred Heart, so thanking them would be out of place, as it was not for thanks they would be attending, but for earnest devotion to the Sacred Heart. He concluded the sermon by detailing at some length the greatness of this devotion, and earnestly exhorting them to continue in the good work they had so well carried on up to the present.

Mysterious Death of Two Cows

On Friday evening last, two fine cows, the property of Mr J. Goff, Ballygow, Carrig-on-Bannow, were found dead in a field. It appears that Mr Goff put those two cows, one 5 years old and the other 7 years old, in a particular field on Friday morning as usual, and afterwards saw them about 1 pm; at which time they were all right and showed no signs of sickness of any kind. At about 4pm when Mr Goff went to turn the cows in for the night he was dismayed to find them both dead at the gateway, each one of them lying in the dyke at either side. It is considered a very strange occurrence, particularly, as nothing was wrong with the beasts a few hours previously and many strange rumours are afloat. Mr Malone, Veterinary Surgeon, was expected to visit the place early in the week and the result of his examination is eagerly awaited. Considering that there are such sensations over the foot-and-mouth disease, the affair is causing more than the usual commotion. In any case, Mr Goff has sustained a great loss and much sympathy is felt for him.

The Carrig-on-Bannow Band

The restarting of the Carrig-on-Bannow Fife and Drum Band has been taken up in real earnest, as large numbers of boys have become members, and constantly attend practice twice weekly, Monday and Thursday nights. From the earnestness displayed in the matter, the success of the band is a foregone conclusion and, during the coming summer, the band is sure to be seen to advantage. A word of special praise is due to Mr P. Creane, Barriestown, the President of the committee, as he is leaving nothing undone to make the band a thorough success.”

From The Bargy Notes in The people on the 8th of January 1913:–

“Wreckage Galore

Along the sea-shore for some past, enormous quantities of wreckage have been driven on the beach and the work of saving the baulks and heavy timbers has been undertaken by many. This is due to the very stormy winter. Some old residents say it was the most continuous storm they have ever known.”

From The People the 1st of August 1900:–

“Sales by G. W. Taylor

6 Acres Oats and Barley on Butt, 30 Cocks 1st Crop Hay

To Be Sold by Auction

On Wednesday, 1st August 1900

For Mrs Margaret Hillis

At Halseyrath, Tullicanna

3 acres prime Tawny Oats on butt

3 acres prime Barley, do

30 cocks prime first crop Hay

Terms at sale at 2 o’clock

George W. Taylor, Auctioneer, Wexford.”

A letter published in The People on the 15th of October 1864:–

“Bannow Revisited

By an Old Irelander

When the mighty mountain of 1848 was in the throes of labour and a few days previous to its happy delivery of the Ballingarry mouse, [reference to the unsuccessful Rebellion of 1848 and the affray in the Widow’s Mc Cormack’s cabbage patch in Ballingarry Co. Tipperary, by William Smith O’Brien, of the Young Ireland movement] I dropped down to Fethard to escape the jaws of the anticipated young monster who was to have swallowed up the “English garrison in Ireland”—boots, belts bayonets and all.

I had often heard of the submerged city of Bannow and now in its neighbourhood, I resolved to visit it, and probably have a glass of grog with Mrs S. C. Hall’s Boat Man. I took a boat from the little pier at Fethard and was pulled across the bay, in which it had been shown that Fitzstephen’s in May 1169 brought his little fleet to anchor. I was landed immediately below the old Church and in a few minutes was standing in front of its crumbling walls.

I asked a Coast-Guardsman, who was on duty, with telescope shouldered, “where was the old town?”; “You are standing on it”, was the reply. “Standing on it!”, I exclaimed; do you mean to tell me the city lies beneath the green turf on which we stand?” “I do”, said he, “and there is the chimney of the Parliament House”, pointing to a block of masonry in the angle of the burial ground. By this time my own two men had made had made their appearance and in due time having seen all then visible of the “city in the sea” and heard a good deal about it which was invisible, we started for the new Bannow, or village of Carrig, as it is called. To get value out of your boat-men, you must wet them inwardly; to outside wetting, they say, they are too well accustomed; so on passing a wayside public house, which displayed the sign of the Plough and Horses (and indeed a very clumsy one it was, drawn by two very grey garrons) we entered and had a glass of what our host called the best Bishop’s water. I had often heard of Tom Boyse of Bannow, saw him once at a public meeting in your County Courthouse “scurriffunging” (as he called it) the rotten English boroughs in the year 1835 but now I saw him as a landlord on his ground, and indeed everything I saw, redounded to his honour. I was pointed out a very fine farm-house and farm, which at one time, he had handed over, rent free, to the parish minister, as a Model Farm, in connection with an agricultural school, for the purpose of instructing the sons of his tenantry in the most approved methods of agriculture. But the most noble act of his munificent generosity was the erection of the large and costly Chapel at new Bannow, then, in an unfinished state. Bishop’s Water had by this time wonderfully developed the bump of communicativeness in one of my boatmen, for when about to return from Carrig, he shrugged his shoulders and asked me, “won’t we go into Neddy’s?” Neddy who? said I, “Neddy the lord, returned he. Has he a hump on his back? said I. “Oh the devil a hump” said he, “but he is the Lord of Carrig and so was his father before him, and always keeps a stronger dkrop than the man of the Plough and Horses.” His lordship’s shop stood opposite the chapel gates; my lord Carrig was at home, behind one of his counters, with a tumbler of whiskey punch before him, with which he now and again “moistened his clay.” He was a man of middle age, middle size, a wit and a punster and cracked his jokes on my Fethard friends, telling them “the stone hacker had gone to pot, since the Tintern people were no longer able to purchase limestone, the black potatoes having beggared them all.”

We bade adieu to the Lord of Carrig—his lordship with the air and dignity of a peer, bowing us out of the shop; and we returned to our boat, under the lee of the ould Church and reached the little pier at Fethard, as the last rays of a July sun were setting behind the blue out-line of the mountains, which bound your country to the north-east.

Eight years have since glided by—the Ballingarry mouse was crushed in a Peeler’s wig; its sponsors, poor fellows, were scattered to the four winds of the world—the black potatoes, it is hoped, are also about to vanish and the Fethard stone hackers are again in the lime trade, as I had lately an opportunity of witnessing. Yet I spent some time last month, in the neighbourhood of Fethard and again paid a visit to the “city in the sea”. The old church yard still braves the power and might of time but the waves and drift sands are fast approaching it. I observed some new tombs and more old ones, broken since the period of my last visit. On one of the former, in the chancel, is the following inscription:–

“Beneath this stone lies buried Samuel Boyse of this

Parish, who died on the 29th December 1839.

Also his wife Dorothea Boyse,

Who died on the 29th December 1835

Also their daughter, Dorothea Boyse,

Also their son Shapland Boyse

Also their daughter Jane Boyse.”

This slab, I understand, was erected in 1852 by the late Mr Thomas Boyse who died himself in Dublin in January 1854 and is buried in the metropolis.

The Wooden Plough still hangs over the wayside public house and as I walked to Carrig, I noticed nothing which had not been previously pointed out to me. But Boyse’s Chapel, as the lord of Carrig designates it, is much improved, particularly the interior, and what doubly enhances it, in my estimation, is—that it is the work of a native, a Mr Hughes of Wexford, as his lordship informed me. The gilding of the altars and tabernacles is superb and all the painting executed in a most finished style and in exact keeping with the ecclesiastical character of the building. Indeed at first look, you would consider all the wood work of rich old oak; and except to the eyes of the adept in painting would pass off as such. The sanctuary is, in itself, a master piece of the painter’s art. A field of rich purple dotted with innumerable golden stars, typical of a heavenly pavement.

The tout ensemble of the interior does credit to the acumen of the resident clergyman, in the choice of a Church decorator and the work should be a passport to the highly talented artist, for the securing to him the patronage of the venerated Clergy of his native Diocese. I paid a last visit to my lord of Carrig’s establishment and had a drop of his “mighty strong”—He complained of declining years and the loss of his ould landlord, the great Tom Boyse, but consoled himself by hoping that “young Mr Augustus” as he called him, would follow in the track marked out for him, by his late noble minded and patriotic uncle.

Graigue—Kilkenny October 11th 1856.”

I regard it as highly probable that Fr Martin Doyle P. P. Graiguenamanagh, Co. Kilkenny, wrote this letter. He was deeply grateful to Tom Boyse for saving the lives of poorer people of his parish during the Famine by his financial donations. Boyse had an estate there but Fr Doyle’s starving parishioners were not on that estate—the tenants of Tom Boyse’s estate there had no need of succour. Fr Doyle at that time wrote a letter to the newspapers outlining Tom Boyse’s extensive aid to the staving people in Graiguenamanagh. One could write a million books outlining the humanity of Tom Boyse—but his nephew Arthur Hunt Boyse was not his equal in ability or humanity. On that the old lord of Carrig had got it wrong.

Shapland Boyse suffered ugly and dangerous injuries at the Battle of Waterloo.

The writer of the letter used the appellation “An Old Irelander” as a jibe at the Young Ireland movement who had caused the ill-fated Rebellion of 1848

I now return to the Cromwellian Depositions, concerning the 1641 Rebellion, albeit in amended English:–

“The examination of Marcus Power, yeoman, aged thirty or thereabouts, taken upon oath, on the behalf of the Commonwealth against Philip Devereux of Carrrickes [Carrig] Church gentleman, deceased, & Edward Devereux of Loughmegeere [Loughnageer?] his brother & heir now living and claiming under him.

To the 1st Interrogator, the Examinant deposed and said that the  said Philip and Edward Devereux dwelt in the Irish quarters all the time of the Rebellion [of 1641] and did not thence remove into the English quarters as diverse English and Protestants in the County of Wexford did. The deponent’s cause of knowledge hereafter appears.

To the 2nd Interrogator, he cannot depose.

To the 3rd and 4th Interrogators, the Deponent said that the Philip and Edward did in the first year of the Rebellion actually contribute their persons in arms in promoting the said Rebellion by being soldiers in the company raised by Colonel William Browne, in which company they, they, said Philip and Edward, served at the siege of Duncannon in the first summer after the Rebellion broke forth and at a place called Shelbeggan [Sheilbaggin?] in that year when and where a party of the English, out of Duncannon Fort, did fight with the Irish and afterwards the said Philip and Edward were in the Company aforesaid at the battle of Ballibeg, near Ross, at or about the 17th of March 1642: his cause of knowledge is for that the deponent was serieant [servant? Sergeant?] to the said Colonel Browne’s Company during the time aforesaid  and did see the said Philip and Edward to be personally present at the several places and engagements aforesaid against the English.

To the rest of the Interrogators, he cannot depose: but being demanded touching the said Philip’s behaviour since the English access to the government said the said Philip being late drinking at Bannow the last summer did upon his going home towards Carrick’s Church by night drive some garrons belonging to one William Farrell of from the lands of Vernegly, whereof the said Farrell having notice pursued and recovered his said garrons from the said Philip Devereux.”

Marcus Power testified that William Farrell told him that Philip Devereux has taken the garrons from the Vernegly lands.

I am not sure what The Phonetic Society of Great Britain and Ireland was but in 1851 and 1852 a number of pupils from the Bannow Grammar School became new members of it:–

Richard Chute, William Peib (?), William Davenport, Joseph Slayter Moore, Michael Morris and Percy Deverill. They do not look like local names and presumably they came from afar to the Bannow Grammar School.